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I think a lot of people are against this or think it is unfair. Unfortunately if a player or player's parents are too vocal, they could potentially be blackballed from any selections in the future whether it be selected for a training camp or selected for a team. The direction things are...

I also think that most of the spots on the national team will be selected this way. 1 spot for the winner of the trials and the rest are appointed by the high performance director or a few other people. I am guessing their logic is that by choosing the "hopes of the future" and giving them...

Some players are very efficient when they play. Losing weight just from practicing TT becomes very difficult if not impossible. Several coaches at the club where I play are like this. One recently stopped practicing completely, started to work out by lifting weights and dropped 15 pounds...

I was in China training at the place where he was getting his degree in coaching. Although he was retired from playing, he had to practice at the college a few hours every day. I was told by some of the coaches that he was one of the very top players for his age in China in his early teens...

I have heard that the ITTF recently changed Olympic eligibility requirements to something along the lines of residence in the home country of at least 9 years. Many of the players who moved from abroad to the USA are ineligible for the Olympics. I 100% could be wrong about this as I do not...

The easiest way to get to 2200 from 2000 is to practice your service for hours on end. If you are 2000, you have room to dramatically improve your serve. With a better serve, everything becomes much easier when you play. If you want travel along a harder road to 2200, 2200 players loops...

In the US there is simply not enough money in the sport to survive outside of coaching. If you are female, you have no other option but to coach. Occasionally there is a women's open event somewhere in the US and 95% of the time or so the prize money for first place does not cover the total...

I think part of the reason why top pros don't use grip tape is for the same reason you don't see 300 pound world class marathon runners. If your hands sweat to the point where you need grip tape, you are going to have a much harder time becoming a professional player. The racket is always...

Personally I do not see any problem with gambling during matches. However I know too many players who simply do not do their homework before making bets which results in them losing anywhere from a few hundred dollars up to $10,000. There are a whole host of people I know who purposely lose in...

When I was training in China in the early 90s I heard a few interesting stories. A former member of the Army team told me that when Liu Guoliang was on the team he would frequently play the women on the team and beat them playing shakehands grip. A few members of the national team told me that...

I agree completely. In other sports if conditions are far from optimal, you just participate. In the USATT if you are slightly ill, there is not enough space to play like you normally would, the floor is slippery or whatever, your national ranking can plummet in one event. It makes no sense...

I don't think college scholarships are the answer. Sure it would help increase the player base a bit, but to be a top 50 player you basically have to practice 40-50 hours a week over a very long time period. I think two huge reasons the US loses junior players once they get older are money...

I know some players are allowed to take classes remotely on-line if they pass placement tests.

Texas Wesleyan was probably the first college to seriously recruit player but I know Anderson and probably Augusta recruited and gave scholarships to players back in the late 80s and early 90s. They met in the finals of the national championships in 1989 with August winning. Augusta also won...

Go watch the video again. There is an insane amount of spin on the ball. Many of his serves have a lot of forward velocity. The backspin is so severe that it slows the ball down so that it bounces several times on the table.

I coach at a club with a bunch of former professional players from China. I also lived in China for a few years playing. The formula for success is simple: take thousands of kids, make them practice 50 hours a week and throw out those that do not improve fast enough. At the end of 10 years...

Far more important than having perfect technique is to have consistent technique. As long as a player can execute the shot in the same manner each time and put the ball on the table, that player will be far more successful than someone with perfect technique and still misses all the time...

Rosskopf beat him. Rosskopf is amazing against the chop. Even though he is primarily coaching now, he also recently beat Wang Wei in a tournament in the USA.

If you have this problem to the extent you are thinking about applying powder, then wiping your hand on the table is not going to help much. For me being able to towel down every point would also be of little help. Without using drysol or the hydronic, I can slide my hand from the net to the...

This problem is quite bad to have as a table tennis player. It also is impossible to understand how much the problem affects your game unless you have it. Powders won't help much. Grip tape also won't help much either. Controlling the paddle with the index finger and thumb also isn't...