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Latest News - March 2010
CHESAPEAKE OPEN 2010
CHAMPIONS AGAIN!
Austin and Jef sweep the Single Elimination U3600 Doubles.
Nine teams enetered with our own Ben and David set to play, until being
cruelly defaulted after a brutal decision by the Tournament Director. This brought the teams to 8. Our 1st opponents were
a young Chinese team with strong loops and good services. The hours of doubles practice paid off with a convincing 3-0
win. We kept the serves short and the tactics simple and were never in trouble. Next up TerriLee Bell and Keith Tademy, both
well known to us. Jef had played Keith years ago. This looked a tougher proposition for the debutante partnership and it was. We
took the first game, making the most of their serves. The 2nd game we had their measure, with Austin punishing any high ball
with his devastating loop and Jef attacking Keith's services back into his body, to go 2-0 up. The 3rd game proved a
nail biter as TerriLee's tomahawk serve began to give Jef trouble, with them pulling the match back to 2-1. Into the 4th,
and we returned to what had won the earlier 2 games. At 9-9, we had some high drama when one point looked completely
lost. TerriLee played a dead ball return off her pips to our b/h, with Jef badly out of position and stranded
on the f/h. It looked as if the ball was going to hit the floor. Jef scrambled across to his b/h and chopped the ball 6inches
off the floor deep into Keith's b/h for a winner. Keith had relaxed expecting to win the point and was not prepared to make
a return. The momentum and initiative had changed in our favour, 10-9 serving for the match. A missed return gave us the match
3-1. We were into the Final. Up next Patrick Lui (1965) and Irving Goldstein (1574), both from Eldersburg, MD vs Austin
(1758) and Jef (1547). MD v PA. This looked like another tough match with their 3539 rating being 234 above our 3305 and both
of them individually rated higher than each of us. Patrick played with a hard bat and Irving had short pips on one side and
smooth on the other. A real difficult combination for the unwary. We focussed on returning Pat's serves with Jef punching
them straight back at him to force Irving to play his smooth side and crowd Pat's movement. When Irving served Austin ripped
them at Pat forcing weak returns for Jef to pick off. Neither of them could handle Austin's serves very well. The game sequence
was 1-0, 1-1, 2-1, 3-1, with the wins fairly comfortable keeping them below 7 points, in the 4th game they had to change tactics
or lose. We were expecting a change and the game was close at 11-9, with Irving hitting off at 10-9 for us to be Champions
Again!
Singles Highlights
Austin, Ben, David, Jaunty and Jef played in several singles events.
Ben had a miserable day, beginning with being defaulted out of the doubles,
and it did not improve much, with the cloud of the default hanging over him. The highlight was Ben's performance against
a 1700 level player taking a game. David's day also started badly as he was defaulted with Ben. It brightened up considerabley
with a stunning win over a 1684 player followed by a win over a 1400 player. His other results went with the rating
levels. Jaunty played well in patches, working hard to overcome nervousness, beating a 1400 player and picking up rating
points. Yours truly lost the first match to 1684 long pips 3-1. Next up was 7 year old girl rated 1691. I hate kids!!!
Short no-spin and underspin serves caused her all kinds of trouble, with a relatively easy 3-0 win. Then the awkward player.
A weird service motion and flat hit pivot out of the b/h side caused problems, but Jef won 3-1 in a very messy match.
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Singles Highlights Continued
Austin progressed to the Junior U16 final beating two 1500 level players
convincingly on the way. One player had earlier defaulted making an odd number of players to progress. The organisers
decided to play the Final as a 3 way round robin, with Austin up against Tong Tong Gong (2130) and Calvin Chan
(1911). Austin played Tong Tong first fighting for every point but Tong Tong was able to hold him off to win 3-0. The next
match was one of the best Austin has played so far. Trailing 2-0 and with the biased crowd cheering him on he pulled back
to 2-2. The 4th game of the match saw the most incredible point Austin has ever played. Earlier in the day he said to Jef
that he wanted a Waldner moment, where he could rip a shot off a lob return. This would be it. Chan attacked hard and drove
Austin off the table. Everyone in the place stopped to watch as Austin lobbed high and Chan smashed hard, with this being
the pattern for over 15 lobs and smashes, until Chan returned one too low. Austin saw his chance and moved in on the ball
to smash it back past a surprised Chan. Austin's Waldner moment had come. The crowd erupted in cheering and applause for
both players, with all of us applauding Austin. The 5th was tough with Austin falling behind 5-1 to lose 11-5. His comment
was, "I dug myself a hole that I could not get out of this time". If this had been the Olympics or World Championships
it would have been a Bronze medal success. As it was we all felt it had been a Gold medal effort and a great performance to
get to this point.
Tip of the Month.
Service and Service Return.
The general rule and received wisdom is to keep the serve short,
go for the double bounce, but how helpful is this? Not a lot! The top players exclude specific areas of the table by serving
into specific areas a high percentage of the time. See the diagram below. (From The Advanced Manual, ITTF)
This diagram shows a short underspin serve to bounce position 1 on the table.
We now have to think in terms of the value of this serve to the server and the value of the return to the receiver/returner.
The serve cannot be attacked with a strong stroke (defined as a medium to long heavy topspin). The least risky return
is back to where the serve came from, thus placing the ball to the weaker b/h side. (Weaker is defined by the strength of
the muscle group in executing a b/h stroke compared to f/h). The bounce position draws the opponent in close to the table
and away from their b/h side, thus opening up the possibility of ball placement to the b/h corner they just vacated regardless
of a short or long return from them. This we can call the primary return position. The secondary position
is to place the ball to the wide f/h. This is a higher risk return because it opens the f/h down the line again
to the vacated side of the table. NOTE: The Pivot is not suggested for either of the b/h returns.
New Serve position next month's Tip.
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