I am 15 years old, what is the chance of becoming a professional?

Never let anyone place limitations on what you can and cannot do. That is up to you.

With that being said, if you want to be a pro it is not going to be easy. Most pros started playing anywhere from 2 to 6 years old and at a certain age they are playing 6-8 hours a day, 6 days a week. They also usually have a full time coach or relative who can guide their training. If you do not have an expert fixing the problems in your game, you are going to waste a lot of time reinventing the wheel at best. At worst you will develop bad habits that are next to impossible to fix. If you want to have any chance, you need to practice 6 hours a day on the table, 1 hour of serve practice and 1 hour of physical training.

When I went to train in China, one of the women's national team coaches told me that if a player had Waldner's natural talent level, they could start training full time at age 16 and get to a decent level of playing. Otherwise it is better to start when you are 2-6. Not many people are as talented as Waldner, its a very short list of 1 person. But maybe you can do it, so try your best! Good luck!

There is a huge difference between having a decent playing level and a pro level. what we posters are saying is that it is almost impossible for him to be at a pro level since he lacks the hours to practice and some other important things a would be pro needs to develop.

I should be clearer. When the coach said decent level of playing, he meant Chinese National Team level of playing, not necessarily world champion. There is quite a bit of difference.

When considering choices like this one it is better to think about real alternatives and not imaginary ones. For example, you are using international pro player/not pro to decide whether to invest a lot of time and energy into table tennis. It's hard to make a decision on that basis because nobody knows the future. You will make a better decision based on your real alternatives to use that time, right now, today. So if you don't do TT, and instead use six hours a day to watch TV and LOLcat videos on YT, then going for table tennis is probably a better option. At worst you will become a good player and have a sport to play for life. At best you become a pro or a coach and maybe have a second job or even a fulltime business. But if instead you would use the time on your studies, that might be a better choice long-term. If you might do another sport, or learn something else that interests you, then it seems like even odds. Regardless the only person who can provide useful input to your decision is you. What are your real choices? It's a lot of time. And SPOILER ALERT: you won't have hours a day to spend as you please once you get out of school and start working. So choose well.

davizoosk said:

I will do that, I even talked to my father and mother. They agreed, my father is a professional / physical education teacher. He has time to guide me. I will use 26 hours on all 5 days of the week and on weekends probably 16 hours on all.

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Hugo's dad is a PE teacher as well I think. If you are going to try, good luck. One important thing to remember is your improvement will not be linear. When you learn a new tactic you might actually play worse for a while until you get used to it and perfect it. The important thing is to put in the effort day in and day out. I had two friends whose improvement had leveled off for a long time. One player eventually made the national team while practicing in a less than optimal environment. The other eventually got into the top 20 in the country in his late 30s/early 40s. Do your best, study hard in school and give it a shot!

TT must be a passion. To be really good at anything it must be passion.

I have what I think is kind of a sad story.
My third coach was Guo Hao. He beat Jinxin Wang who was the US Champion a few years back in Seattle. When Hao got serious he was very good.

Hao won a provincial tournament when he was 13 and and was selected to a TT academy instead of high school. 4 years of intense TT training. When he graduate from the academy he failed to make the CNT. Competition to make the CNT is vicious and you must be more than good, you must be the best, with the right attitude and without physical weaknesses.

I could guess why Hao didn't make the CNT. Hao got sponsored by someone to come to the US to learn English at a local college. He was here on a student visa which he violated. We knew that but we just wanted to play TT with him. I took lessons from Hao for about a year and a half.
Hao went back to Tianjin and couldn't come back. I doubt he paid any taxes on the money he made and his student visa says he must work only on campus.

In China, Hao can coach. He may be able to make a local team. If he can't he is not going to do well without a real high school education. This is kind of sad.
Does anybody know what an ant colony is?

My point is that you must be much better than good and unless you make the top 20 or so you probably won't make real money. In the US I doubt one can make any money except by coaching.

You have to be training in China surrounded by high level players in order for you to be at pro level starting at 16 years of training.

MaLin2.0 said:

Watch this YouTube video

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OM3YNEnbMPs

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nice video, I've seen a lot ERT videos, but somehow missed that. And for OP, you can try and reach stars, but if you wan't to make decent living from table tennis, this is not a thing for players below ITTF100, so I should seriously be working on my plan B simultaneously... sorry

Simas said:

nice video, I've seen a lot ERT videos, but somehow missed that. And for OP, you can try and reach stars, but if you wan't to make decent living from table tennis, this is not a thing for players below ITTF100, so I should seriously be working on my plan B simultaneously... sorry

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Yeah. This is actually a good point. I was thinking of this purely from the standpoint of whether you could get good enough to be a decently high level player like, top 50 in your country.

From the standpoint of making money, top 1 in your country makes money. I doubt anyone else from your country can pay their bills from just TT. Maybe top 20 in the world can do more than pay their bills. The rest, I have a feeling they get money in other ways aside from TT.

From the supporting yourself and paying the bills standpoint, being almost anything would support you financially better than TT would.

UpSideDownCarl said:

Yeah. This is actually a good point. I was thinking of this purely from the standpoint of whether you could get good enough to be a decently high level player like, top 50 in your country.

From the standpoint of making money, top 1 in your country makes money. I doubt anyone else from your country can pay their bills from just TT. Maybe top 20 in the world can do more than pay their bills. The rest, I have a feeling they get money in other ways aside from TT.

From the supporting yourself and paying the bills standpoint, being almost anything would support you financially better than TT would.

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yes, so if you end up in table tennis, the most realistic option to make a living is to be a good table tennis coach

10000 hours is the bottom line... I tend to agree with Matthew Syed when he said talent is nothing, hard work is everything.

At 6 hours a week you should be elite level by the time you're approaching 50 years old.

Even at 18 hours a week you'll be late 20s.

And as an elite player the reality is you'll still not make a living out of TT.

As I said to my son... he could be in the top 250 football players in France and be a wealthy man but in the top 250 TT players in France he'll earn close to nothing. He'd be much better off being the best plumber in the area than the best TT player the area.

So, set yourself small goals, practice only as much as is enjoyable, get some decent coaching regularly and you'll be as good as the time and effort you put in.

It's only a game.

CluelessTTDad said:

10000 hours is the bottom line... I tend to agree with Matthew Syed when he said talent is nothing, hard work is everything.

At 6 hours a week you should be elite level by the time you're approaching 50 years old.

Even at 18 hours a week you'll be late 20s.

And as an elite player the reality is you'll still not make a living out of TT.

As I said to my son... he could be in the top 250 football players in France and be a wealthy man but in the top 250 TT players in France he'll earn close to nothing. He'd be much better off being the best plumber in the area than the best TT player the area.

So, set yourself small goals, practice only as much as is enjoyable, get some decent coaching regularly and you'll be as good as the time and effort you put in.

It's only a game.

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This is a great post. It is funny. I almost used the analogy of a plumber. I thought about garbage man as well. Either make more than the guys I know who are TT coaches. And the best TT coaches I know, and they are good coaches, kind of have to hustle to make a decent living. Some also have a day job.

Sad, per hour, a tennis coach makes about 3-4 times the amount that a TT coach makes. A golf coach makes about 2-5 times what a tennis coach makes. At least that is how it is on the east coast of the USA. A golf coach can have one client in a day and make exponentially more than a TT coach with 6 or 7 clients in a day.

UpSideDownCarl said:

This is a great post. It is funny. I almost used the analogy of a plumber. I thought about garbage man as well. Either make more than the guys I know who are TT coaches. And the best TT coaches I know, and they are good coaches, kind of have to hustle to make a decent living. Some also have a day job.

Sad, per hour, a tennis coach makes about 3-4 times the amount that a TT coach makes. A golf coach makes about 2-5 times what a tennis coach makes. At least that is how it is on the east coast of the USA. A golf coach can have one client in a day and make exponentially more than a TT coach with 6 or 7 clients in a day.

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Something Jimmy Butler once told me. He said it is bad to be too good at table tennis.

Baal said:

Something Jimmy Butler once told me. He said it is bad to be too good at table tennis.

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Was he mostly referring to the money of it, or the sacrifices that you have to make in all other aspects of your life to get to that point?

CluelessTTDad said:

10000 hours is the bottom line... I tend to agree with Matthew Syed when he said talent is nothing, hard work is everything.

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oh no, if you put 10k hours, you will just be a very good player. You won't be anywhere near ITTF100 or even ITTF1000 i suppose. If you wan't to be with the best in the world, you have to be super talented and then add not 10k but 20k hours on top. At those levels you start with the talent and then you add work.

zyu81 said:

Was he mostly referring to the money of it, or the sacrifices that you have to make in all other aspects of your life to get to that point?

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This comes from a 19 century attitude when professional sportsmen were looked down on compared with amateurs. Perhaps because parents wanted to guide their kids towards respectable jobs with regular income.
For snooker for instance "no gentleman plays billiards better than the marker" (the marker being the club pro keeping score for the members)

Found my 1.5 year old forum post (time flies ) about player salaries in clubs in EU:


"A member of a Table Tennis Facebook Group I follow wrote a very interesting post with the info he was able to gather about men salaries in clubs in EU. So according to the author:

-players who are ~bellow ITTF250+ are playing for food, equipment and a butterfly suit. On a good day, they even may get 100eur for small expenses
-players around ITTF250 earn on average 12-15000 EUR per season +bonuses for results, so on average around 100eur per victory
-players around ITTF200-250 can expect 15-20000 EUR per season+some bonuses
-players around ITTF150-200 can expect 18-22000 EUR per season+some bonuses
-players around ITTF100-150 can earn up to 30000 per season, on average 25-27000 EUR per season
-Crossing ITTF-100 is an important threshold in Table tennis. Top 100 players salaries start from 30000 eur per season. But it depends upon how stable are you. Whether you are always in the top 100 or if your ranking varies from for example ITTF-120 to ITTF-80...
-players around ITTF-60 and up earn 40-50000 eur per season. Those who are stable above ITTF-50 earn not less then 60000EUR per season
-players around ITTF-20 earn from 60-90000eur per season. But it may vary wildly depending on the results
-top players get 150000-300000 eur per season or more. But, for example, stars like Timo Boll earn much more than that.
Also, players get bonuses for taking first places in various tournaments, so this money usually goes only to top players naturally.

Salaries in China are much bigger than in Europe.

So the takeaway is that you should get a normal job and stop dreaming about making your living from TT. Cause to be able to make a decent living you have to be one of let's say 100 top players in the whole world and have superpowers "

I think it's right on topic here