Table Tennis News: Players, tournaments, products, tips & more

The Final Dusseldorf Series Event: Qiu Wins Today and Takes the Series Title

August 23, 2020

(by Steve Hopkins) The 10th and final men’s Masters event concluded over the weekend. The winner, Germany’s Dan Qiu, his second series title. This week, the four seeded players were Franziska, Duda, Assar, and Qiu. Unlike many of the past events, play did not proceed as expected. The top three seeds were all eliminated in […]

PongNow: Tim Wang

August 22, 2020

(by Steve Hopkins) The PongNow interview series discusses table tennis with some of the best players and personalities in the sport. This edition features Tim Wang, 3-time U.S. National Champion and 2-time U.S. Olympian. Tim shares stories of his early years, his first National Championship, his Olympic run, and a trip to China. __________________________ […]

China “2020 Olympic Warm-Up” Finals

August 21, 2020

(by Steve Hopkins) As much of the table tennis world is beginning to emerge from their various lock-down circumstances, we are beginning to see club and regional events as well as some larger challenge events. The U.S. has been running Thursday night live, carefully playing one challenge match a week to help build enthusiasm here. […]

USATT’s Thursday Night Live Series: Jennifer Wu puts Nittaku on the Board

August 20, 2020

(by Steve Hopkins) USA Table Tennis conducted its fourth Challenge Series event on Thursday. This week, “America’s First Virtual Table Tennis Challenge” matched Jennifer Wu (2473) for Team Nittaku against Tahl Leibovitz (2457) for Team Butterfly. Table tennis is one of the few sports where men and women compete against each other in major tournaments […]

100th Anniversary of the Birth of Hikosuke Tamasu – The founder of Butterfly

August 20, 2020

Hikosuke Tamasu was born exactly one hundred years ago on August 20, 1920, in Yanai, Japan, as the eldest son of the Tamasu family. Hikosuke began to devote himself to table tennis, a sport for which there were few competitors at the time. Later, as he further honed his skills, he won prizes in all […]

Dusseldorf Masters X Video Highlights: Featuring Duda and Assar

August 18, 2020

(by Steve Hopkins) After the Dusseldorf Masters X event concluded last weekend, Benedikt Duda was the last man standing. It was his second win, the only repeat winner except for Dima Ovtcharov. The highlights video below was posted by BorussiaDuesseldorf (the host of the event). This includes some of the best points across the whole […]

Practice to Master One Skill

August 18, 2020

(By Truong Tu) People watch video of high level matches with many amazing rallies and think that they have to practice fancy drill combinations. We need to admit that unless we have already reached the National or International level, our rallies usually end within 5 shots or less. Therefore, mastery of the basic skills and […]

Steve Isaacson Interview: The Hall of Fame

August 17, 2020

(Intro by Steve Hopkins) As I have been collecting stories from Hall of Fame members, players, and personalities in the sport, I recently had opportunity to converse with Hall of Fame Member, Steve Isaacson. I will be sharing some of his many stories in a series of articles over the next few weeks. This article […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: Should You Develop Your Forehand Push?

August 17, 2020

(By Larry Hodges) At the lower levels, pushing is often over-used; at the higher levels, spectators often underestimate its value. All top players have excellent pushes. However, advanced players – and even intermediate players – rarely push against deep backspin to the forehand, unless they are very defensive choppers. It’s simply better for them to […]

Dusseldorf Masters X: Duda Doubles Down

August 16, 2020

(by Steve Hopkins) The 9th men’s Masters event concluded over the weekend. The winner, Germany’s Benedikt Duda, the only player except for Ovtcharov to repeat as a Series Winner (Dimitrij Ovtcharov has won three times). This week, the event progressed almost exactly by seed. The top 7 seeds all advanced, and the only early upset […]