Monqui Pong open letter to ITTF President regarding service rule

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Interesting video. great pro-active initiative

https://fb.watch/wkW0pOL2Cx/

 

[PhoenixTT]

I suggest a low tech solution that can be applied even in poor communities is to use two-coloured balls.
Two-coloured balls allow the opponent to see the spin, resulting in looooooooooonger rallies, making the game more interesting.
Revoke the hard to enforce rules about services.
It won't even matter if Yoshimura uses his actual face to spin the ball!
Of course, Adam Bobrow's snake career may take a dip.

 

[haggisv]

A well written letter, that does well in identifying the issues, good initiative for sure!
I might have been useful to offer some solutions as well, although I'm not sure if the ITTF would listen.... but you never know.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

I suggest a low tech solution that can be applied even in poor communities is to use two-coloured balls.
Two-coloured balls allow the opponent to see the spin, resulting in looooooooooonger rallies, making the game more interesting.
Revoke the hard to enforce rules about services.
It won't even matter if Yoshimura uses his actual face to spin the ball!
Of course, Adam Bobrow's snake career may take a dip.

have you played with the two coloured ball and can read the spin from it during the service return?

 

[plunder]

tl;dr

 

[pongfugrasshopper]

The letter only offers the suggestion to allow for the receiver to challenge a serve's legality. In principle that is fine, but without an unbiased tech solution, how is the umpire supposed to decide if the challenge is successful or not? What if the receiver is having trouble with a difficult serve and decides to complain that the ball is not visible throughout the service?

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

The letter only offers the suggestion to allow for the receiver to challenge a serve's legality. In principle that is fine, but without an unbiased tech solution, how is the umpire supposed to decide if the challenge is successful or not? What if the receiver is having trouble with a difficult serve and decides to complain that the ball is not visible throughout the service?

I feel, someone in the umpire/referee team need to decide if the serve is within the law of table tennis.
at the moment, there is more cluelessness going on and hopefully with tech solution, an umpire can now review the legality or not of the serve.

I prefer to have someone watching the live tech solution and pressing a red light of every serve.
The call could be delayed, but the call would still come and fault the player.

The correct rule is that the server need to make sure it is clearly legal and with tech and correct angles, it is the servers job to not get faulted.
This way, the culture of serving legally would start.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Here is a video of a TPE U19 player playing against a CNT B team mens player.
The person who is recording at 3:21 comment how Taiwanese players serve very cleanly.
At the start of the video, they are saying how the CNT b team player is serving with a hidden serve.

the culture of illegal serve is actually very bad in the youth space

 

[JackJohnson]

Table tennis really needs another umpire/video umpire similar to cricket where they can monitor live footage and can instantly call out the illegal serves. Similar to cricket where the video umpire can call out a bowler for bowling a no ball for going over the white line and the the opposition team gets 1 run added to their team innings score.

If a player does an illegal serve then the point should go to the opposition player. Players should be allowed 2 reviews each and if a player is wrong they lose a review. If the player is right then they can keep their review

 

[Gtsnake]

Table tennis really needs another umpire/video umpire similar to cricket where they can monitor live footage and can instantly call out the illegal serves. Similar to cricket where the video umpire can call out a bowler for bowling a no ball for going over the white line and the the opposition team gets 1 run added to their team innings score.

If a player does an illegal serve then the point should go to the opposition player. Players should be allowed 2 reviews each and if a player is wrong they lose a review. If the player is right then they can keep their review

There isn't nearly enough money in TT as cricket. Both in revenue and market size of players. They can't afford to add another official unless they're volunteers. Nor can they add more tech which would be even higher costs.

 

[backspacer]

Table tennis really needs another umpire/video umpire similar to cricket where they can monitor live footage and can instantly call out the illegal serves. Similar to cricket where the video umpire can call out a bowler for bowling a no ball for going over the white line and the the opposition team gets 1 run added to their team innings score.

If a player does an illegal serve then the point should go to the opposition player. Players should be allowed 2 reviews each and if a player is wrong they lose a review. If the player is right then they can keep their review

Same in Badminton. There is one person whose only job it is to call out service faults with the help of a device.

 

[PhoenixTT]

have you played with the two coloured ball and can read the spin from it during the service return?

No I haven't
I'm only assuming you can read the spin because they're for training purposes. If you see two colours, no spin. See one colour, spin.

What have you observed about them?

 

[pong99]

I have practiced with the two color balls once used by the CSL for a several years. These are very good balls for practice.

It's a little easier to read the spin on serve as long as the spin is not heavy and the serve is not too fast. It makes it very easy to see when the server put a heavy spin motion but the serve is no/little spin.

When the serve is very heavy and fast, the ball is a blur. I like to use these balls for serve practice to check my spin.

Against an LP player in open play, you can easily tell what spin is on the ball.

Maybe someone should just ask the pros who played with the two color ball in the CSL if it made a difference to them in serve receive. (pros may have a different experience to my hobby level)

A more hard data driven approach would be to review actual matches with the two color ball in the CSL versus one color balls.

 

[JackJohnson]

Same in Badminton. There is one person whose only job it is to call out service faults with the help of a device.

Badminton also has 2 reviews for each player/team and they can review if they believe the badminton shuttle is in or out.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

I have practiced with the two color balls once used by the CSL for a several years. These are very good balls for practice.

It's a little easier to read the spin on serve as long as the spin is not heavy and the serve is not too fast. It makes it very easy to see when the server put a heavy spin motion but the serve is no/little spin.

When the serve is very heavy and fast, the ball is a blur. I like to use these balls for serve practice to check my spin.

Against an LP player in open play, you can easily tell what spin is on the ball.

Maybe someone should just ask the pros who played with the two color ball in the CSL if it made a difference to them in serve receive. (pros may have a different experience to my hobby level)

A more hard data driven approach would be to review actual matches with the two color ball in the CSL versus one color balls.

pros still rely on the action of serve, rather then reading the incoming ball over the net.
reaction time is just not enough for service return to read the spinning ball traveling against you.

maybe during a rallie is okay - ie, as you put it, LP player, where the balls path is from rubber to your side of the table, but not serve, table, over net, table and you.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

There isn't nearly enough money in TT as cricket. Both in revenue and market size of players. They can't afford to add another official unless they're volunteers. Nor can they add more tech which would be even higher costs.

well, ITTF just announced TTR for WTTTC 2025
so officials / technology is in place for it.

but again, its for review, not "live umpiring"
So it is a policy issue, not budget issue

 

[banbekas]

pros still rely on the action of serve, rather then reading the incoming ball over the net.
reaction time is just not enough for service return to read the spinning ball traveling against you.

maybe during a rallie is okay - ie, as you put it, LP player, where the balls path is from rubber to your side of the table, but not serve, table, over net, table and you.

I agree. I have played with two colors balls and it's nearly impossible to judge the spin on the ball as it travels. Not enough time to properly assess the amount, type of spin and so on because the ball travels faster than you actually think of.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

I agree. I have played with two colors balls and it's nearly impossible to judge the spin on the ball as it travels. Not enough time to properly assess the amount, type of spin and so on because the ball travels faster than you actually think of.

correct
the service return movement starts by the first bounce.
There is no ways anyone can predict the spin from looking at the ball between hidden contact and first bounce.
You have contact and first bounce little time frame to decide on what to do.
anything after that, you would be late

 

[PhoenixTT]

I have practiced with the two color balls once used by the CSL for a several years. These are very good balls for practice.

It's a little easier to read the spin on serve as long as the spin is not heavy and the serve is not too fast. It makes it very easy to see when the server put a heavy spin motion but the serve is no/little spin.

There might be a design pattern or colour combo that better highlights the spin, even very high spin. I'll test some when I have time.