First of all, I have to thank all the amazing helpers at this year US Open table tennis championship. The people like Bruce, Larry, Gerry are all helping. Thanks to Anne, my wife who is helping the results section. Please visit US Open Twitter feeds. You will get the latest updates from the media.
I would say US Open 2009 Table Tennis Championship first day was not bad for me. I was really in high spirit yesterday. I could breath better and move better. I had to take few puffs from the inhaler, but it has worked. The sinus pressure was under control too.
Meg is improving day by day. In my opinion if she practices every day, she would be a 2200 to 2300 rated player. I realized this after I have watched her game against Soo, a 2400 rated chopper from California and now in the Killerspin crew. I did not have enough battery power in the camcorder, otherwise I would have recorded that match. If Meg was little careful she would have beaten Soo. Meg played very good against Soo - very patiently and thoughtfully. If Meg has understood her mistakes and correct in the long run of her career, she would shine as one of the top players from Utah. That is one reason I advise her to practice with Ryan.
Meg and I reached the quarter finals of the under 3700 doubles. We had tough competitors. Byron and Carol were helpful cheering for us. Unfortunately, I’m the reason we have lost the quarterfinals. I messed up the fourth game. I took it little light and gave away the game. In the fifth game, we switched sides. There was a havoc between the referee, the audience and the other team about who is serving who. I just kept quit when the conversion was getting more attention from the crowd. Unfortunately I gave out two points (serve mistakes) while we were leading like 5 to 2. Darn! That was a big stupidity from my side. That is a legendary problem I have. It is not really nervousness. I would say my brain is still processing a previous incident when I’m supposed to do something new at that point. Isn’t the brain complicated especially mine? We lost 11- 9 in the fifth game.
The under 2050 was really encouraging for me. I have played Ilya, and an elderly lady from New York - aged 55 to 60 may be. With tenergy on both sides with a rating of 1100, she was rocking. She gave hard to all of us. She hits hard. It surprised me a little when I have found about his rating. But, it is encouraging to know she is carrying a dream to be a better player at this age. I have to talk about one point where she hit the ball on the net on my extreme forehand, fall down from the net, I pushed the ball to her forehand exactly the same spot she put the ball on my side. Alas! She moved fast and returned that ball too. Sadly she lost the point because she was at her extreme on her forehand when I have placed the ball on to her backhand. We had Larry Thomman of Newgy in the group.
Ilya has very good loops. He took a momentum in the second game, by serving no spin to my pips and looping the next ball. Ilya was caught in that idea when I have toppled his plan. I won that match. He is surely a good player I would like to play against. Larry troubled me a lot. He has XIOM Omega II on the forehand and TSP Spinpips on the backhand. With TSP Spinpips with thick sponge on his backhand, he was rocking on all my backhand chops. Except that I gave him little trouble from looping, I was a total disaster against him. Larry is a good player and takes advantage of his backhand and forehand very well. After the match, we chatted for like 30 minutes. The Coach Richard Mccafee joined the conversation. It has really touched me when Richard told this about Larry “A man practices at least 1000 balls in a robot every other day is hard to beat”. That realized me of the importance of a table tennis robot to improve the skill.
I met Arthur Lui of TableTennisDB.com, a very nice guy to meet. He came to see me at my table, and that was nice of him to do that. I would say he is probably good for me with his good looping skills. That Chinese stuff Arthur Lui uses is a very good match for him. I would say he is good enough to be rated in the range 2100. There are some areas he struggles, but he is an intelligent guy to master those. We played like 3 games. If I remember it correctly, he took two games and I took one.
I had a long talk and session with David Peck, the representative of Dr.Neubauer in the United States. He had the new Dr.Neubauer A.B.S anti-spin rubber. We played each other for a while and played a 5 games match. David was kind enough to show me some strokes that can be done with anti-rubbers. Against the new anti, I could successfully do two loops. He chopped it back and it was heavy. I was using Tenergy 25 on the forehand.
I’m greatful to David in some other means. He did some nasty serves which is a real trouble to me. Those serves trouble me a lot in the tournament. It looks like that is his signature serve. We played 5 games. He took 3 and I took 2.
She has done this before also. While we were leaving for the day, there was a mum came to me and asked me to play against her daughter. They are from Canada. This 11 year old has to play tomorrow. I played 30 minutes for her keeping my wife waiting. Look at this girl! At this young age she has excellent strokes and even loops couple of my chops too. If we had all our young kids practice at the age of 11 or 12, how many world class players the United States would have produced!
I met Chen Weixing, the world’s best chopper and my guru. We chatted for a while. In the middle, Tania Hoffman joined and gave me a hand. Are you guys taking advantage of some of these world class players’ camp in the US? Please do if not. They are amazing.
I had a long session with Borko. I have to write about that in a different blog. There is so much to write about Borko including his thick accent. Such a nice guy, a real asset to America.
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