Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

btw, one curious thing happened . we were playing doubles on friday and this week was something of a discrepancy because I retained my form till friday and was ripping forehands .. even though my waist and shoulder was sore afterwards... anyways back to topic , so we have this guy who comes in once in a while who has a very good pendulum serve , top, side and under and its very difficult to pick ... so we lost the first match badly .. even though he was playing with somebody who plays infrequently and was not in his best ... so I suddenly started noticing , I could tell his serve from the receiving side when my partner was actually receiving ... and then I realized that if we could cheat a little bit and stand towards to left of the table the contact was easier to tell ... passed that on to my partner and both my partner and I started ripping his serve ... gave me tremendous satisfaction even though we lost the next game 2-3 ..... so I guess the lesson is you can still win when you lose

back to Japan after 1 month in France !
played already 1 hour yesterday at the club, just drills which was fine for me.

With 3 summer tournaments played in France (13 wins, 8 losses) playing with a lot of ranked players, i have a good feeling of where I am now. Roughly as I expected, it means at 45 my level is matching or above my best level as when I was in my 20s but with a different game.

With one little exception, I had convincing wins against all of those I was expected to win and lost but gave a good challenge to most of my better ranked opponents. Overall my technique can be improved a lot on all my shots, and i did feel all the better players had a better technique than I. However i could see where i was better than them: more consistency in rallies , good transition in FH/BH, blocking game, some of my serve + 3rd ball combo were good. There were only 2 matches were I felt at a big disadvantage on the opponent serve. My endurance was good, i could play 8 matches with little fatigue; but I feel slow.

Areas to improve in priority:

- recover faster after every shot including serves. I was complaining about my lack of power on some shots, but a more experienced player told me its less about the form of shot itself but its because im not recovering fast enough from the previous shot so i cant get ready in time and take a good swing. So always recover quicker and think about the next shot. Its the fundamentals of TT. and thats enough to go up a few levels.
- while i still can; keep on training on my footwork.
- serve and receive (esp long serves)

Like riding a bike Sir, hopefully health turns around and you will regain your level and progress to the next level.

Good luck Sir!

*prays NL doesn't ask me for 9 pts*

NextLevel said:

My playing level is still dropping but I like the game too much to stop playing. So screw my playing level.

I am reconceiving my forehand stroke for what I hope will be the final time. I have decided to go back to a spinny forehand with off the bounce elements whether as a short or large stroke.

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Sir,

1 MONTH IN FRANCE?!!?!?

Vaguely recall you mentioning you used to live in France? Forget the TT, how was it?

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

back to Japan after 1 month in France !
played already 1 hour yesterday at the club, just drills which was fine for me.

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ttmonster said:

so I guess the lesson is you can still win when you lose

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i always remind 42andbackpains and TTD CCers that one never truly loses if you learn something from it!

AWESOMENESS!

NextLevel said:

Yeah. MX-P and T80FX are not for people who want to compromise. The stuff that helps you compromise is slower than that. But still isn't as cheap or slow as cheap tacky rubber.

There is the Hexer/Baracuda/Genius generation of tensors. And even the stuff suds79 chose is not that bad either. The -S evolutions are not that bouncy compare to the -P.

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i am more used to the MX-P than the T80FX ... however, i've played with the MX-P longer.

Thank you Sir for the reco's on the other rubbers, will keep in mind (as well as ttmonster's reco of Karis-M) when i change rubbers.

Hello DTT CCers!

Last week, we were on vacation... drove ~8 hrs from nyc to toronto to spend a few days and then drove ~2 hrs from toronto to buffalo, ny to take our eldest daughter back to school.

now that she is not home with us, i will resume playing tt sometime this week... missed ~6 weeks.

i missed ~6 weeks as i went driving with my daughter, practicing for her road test. for the record, she didn't pass the road test. but still good times with her practicing her driving.

As always, may all the net and edge balls go your way!

Very truly yours in TT,

~osph

OldschoolPenholder said:

Sir,

1 MONTH IN FRANCE?!!?!?

Vaguely recall you mentioning you used to live in France? Forget the TT, how was it?

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yes I'm French and from Paris. I just love Paris. Its such a beautiful city and I have so many memories.
But I spent a lot of time in Brittany with my parents. They are retired and bought an old farm in the middle of nowhere.
Relaxed a lot, went a bit to the beach, and enjoyed our great food and great wines...

very happy about it ! many people come to France from all over the world every year , and if you haven't been there yet, make sure you do !

had a coaching lesson today
here is a small vid where i'm having a hard time

later i played with Vrael, but contrary to last time where i was happy with my game, i was totally done for, made too many easy mistakes and he crushed me. There was no match. a bit of a pity as I had an excellent training session last Tuesday where i notably won a very good training match 3-0 against a quite skilled girl, I'm not sure i can beat her at all next time.

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

had a coaching lesson today
here is a small vid where i'm having a hard time

later i played with Vrael, but contrary to last time where i was happy with my game, i was totally done for, made too many easy mistakes and he crushed me. There was no match. a bit of a pity as I had an excellent training session last Tuesday where i notably won a very good training match 3-0 against a quite skilled girl, I'm not sure i can beat her at all next time.

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nifty footwork there, well done.


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Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

later i played with Vrael, but contrary to last time where i was happy with my game, i was totally done for, made too many easy mistakes and he crushed me. There was no match. a bit of a pity as I had an excellent training session

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Well, this time I had advantage of being fresh and Takkyu had hard training

Had a good but not great Sunday at club.

I can safely say I am playing my best table tennis I ever have right now. The switch from short pips/inverted to duel inverted definitely was the right way to go for me. That being said, I had a couple of heart breaker losses on Sunday. I suppose the good news is that the two matches were vs people who had always 3-0'd me. Now they're going down to the wire which is good but man.... I should have closed.

Match 1:
Game 4 up, 10-8. I serve to balls in a row of which he chops, I get loop kill opportunities and missed them both. They were the right plays. I simply missed the shots. He takes that game. Game 5 was decided in his favor 13-11. Ouch.

Match 2:
1-1 vs my training partner. I kid you not I was up 10-4 game 3. I don't know how many times I have to make this mistake but at 10-4 I try one of my more experimental serves. Fault. That's okay 10-5. No big deal right? Suddenly he catches fire, has momentum. I try using a timeout. Still didn't work. I lose 10-12. So I'm down 1-2. Next game I'm up 10-7 again and simply couldn't close. Point to be learned from that game 3? Never, ever let your foot off the gas if you're up big on someone. Even if I would have won that same say 11-8 or something. They then start to have confidence "okay I'm came back some. I can do this."... Nah. Just beat them 11-4 and have them think on that going into the next game.

Similar stories both times. I don't know what it is. By describing it, it sounds like nerves in finally getting over people who usually beat me but I really thought I felt comfortable.

Disappointing results but if you take the mindset of "play the game and then move on, there's no sense in dwelling on it. Just try to learn from it." I really think I'll start to take these matches soon here.

Now you understand why the Chinese call timeout when they are up 10-4 and the score becomes 10-7.

NextLevel said:

Now you understand why the Chinese call timeout when they are up 10-4 and the score becomes 10-7.

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Yeah for sure. I've used that tactic successfully for some time now. It's great for killing momentum and usually works. I called timeout at 10-8 but still just couldn't finish the deal.

He changed his service tactics as he tends to serve long and he saw that wasn't working. He went to serving short and I guess started to beat me in short game.

What I'd like to work on or learn more about is push game tactics. I feel like mostly I just soft tap it back trying to play it short. Of course they can just tap it right back. I know I don't utilize the long hard push enough. That ball is well off the table and they're basically forced to open up or if they push or chop back, then I will get an open up opportunity. But yes in the end, I need more short game variation tactics I'd like to work on.

ex: if it' possible to sometimes push short heavy backspin or sometimes basically try a non-spiny short push almost killing the spin.

3 training matches today lost them all in the decider.

i was in poor physical form today, with little sleep recently and skipped running for too long. I was playing rather well recently but i think i wasnt fit enough for the games today

1st guy a veteran, leftie PH. Actually recently i always lose against him in the decider. Once again he wants to play with me, while i have no warmup at all, its a bit of a handicap. i manage to win the 1st but i don't play with right tempo and lose him. He's got tricks, he likes to twiddle and use sometimes LP, and when serving he starts with the bat below the table so i have little time to see whether hes serving with LP or not... thats disturbing a bit. in the 5th set i got killed.

2nd guy a teenager whos a modern defender with BH LP. He's quite good and getting better, his chops are quite heavy and he's got a strong FH attack. He trashed me the 4 and 5 in the 1st and 2nd set, and i thought, its really not my day and he's too good for me, but somehow i fought for honour, and tried to stay positive and to make less mistakes and it paid, I was also a bit lucky with nets and edges and won 3rd and 4th 7 and 4. But in the 5th he took the good start 0-2 and i couldn't catch him 8-11. I've still never beaten him even though it must be the 4th or 5th time i lose in the decider with 2 or 3 points difference only

3rd guy allround player like me he's got some good attacking shots but lacks a bit consistency and doesn't move very well. But some of his serves are really problematic for me and thats why he wins it in the end. I had 2 or 3 match points but didn't play well those points even with my service. Too bad for me. in the 3rd i did come back from 8-10 to win it 12-10. A close encounter again. I've already beaten him several times, i'd say it should be 50/50, but its 2 wins in a row for him now.

Unhappy about the results but not too bad given my level of fitness today.

Takkyu_wa_inochi said:

1st guy a veteran, leftie PH. Actually recently i always lose against him in the decider. Once again he wants to play with me, while i have no warmup at all, its a bit of a handicap. i manage to win the 1st but i don't play with right tempo and lose him. He's got tricks, he likes to twiddle and use sometimes LP, and when serving he starts with the bat below the table so i have little time to see whether hes serving with LP or not... thats disturbing a bit. in the 5th set i got killed.

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I think I can help here because I use to play this exact style. I'm a lefty. I used LPs and I twiddled. Sometimes had SPs on the FH. Sometimes inverted.

Anyways, I'll tell you what my training partner would do vs me that became a problem.

Lets first go over the LP serve setup. So i used that trick too. You serve a few times inverted showing that heavy backspin. You don't try to hide it too much. Then comes time for the LP serve. I kept my paddle behind me. Twiddle. Serve with heavy backspin motion but it's LPs. If they pushed, pop-up. 3rd ball. Point over.

So the key is to pay close attention to when you see that LP color hit the ball. If he's selling to you a chop motion, pay no attention to it. It's probably very dead and/or light, light topspin. I don't know about this guy but because you typically have LPs on a thin sponge and it's just not that fast, that serve is most of the time slow and a two bouncer. So what would you do to me if I took a ball in my hand and just tossed it over to you like a short serve? I'd toss it over no spin and after the two bounces forward, maybe it's rolling over topspin once or twice. Think you could return that serve? Of course you could. You'd F-in smoke that ball with a flick easily placing it wherever you want. There'd be no fear whatsoever of putting it into the net. You'd probably say to me "Are you serious with this exercise? Too easy. etc." It's the same thing.

Now for rallies, my training partner got really good at soft looping LP chop blocks in over & over. He got to the point to where he could out spin me and soft loop those in more than i could play close to the table and chop-block those in. He would then wait for one chop-block to be too high and he'd power loop it. I after a while thought that I need to turn the corner and attack those high arching balls but soft loops have a funny arch on them and they're usually quite spinny so for me it wasn't as easy as it sounds.

Anyways, best of luck. Just keep your foot on the gas when applying pressure. Make him eventually feel that he's out gunned... Happened to me. Now I play duel inverted.

A few points from the LA Open.

I handed a ball that entered my court to Q. Aruna. 4 hours later, I entered a dark locker room to change my wet clothes that were about to give me a week long chafe, turned on the lights and Q. Aruna's Status was KTFO, taking a nap on the bench. A foreign speaking player then asked me if I had a hair dryer, since I couldn't pull one outta my Fro (what a joke if you see how short my hair is) or outta my tail end (which is wide and thick enough enough to provide concealment for an Army), all I could offer him was a disgustingly smelly 25 yr old brown towel used for 8 hrs every day the last three days that was probably more wet than hiz hair.

Last match day,I was practicing with someone, looked up at the sideline and some tall dude in a Samsung Life jersey was standing outside the court I was in waiting for something. I went up to him and asked in Korean if he wanted to come in and practice, then saw others and asked if it was a match. I departed quickly and the one who was Joo Se Hyuk had no time to reply.

I had a 6 hr trip to LA, played 4 hours past midnight, played 10 practice matches day before match day, and a gazillion real match and practice matches. I got my Table Tennis play time for sure.

Got a pic with Joo S H after he won the Open, I think, because I still have not received the text from my TT friends.

Saw a lot of exciting

I have to bug my friend to cough up the pics before he sells 'em on internet or tries to run a hustle on Joo S H...

Youtube says:
Recommended video: How to hold the bat correctly
LOL, he wants to send me back to the basics.

A 12 yo. boy will join our club, who was trained in china (he is chinese). I am curious what will the coaches do if they see chinese style looping just like me. It's because they teach shorter movements (not extremely short, just shorter).