Welcome to Brady's Table Tennis Info Page! I've designed this page to be an informative site about Table Tennis, as well as a method of distributing the local resources for Table Tennis fans, and also showing a few pictures of Table Tennis Players in action! If you are an avid player, play occasionally, or aren't quite sure what Table Tennis is, I hope this site will prove useful!
What is Table Tennis?
You probably have heard of "Ping Pong", maybe you've even played ping pong before. Basically, Table Tennis is a more professional way of playing ping pong. Using two "paddles" or "bats" and a table, a ball is kept in motion for as long as possible, until one of the players makes an error, or is unable to retrieve the ball due to some physical circumstance, like they are unable to reach it, they can't get there in time, or the ball is just moving too fast for them to react.
Table Tennis is becoming more and more popular in the United States, as people realize that anyone from 8 to 80 can enjoy a great game of ping pong!
Table Tennis Clubs
Where can you play Table Tennis? Well, you could play in your basement, garage or on your back porch, and thats where a lot of people first learned how to play ping pong! Then, they moved up to the professional level, and started to play Table Tennis, and so they needed a more professional place to play. So people starting organizing into Table Tennis Clubs. Like any other club Table Tennis has its own set of rules and ettiquette that you seem to learn along the way. Most clubs are set up in a Gymnasium somewhere, because of the space requirements - the more room the better! Ceilings and walls need to be far enough away from the table for proper movement and because of the need to move around the ball. I've been to a few clubs, here are a few reviews:
Pottsgrove Table Tennis Club:
Every Monday and Thursday night from 7 - 10pm, the Pottsgrove Table
Tennis Club meets in the Pottsgrove High School Gym in Pottsgrove, PA. On occasion the start time is changed to 7:30pm if there are special school events. There are 4 or 5 Stiga tables, all pretty much new and in great shape. The tables are set up in one of the gyms, so the floor is fantastic, the ceiling is at least 40 feet up, and there is more room than most of us know what to do with! It gets a bit hot there in the summer, but thats the only drawback. The current turnout is between 15-25 people each night, ranging from novice players to USATT rated 2200 champions! Guests are always welcome.
Because the club is sponsored by the high school, it doesn't
meet when school isn't in session - school holidays, inservice days and snow
days. Membership fee is $30 for the entire year, or $3 per night, and even less for school students. If you check around you'll find that rate is phenomenal, so I suggest joining if you're in the area!
Middletown Area Table Tennis Club:
When my friends and I want to get serious, we go to one of the best places around for high powered, well organized tournaments: The Middletown Table Tennis Club. The Club meets in the Main Street Gym, and boy is it nice! Its probably the best place that I've seen for awesome tournaments. They have upwards of 10 Butterfly tables, great ball barriers, plenty of room between tables, a high ceiling (+40 feet), a concession stand, stadium type seating for friends and family who come to cheer you on, and an even a great speaker system to announce the events so everyone can hear! The club usually holds monthly tournaments during the year. These are scheduled a few months in advance, and can be found found at the USATT
Tournaments Page. I also believe they meet every Friday night. Please call Don Vastine for more information.
Middletown Area Table Tennis Club
Middletown Main Street Gym
231 Oak Hill Drive
Middletown, PA 17057
Don Vastine
717-944-7154 (W)
717-944-6612 (H)
Waterfront Table Tennis Club:
Well, there used to be a decent club down in Phialdelphia on Delaware Avenue, but for some odd reason, it no longer exists. I just mentioned it here in case people were searching, they would find SOME mention of it, and know that it is now defunct. I think it closed down in 2000.
You can find these and other Table Tennis Clubs on the USATT
Clubs List.
A Spectators Guide to the Olympic Sport of Table Tennis
It's not difficult for spectators to appreciate the grace, agility and dynamic power of the tournament level table tennis player. What you are seeing is the product of endless hours of physical training and tens of thousands of balls hit in practice drills.
You are probably already familiar with the rules of the game if you have played "Ping-Pong" in your basement. To quickly review: The game starts with a coin toss, the winner having the choice of serving or receiving. Service alternates in groups of five until one of the players wins the game at 21 points, unless the score reaches 20-20, a deuce game, and players then alternate serves until one of them wins by two points.
The equipment used by the tournament players differs greatly from that used by the recreational player. The tournament players gives considerable thought in selecting the type of wood for the blade (also known as paddle) and choosing from hundreds of different types of rubber. Some players use a "combination racket" having a very spinny rubber on one side and a slick or "anti-spin" rubber on the other. When you see a player flipping his racket he is going back and forth between the spinny side and the slick side in an effort to confuse his opponent. Occasionally you will see a player make what appears to be a very simple and easily avoided error. That player has been the victim of his opponent's deception. With this advantage of different rubber, the International Table Tennis Federation established a rule a few years ago in which all rackets should have one side of red rubber and one side of black rubber. Before the start of the match it is common for the players to present their rackets to each other for inspection so that they know what kind of spin effect is produced from each of the rubber surfaces.
Top players will tell you that there are only three ways to win a point - speed, spin, and placement- but in the course of a game there are a multitude of ways to get into a position of winning that point.
Spin is often the most difficult part of the game for a player to cope with. In a fraction of a second the player must judge not only the ball's velocity and where it will land, but also whether it has topspin or under-spin combined with the infinite degrees of side spin possible. As a spectator you can sometimes tell what the spin is by closely watching the ball A ball with topspin will stay low and kick towards an opponent. A ball with underspin tends to slow down a bit and bounce higher.
Spin is also the primary ingredient in the service game. Players spend a great deal of time finding ways to generate spin in their serves and almost as much time in devising ways to disguise it. Occasionally you will see a player hit what seems to be an easy serve into the net or off the table. The server disguised the real spin so well that neither his opponent or you could tell what it was.
Another aspect of the game is sometimes difficult to appreciate is the mental intensity, the depth of concentration, required of these athletes. The table tennis player is in the position of having to actively think about strategy and at the same time let his body instinctively react to the hall. A nifty piece of mental gymnastics.
USA Table Tennis - Fact Sheet
USA Table Tennis (USATT) is a member of the International Table Tennis Federation and is a Group A member of the United States Olympic Committee. Established in 1933, USATT is the National Governing Body for the sport of table tennis in America. Headquartered at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USATT develops the sport and its athletes at the local and regional levels, produces televised tournaments, and prepares teams for national and international evens including National and World Championships, the Pan American Games and the Olympics.
USA Table Tennis has more than 7,000 sanctioned players and a national network of approximately 300 affiliated clubs. These clubs conduct sanctioned tournaments, league play, and educational activities. USATT also assists a variety of organizations and evens such as the AAU/USA Junior Olympics, National Senior Olympics, State Games, American Wheelchair Table Tennis Association, and Association of College Unions International.
Table Tennis Background
Table Tennis is the second most popular sport in the world next to soccer.
In 1992, more Americans played table tennis (19.8 million) than baseball (14.8 million), skiing (13.8 million), or football (11.4 million).
Table Tennis can be enjoyed by almost anyone. It's an all-weather sport that is inexpensive to play, excellent for hand/eye coordination, adaptable for people with disabilities, and is great exercise for people from eight to eighty.
Table Tennis Athletes
Many top athletes train up to six hours a day. Zhenshi Li, U.S. National Team Coach, has athletes run, spring, cycle, jump rope, weight train, and play baskeball and soccor for physical conditioning.
A group of elite Swedith table tennis athletes was in the upper 5 percent of their age group in terms of aerobic activity.
A well-played 30-minute recreational game burns about 150 calories for a 150-pound person, the equivalent of a brisk 27-minute walk or 32 minutes of light gymnastics.
Top U.S. players train by using a fully-programmable computerized robot made by SITCO USA of Portland, Oregon, that mimics the playing styles of the world's top athletes.
Sweden, China, and Korea are currently world powers in table tennis. The U.S. men's team is ranked 20th, and the women's team is reanked 14th.
Table Tennis History
"Flim-Flam," "gossima," and "Ping-Pong" are names of early versions of the modern sport of table tennis.
Early racquets were made of materials such as cork, vellum, cardboad, and wood and covered with cloth, leather, or sandpaper
The racquet (also called a bat or blade) may be of any size, shape, or weight. Its surface must be dark colored with one side usually being red and the other black. The racquet may be covered with pimpled rubber of total thickness of 2 mm or a "sandwhich" consisting of a layer of cellular rubber surface by having either inward or outward pimples with thickness not exceeding 4mm.
Early verisons of table tennis were sometimes played with champagne corks or light-knitted web balls.
International Table Tennis Facts
Table tennis was banned in the Soviet Union from around 1930 to 1950 allegedly because it was harmful to the eyes.
The 1971 USA Table Tennis delegation to the People's Repuclic of China created front page news as "Ping Pong Diplomacy." The trip not only created greater awareness for the sport, but helped pave the way for improved diplomatic relations between the United States and China.
The International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) was founded in 1926 in Berlin with Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, Germany, Hungary, India, Sweden and Wales as members. USA Table Tennis became a member of the ITTF in 1933.
During the 1996 Olympics, Olympic Table Tennis was televised on every other country in the WORLD except the USA. Many USATT members were outraged by this, calling local television companies and even their local congressmen and state representatives in efforts to get at least some of the Olympic Table Tennis events televised, but they had no success. Some tapes from those 1996 Olympic Table Tennis matches are now available on video, but it would have been nice to watch them on TV.
FUN FACTS SOURCES: American Sports Data (1992); The Olympic Fact Book, Visible Ink Press, 1992; and USATT Media Guide, USA Table Tennis, 1992.
Alden Banks, an old member of the Pottsgrove Table Tennis Club (who has since moved to NY!), attended a Table Tennis Clinic hosted by Danny Seemiller a few years back. He said that he strongly suggests anyone going to a Seemiller Training Camp - he said it improved his game immeasurably! Here is a picture of Alden taking his prize after beating Dave Matthews (circa 1997).
The Forehand
A good forehand is probably the most sought after shot in the entire game. Without a strong forehand, your game is unbalanced, and you have little chance of succeeding for long. If you click on the thumbnail to the left, you will see a larger image of the "The Forehand." Some of the writing is fuzzy, and its about 150kb, so takes a few seconds to load, but I think its worth viewing. This image was donated from Donald Winze
The Serve
The only perfect serve is the one that doesn't come back! Other than that, all serves are just used to get the ball over the net, and to possibly begin control of the ball. Some people serve with a twist of the wrist, others throw the ball way up in the air, hoping for more spin as the ball comes down from the height, and still others hide the ball in mid-air with their other hand. All of these styles of serving are legal, and you'll see them all in a tournament!
If you have any suggestions,
comments, information, etc. please
e-mail me!
