Can European players compete with the Chinese?

Now , since the original owner of the the thread has given up , it might not be a bad idea to hijack it , I will wait for the protesters ...

I am taking a guess here Carl , probably because the ITTF along with us have deemed that the greatest acceptance of Table tennis as a global sport is through its inclusion in Olympics , and since nationality is inexorably tied to the Olympics the rest follows.

There could be another interesting theory , again pure guess work , look at the level of corruption in the world sports bodies , tennis is a comparatively corruption free sports , because its elite , there is a lot of money and from a social perspective it does not have penetration into third world countries except the creme de la creme in those countries ... so the politics there has gotten above beyond the nationalities but instead of becoming global sports they have become global "corporate" sports ...

It helps the governing authorities in the more corrupt sports to follow the age old divide and rule policy and keep shining the spotlight on nationality , to help them win the elections by promising peanuts to those less unfortunate countries and promising power and sway in policy decisions to the more fortunate ones

However, and this is the saddest part, time and again , in this day and age, we come across perfectly educated fans / amateurs / coaches in these sports who have international exposure but still cannot rise above their parochial vision of nationality, realize that they are a citizen of the world , and acknowledge the sport as a global sport

UpSideDownCarl said:

I am all for thinking outside the box to get the rest of the world more competitive with the top CNT players. So thanks Eli for getting people to look at these things a little differently.

One of the things I have never entirely understood about table tennis as a sport is why nationality plays so big a part in how events are played.

For instance, in tennis, at Wimbledon, I don't think they list the player's name with their country flag. And in a match with. Nadal, they don't talk incessantly about Spain. Or about Serbia when Djokavic is playing.

I wonder why table tennis is like that.


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I guess, when a forum moderator hijacks a thread to talk about nationality and why it is so central to how TT is marketed and viewed, instead of the actual subject of the thread, perhaps it's that the goon squad was about to try and start confiscating National H3 Blue Sponge from all the posters on the thread so someone had to divert their attention so everyone had a chance to escape out the back door.


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Is that why the "family" sent Luca Brasi to California to start investing in legalized gambling ..

UpSideDownCarl said:

I guess, when a forum moderator hijacks a thread to talk about nationality and why it is so central to how TT is marketed and viewed, instead of the actual subject of the thread, perhaps it's that the goon squad was about to try and start confiscating National H3 Blue Sponge from all the posters on the thread so someone had to divert their attention so everyone had a chance to escape out the back door.


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UpSideDownCarl said:

I guess, when a forum moderator hijacks a thread to talk about nationality and why it is so central to how TT is marketed and viewed, instead of the actual subject of the thread, perhaps it's that the goon squad was about to try and start confiscating National H3 Blue Sponge from all the posters on the thread so someone had to divert their attention so everyone had a chance to escape out the back door.


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The main answer to your question is that to register for an ITTF event, you must be approved by some national association. If you watch ITF (tennis) events, nationality is often factored in (Grand slams, Davis Cup). It is ATP/WTA events that are less reliant on nationality.

I think it's a misconception that Waldner used "tricks" to defeat the Chinese. He was ruthless in big competitions. Didn't yield an inch of the table. Watch the 1997 WTTC to see what I mean or his matches in 2004 against Boll and Ma Lin. Hardly any fancy chop blocks or sky-lobs. Just great service-game, technique and tactics.

tristan flore, kristian karlsson and anton kalberg maybe have some slight chance to win an odd game against the chinese if they play out of their skin. all three of them faced a top chinese and seemed to hold their own for at least a little while. gauzy lacks power, ouaiche is not aggressive enough, pitchford relies too much on his rally game, dyas needs way more experience in short game against the worlds top 5 and it's not like he gets to train with them every day, dima has become a father, duda is not good enough, freitas has the same problem as pitchford.

i don't see ouaiche endangering the chinese any time soon. let us not forget, the chinese are and will be way better players for quite some time, in order to beat a better player you have to put him under pressure. ouaiche has crazy skills but his style isn't about putting his opponent under pressure. someone like kristian karlsson who fires away projectiles from both wings has more chance imo.

anchorschmidt said:

I think it's a misconception that Waldner used "tricks" to defeat the Chinese. He was ruthless in big competitions. Didn't yield an inch of the table. Watch the 1997 WTTC to see what I mean or his matches in 2004 against Boll and Ma Lin. Hardly any fancy chop blocks or sky-lobs. Just great service-game, technique and tactics.

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I think you are right Samsonov said in the podcast that Waldner played really aggressively in the final in 1997.
At the 2004 Olympics Waldner had a cool sidespin push thing though. I guess you could call that a trick (see 3:30 in the video)

anchorschmidt said:

I think it's a misconception that Waldner used "tricks" to defeat the Chinese. He was ruthless in big competitions. Didn't yield an inch of the table. Watch the 1997 WTTC to see what I mean or his matches in 2004 against Boll and Ma Lin. Hardly any fancy chop blocks or sky-lobs. Just great service-game, technique and tactics.

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I agree and of course waldner didnt rely only on his jedi mind tricks. What I meant is that, with the new balls and evolution in technique, every ball that is only one bounce and goes out (double bounced serve also if they can banana flick with good prospects) is attacked by the chinese, or at least neutralized to keep themselves in the point and then attacked. Ma lin was described by waldner as his toughest opponent, thats why I set him as an example

For example waldner used way more half long serves (comparing to today's serving ratio) to trap his opponents. If they pushed back he attacked first, if they topspin slow he countertopspins, if they topspin with good quality they get punch block or at least he blocked them out of position and then finish the point, if the receive was poor quality again he attacked first. With the 38 mm ball my perception/assumption is that it was way more easy/effective to do that to anyone, especially with a variety of hidden serves where the guessing factor comes to play

Im not saying a 20 yo copy of waldner would not stand a chance today, he would definitely adjust, (as he did but he was too old to keep up with the youngsters) but that the game has changed and out of the box shots are not of big importance in the top20 ranking list as they were 10 or 20 years ago

UpSideDownCarl said:

I am all for thinking outside the box to get the rest of the world more competitive with the top CNT players. So thanks Eli for getting people to look at these things a little differently.

One of the things I have never entirely understood about table tennis as a sport is why nationality plays so big a part in how events are played.

For instance, in tennis, at Wimbledon, I don't think they list the player's name with their country flag. And in a match with. Nadal, they don't talk incessantly about Spain. Or about Serbia when Djokavic is playing.

I wonder why table tennis is like that.


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This is something what I also can't understand. If I remember correctly, there isn't too much tennis team event. Even tennis team world cup is closed now. In table tennis team events are equally important as singles. Maybe because there is less money in TT and without the help of national associations (which are getting money from the government) you have a hard time to get quality coaching, sponsorship etc. Look at China and Japan. Their training program is superior compared to other nations', they aren't team champs by accident.

oops, posted in wrong topic.

[h=2]Can European players compete with the Chinese?[/h]
The answer is absolutely off course they can. They are already competent, why do you guys worried a lot about? everyone human being are the same human being, we have to be fair and accept not to be jealous or envy of someone better than us, thats all. In the end there would be another stars maybe from europe, maybe from another asian countries or else where would become champion, so what do we have to worry about? Its just unfair and ridiculuous to think that only chinese players are the strongest, and yes it is maybe now because they trained so hard, have good organizations and preparations for this sport because table tennis is one of the favourite and loved sport in China. People from young,old, men and women they love table tennis, that's why this sport is so much supported and developing there. So, stop jealous, stop envy like theres no one could be better than chinese in this sport, it just sound ridiculuous, not make sense and at the end could be tend to racism and thats bad. Just remember that song title from the Beatles " All you need is love, love is all you need"

ttmonster said:

I think its high time instead of using the term European , you should really use "Rest of the world" and include Latin American players in that list as well , or atleast one , Hugo Calderano

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I agree, Hugo Calderano

Yeah. It is a fun topic. Thanks for opening it up. People's response about different regions made me think of why table tennis is so nation oriented. I hope you didn't mind my taking the thread on a tangent for a moment or, joking about hijacking the thread.

I think sometimes people make comments and don't realize how they can come off as being negative. Don't worry about the comments where it feels like people want to bite your head off.

Having a real high level player and a good coach on here throwing ideas out is really great for the forum.

Even if some of us on the forum act like we are trying to win a match any way we can when we post: filthy serves, nets and edges. [emoji2]


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