This was a big get for Houston, and the pathetic Houston media has not been covering it. This is the 2nd most popular sport in the world after soccer. Ticket sales have been fine, with everything sold out, but I am sure that is from foreigners coming to Houston.

Tomorrow are the finals, with Fan Zhendong (the #1 player in the world) of China playing Truls Moregard of Sweden. The mens doubles final has a team from Sweden playing a team from Japan. Of course the women are playing too. All can be live-streamed for a small charge.

Table tennis requires an incredible amount of athleticism, and I can attest to that. Playing also helps baseball players who can't hit curve balls, since the natural forehand comes in with topspin/sidespin on it.

only if they're playing badminton behind a big blue curtain will they sniff the attention of the press...

The Swede Truls Moregard is only 19 years old, and was ranked 77 in the world coming into the world championships. He will play the number 1 in the world in the finals.

In the semis he was down 3-0 and came back to win 4-3.

(11-29-2021 02:50 AM)peanutgallery Wrote:  The Swede Truls Moregard is only 19 years old, and was ranked 77 in the world coming into the world championships. He will play the number 1 in the world in the finals.

In the semis he was down 3-0 and came back to win 4-3.

Here's a link the WTT's video highlights of that match: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=642710070431573

5:44 - Start of what the announcer called "the point of the tournament so far"

6:46 - Start of the final match highlights.

Brings back memories of playing Harold Solomon in the RMC basement's tables.

Swedes just won mens doubles

The surfaces of the professional table tennis "bats" are incredibly sticky, unlike what the typical player uses for playing in the basement. The balls have all their weight on the rim, with only air in the inside, and the sticky surfaces of the bats put an incredible spin on the ball. In effect, the balls are "sizzling" with spin.

If you were to hold your bat pointing directly at the opposite side of the table, and your opponent hits a topspin shot to you, the ball would go up about 45 degrees, way over the other side. You must angle your bat about 45% down, and when the ball hits your bat the spin is reversed, sending topspin back to your opponent.

Instead of reversing the spin of a topspin shot, you can also go with the spin, chopping down with a speed equal to the spin, sending underspin back to your opponent.

The same principle holds if you are receiving underspin or sidespin.

To make everything even more complicated, a player can use a surface on one side that is slippery as ice. The player will try to disguise which side he is using on his serves. Receiving a shot with this side sends the same spin right back to the server. However, this surface is mainly used for backhands, and is not good for offensive shots. The players must use different colors for each side of the bat so your opponent can know which surface you are using.

The server is like a pitcher in baseball, trying to disguise the spin he is sending you. Besides sending variations of sidespins with underspins, he can send a screwball which comes at you with axis of the spin directly at you. If you angle the bat downward, the ball will go into the net. If you angle the bat upward, you will pop it up for an easy kill. You must hit the ball back right on the pinpoint of the spin axis.

Like a pitcher in baseball. the server can cheat and serve a spitball. This is why the players are always wiping the sweat off their hands, and making sure the umpire sees it.

If you have a powerful enough forehand, you can nullify the spin on the ball, since the ball remains on your bat for a tiny amount of time. For example, a kill shot for a high ball, with a hard enough swing, can nullify the spin.

The art of the shoulder fake is also very important.

Tennis, over the years, has become more and more like table tennis, with Bjorn Borg leading the way (he started out playing table tennis). He introduced heavy topspin. Over the years, shoulder faking has become more and more important on forehands, just like table tennis.

One of the things the pro table tennis players can do (which is very difficult to do) is to sometimes convert the spin energy of the ball into velocity. You can see this sometimes on the surprised look of the opponent, when the ball goes past him when it looks like the player hardly swung at the ball.

Fan Zhendong, world number 1, of China won 4-0. Many interesting points, though.

I was for the Swede - China has thousands nuclear missiles aimed at us.

However, they are being nice and making them all supersonic so we won't have to agonize as long once they are in the air.

(Reminds me of the old George Wallace comedy sketch about our government bragging about faster bomber jets being developed. He said do we really need these? I haven't ever heard of the people in the other countries complaining that they are arriving late. He then portrays a foreigner looking at his watch saying "damn, when is that bomber going to get here. I've got things to do."

With our strong connections to China, not to mention that this is an Olympic sport that requires little in the way of equipment nor space, I'm really surprised we don't have a team for this.

I realize its not an NCAA sponsored sport (because so many play 'pro') but the list of recent champions includes
Stanford, Texas Wesleyan (who won one or more divisions about 15 times in a row it seems), Harvard, RPI, MIT Johns Hopkins, Bradley, Princeton, Penn, Brown, UT-Arlington, USC and Berkeley.

The 2020 games were to have been in Round Rock (as they were in 2016 and 2018), but were canceled.

(11-30-2021 05:09 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  With our strong connections to China, not to mention that this is an Olympic sport that requires little in the way of equipment nor space, I'm really surprised we don't have a team for this.

I realize its not an NCAA sponsored sport (because so many play 'pro') but the list of recent champions includes
Stanford, Texas Wesleyan (who won one or more divisions about 15 times in a row it seems), Harvard, RPI, MIT Johns Hopkins, Bradley, Princeton, Penn, Brown, UT-Arlington, USC and Berkeley.

At least as of 2019, a Rice team did participate in a National Collegiate Table Tennis Association tournament in San Antonio: http://danserver.com/nctta/MeetReport.asp?MeetId=7052

Rice is among the four teams listed as playing in the Nov. 14, 2021, tournament, too: http://www.nctta.org/schedule). But the last update to the Rice listing was in 2019 (http://danserver.com/nctta/SchoolDetail.asp?ID=1520).

Here's a link to the list of past national team and individual champions: http://www.nctta.org/content/past-national-champions