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Generally speaking, the Table Tennis and Ping Pong, at recreation centers, is not organized very well.
In my opinion the biggest obstacle in growing TT in US is the availability of coaching... It is ridiculously difficult to do well in any sport without guidance, but in such a technically complex sport like TT it is just undoable. And the price of the fanciest racket you can buy is worth of only a few hours of individual coaching, and one needs many to really progress. And even if the price is not a concern, coaching is only available at a few TT "hot spots", that can be too far away from your home club (you're lucky if you have one).
I'll be quite honest with you, i would'nt like to live in a country where it's difficult to play table tennis !
it's more interesting to play against a lot of players and so future of table tennis in USA is in growing, no doubt about this for me.
I am living in a french town with 80.000 people, about 400 players, ever many people at training, I couldn't imagine a town without table tennis.
It is a twisted scheme that is entirely based on making SPiN as much money as possible. But, in an interesting way, it is getting these guys more interested in the sport, or at least playing it. Although I doubt these corporate types, for the most part, are really learning the sport. They are interested in playing and bragging rights. There was a coach who was training this guy to get ready for a match with another big wig in his corporation and the there was $10,000.00 USD riding on the match. I mean, from a real standpoint, they were both clowns and I could beat them with my left hand. But, they had a bet on th match for $10,000.00 smackers.
Der_Echte, too bad you didn't put the hustle on those two guys. You could have come away with $10,000.00 from each!!!
I didn't travel outside Europe ... we say "casanier" in french ... But I am always interested about others country playing table tennis.
I am 56 old and play since about 25 years (with a break) in regional championship, my level is about 1300 points in France.
As I am music teacher, i'm very interested too about table tennis technique, I am often looking at videos (ttbl.tv, ittv, etc ...)
In france, it's just a dream to play table tennis, it's cheap (between 100 euros and 150 euros for a year) and there is a lot of free competitions.
a question, who are the top players in USA and what about their world ranking ?