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Picard is another very strong player who may never make national team. I remember people were recently making fun of the fact he gave Pitchford a tough match and has an ITTF ranking over 200...

Poret and Coton are why I don't think we will see Gauzy in LA.

France is strong, De Nodrest is not going to make national team any time soon but clearly a very strong player.

Was a bit sad for me seeing Tristan Flore lose...

I have always held that the current ranking system measures performance but not player strength like an ELO system does, so you get no reward for quality of wins, it is all about what round you make in events. So I am not a slave to the current system in assessing player strength, one has to...

I find it hard to believe I posted Szocs was overrated, in what context did I do that? I thought it was you arguing that the European women (and Shin Yubin) were overrated prior to the Olympics and that Miu Hirano would overtake them in ranking or something along those lines.

If you look at any player in the top 30, you will find a similar won and loss profile. Remember that prior to the Olympics, Truls for example lost a bunch of first round matches against various players. I like the fact that you admit these are all great players, and Elbeiali, the outlier...

Who doesn't have first round exits at the Champion's level other than the top Chinese? I believe there was a time when Bernie Szocs was losing first round every time at either Champions or Smash, I believe Champions. Would you say her rating was inflated? In Bundesliga, Aruna went through two...

Not some. other than maybe Zhang Jike who studied him for an extended period, pretty much all. I would go so far as to argue that Wang Hao was the first CNT player with a truly great backhand and his world championship in 2009 was the true beginning of two winged play and dominating the...

A player who has beaten Hugo, both Lebruns, Lin Yun Ju, Harimoto, Liang Jingkun and a few others I probably will forget doesn't convert into results....

His (Ma Long) backhand was always one of the best in the world, even when it was a relative weakness before the plastic ball change. His forehand as far as I know was never underrated.

You would never put Wang Hao or Felix Lebrun or Dang Qiu or Wong Chun Ting, who all have great backhands? Xu Xin is relatively bad IMHO, there are many good RPB backhands out there.

There definitely is, the question though is whether these give rise to different technical patterns for teaching with starkly different results. Obviously you can flat block topspin with the forehand, you can smash it, you can guide it. You can fade you can hook, you can straighr...

My perfect non-CNT players (using a different philosophy from my original answers): Forehand: Truls Moregard Backhand: Liam Pitchford Serve: Quadri Aruna Mentality: Harimoto Feeling: Anders Lind Power: Alexis Lebrun Personality: Simon Gauzy Celebration: Darko Jorgic

Just saw these on an old youtube channel - lots of other matches there for people who are interested:

This is just athlete's pride speaking, Lin Shidong is probably the best rally player in the world now and we saw what happened

Someone needs to out together a 2025 WCQ highlights video. It could have feats in it for forehand footwork that might draw new fans to the sport.

He is doing things to get in his forehand that are beyond 90% of pros. It is really amazing.

Fan was already showing signs of exhaustion last year. While I know it was partly interests and he could have played on, the demands of remaining unbeatable definitely played a part. How you remain unbeatable points towards sustainability with age. And the truth is that because o Ma Long...

Which is why I gave him four years. If you believe either the FZD or ML trajectory that corresponds to his age, he has 4 years and has already lost the Olympics in this cycle with only XD medals. He needs to win the WTTC this year for sure but he is definitely the favorite.