Daily Table Tennis Chit Chat

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Table tennis live on national TV is not something that happens every day (or every year even). The video can be found on ITTF's facebook page. SVT seem to have locked their stream (which is much higher quality) to Sweden only.

Truls destroyed Falck. 4-0. His recent sparring with Dima in Stockholm really seems to have paid off.

Linda Bergström won the womens match. Quite impressive as she only changed from Curl P1R to Spin Pips Chop 2 just some weeks ago.

Truls played fantastic!
 
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Have been testing Dignics 09C. It is about what I expected and it makes my forehand much more versatile and stable. The sponge is fast enough and you get the beauty of Chinese rubber on pushes and chops but it isn't as tacky and sticky though it has *some* stickiness. I suspect that price aside, it will become an extremely popular forehand rubber. Definitely an upgrade over Tenergy 05 Hard on my forehand side.
 
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did you try on your BH ?

Yes. In fact, originally I considered switching to it on both sides. I decided to postpone that because it wasn't as obvious it was better on the backhand for me - in fact, it is quite possible that Tenergy 05 Hard is too much for me on the backhand but the rubber plays similarly enough to Dignics 09C that I don't lose my understanding of the stroke when I transition my technique, which is important for me. But it wasn't always clear that the ball holding of D09C on backhand was a strength. I might have a different opinion in the a few months as I will definitely twiddle a lot. I suspect that the rubber will continue to get faster as I use it more and maybe with more testing I would have stuck with it on both sides.
 
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I have been wondering how TT will be played when it gets back to normal. It's interesting that the TT demographic in America largely consists of people who are at risk for contracting this disease given their age profile. I personally have treated this disease largely in my head as a disease I do not want to contract (hence social distancing and limited interaction with people), but also in my mind as something that I should not be deathly afraid of, which is largely how I view influenza. Everytime I have influenza, I fall sick and have sweats and hope I survive. For COVID19, I have made sure I get copious amounts of rest, take vitamin D and Zinc, and reduce my carb load to make sure body is as active as can be. I also bought a pulse oximeter to test my breathing on a regular basis. I go to the club two to three times a week to hit with people I know, one of whom had the disease in March (his children brought it from NY to him and his wife).

Now my club is actually closed till June 1 at the very least. I wonder whether there will be any capacity limits or social distancing measures when play resumes.

So I was wondering that if anyone here lives Sweden for example, where a club is unlikely to have the 50 people limit but even 20 people in my club might induce panic - I was wondering how that is handled?

I am still 2 weeks (or 1.5 weeks) away from this being a reality.
 
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I have been wondering how TT will be played when it gets back to normal. It's interesting that the TT demographic in America largely consists of people who are at risk for contracting this disease given their age profile. I personally have treated this disease largely in my head as a disease I do not want to contract (hence social distancing and limited interaction with people), but also in my mind as something that I should not be deathly afraid of, which is largely how I view influenza. Everytime I have influenza, I fall sick and have sweats and hope I survive. For COVID19, I have made sure I get copious amounts of rest, take vitamin D and Zinc, and reduce my carb load to make sure body is as active as can be. I also bought a pulse oximeter to test my breathing on a regular basis. I go to the club two to three times a week to hit with people I know, one of whom had the disease in March (his children brought it from NY to him and his wife).

Now my club is actually closed till June 1 at the very least. I wonder whether there will be any capacity limits or social distancing measures when play resumes.

So I was wondering that if anyone here lives Sweden for example, where a club is unlikely to have the 50 people limit but even 20 people in my club might induce panic - I was wondering how that is handled?

I am still 2 weeks (or 1.5 weeks) away from this being a reality.

Our club has put a cap on 32 people in the hall. We conduct our training sessions in a school handball hall (which is about 25% bigger than a full size basketball court) and have room for about 24-30 tables but we rarely use more than 16 tables so it really hasn't been an issue. The coach (we have a full time coach employed) keeps track of this. No parents are allowed in the hall to watch their kids practice nor to leave/pick them up.

The two bigger clubs in Stockholm (Ängby & Spårvägen) has more rigorous rules. Spårvägen's covid-19 rules can be found here:
https://www.sparvagenbtk.se/Nyheter...asteNyheterna/traningaraterupptasfromman3003/

Google Translate does a 99% accurate job with Swedish as our language has pretty much the same syntax as English.

Edit: Dima has been training with another Stockholm club during the pandemic (together with Truls). He usually trains with Spårvägen. I'll leave it to someone else to decide whether this is due to the fact that Spårvägen only allows members to enter their hall or if it's due to him ditching Donic :D
 
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Our national broadcaster has picked up that Dima is training in Stockholm since 5 weeks back. The Stockholm training group now also includes Robles (on top of Truls and Simon Berglund).

It is just logical, people are going to where there are clubs open that they can train. If I were in Europe and played professionally, I would likely be in Sweden as well. Who really wants to deal with all the barriers to practice? In some countries, top players are forced to hit with robots during this lockdown.
 
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It’s a pity that SVT region locked the clip. Robles seem to be having the time of his life sparring with Dima.

56B53D12-954E-4415-B661-3F65EEE29B6B.jpg
“It’s a dream to train with such a good player”
 
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Finally !!
After nearly 4 months without playing (apart from a few sessions on an outdoor table which wasn't even the proper size), I had a real knock with my teammate E. for 2 hours.

We were both far from our best. But i'm quite happy with the result given the circumstances. Actually in drills i was doing rather ok, especially on the BH side. D80 really suits me well, and is making me forget the SpinArt. Physically i've been jogging regularly and even did a few Air-TT sessions so i was ok.
In matchplay however it was a disaster. E. is a better player than me, but I can beat him from time to time and take sets very often. However we did many many sets, and i couldn't even get one, only a few deuces. My serve, and especially receive game was really under par. Even when I told him to tell me in advance if he would serve topspin or underspin, i couldn't receive properly.

To be able to play today, we had to rent a table in a private school and pay top yen for access.

The public venue we play normally will open on Tuesday, but I'm worried about what they wrote in their website:
- only 30 people allowed while there's 18 tables and peak hours are overcrowded...
- extra screening at the entrance (temperature, paperwork...) --> loss of time
- everyone should play with a mask
- access to changing rooms will be limited (no more than X persons at a time)

We cannot expect tournaments to resume anytime soon. 2 June tournaments that I registered to have been cancelled.
 
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Had a few hits, after cleaning up the club, flushing the pipes for legionella prevention, making arrangements to mark and separate in- and outgoing players, sanitation points at club and playing hall entry, and so on.

Anyway. My BH was at home immediately. Stance, movement and FH timing took a while, but seemed to *snap* into place after an hour or so. HUGE numbers of FH edge hits, and quite a few donkeyish mishits as well until proper ball contact started to return. Serving with quality is hard!

It was great feeling the snap and bend of the ball again, and feeling the fluidity of movement (well, as far as old geezerdom permits) return.
 
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Ever wondered how Waldner and Appelgren makes a living nowadays? Look no further:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6nDqIZz_Ro

Quite funny. The vlog is produced by one of Swedens most famous football and ice hockey commentators (the bald guy who I have a 1-1 track record against). He teams up with Waldner against Appelgren and Glenn Strömberg (one of my childhood idols when he was playing in Italy against the great "El Diego" of Napoli). Strömberg completely looses it against Waldner.
 
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