How can serve like this be legal?

APW46 wrote: I suppose everyone has forgotten about finger-spin serves, invented by the Americans and deemed 'unplayable' before they were banned in 1937.  'Gallant knights of old ' my Ar$e, players did everything they could to win back then just as they do now.

Edited by berndt_mann - 04/02/2016 at 11:14am

berndt_mann wrote: There are hundreds of millions of table tennis players world wide.  How many of them would you guess play with speedy sponge?

OK.  Let's put this another way.  If you are a 2.5 hacker at tennis, what sport are you playing?
And if you play on a piece of plywood on a sawhorse outside of Koza, Okinawa with wooden rackets uncovered with rubber,  what sport do you play?

It would be more accurate, I agree, to refer to these hundreds of millions as "ping pong" players, but the name of the sport that that play, or rather play at, is table tennis. 

Baal wrote: The funny thing when Berndt talks about "back in the day we" its not his day. Also I am not as young as he seems to think. I was annihilated in 1972 by a Taiwanese guy whose serve was too good for me and whose third ball was strong and consistent. Serve has been important my wholebplayong life -- and his too. Remember Ruth Aaron's played before he was born.

Let's set the record straight before other contributors jump in to explain the 642 ways modern pros can serve illegally to the OP.

I was not a practice partner of Ruth Aarons.  That was Marcus Schussheim (aka Mark Matthews).  I was not on a first name basis with Coleman Clark.  I never met Victor Barna.  I did shop at Jimmy McClure's Pla-Good Shop, 1718 Central Ave., Indianapolis Indiana when a student at Indiana University.  I knew Marty Reisman for twenty years until his death in 2012.  I met Johnny Leach at the 1992 World Vets' Championships and Ferenc Sido at the 1994 World Vets'.  They were somewhat older than I, and since this was at a players' banquet I naturally did not ask either of them to have a knock-up with me.

I did start playing competitively in the twilight era of American hardbat (early 1960s).  As I've said before, my first mentor was Danny Vegh, a two-time National Doubles Champion and student of Tibor Hazi.  This was in Cleveland, Ohio.  At that time, virtually all of Cleveland's best players used hardbats.  In 1964, disaster struck.  Two English loopers came to Vegh's club to demonstrate the loop drive with sponge. 

Panic ensued.  Players, including myself, switched to this strange new potent substance.  I went in to the Army in April 1965 armed with a 3-ply Hock No. 74, a Cor du Buy Loop Drive shod with 1.5 mm BTY D-13, and a Stiga Alex Ehrlich plastered with Yasaka Cobra, somewhat thick, maybe 1.7 mm.

I didn't go back to hardbat, though playing with it occasionally against John Liu, a classic penhold hitter who did have a bit of trouble with underspin.  He and I shared either the No. 1 or No 2. positions at the Ohio State University.  John would get slightly the better of me if I played with Sriver, pitting my all-round keep it in play topspin/underspin style against his 1971 three-ball kill.

I watched Marty Reisman play at the 1997 National Championships.  Reisman defeated, at age 67, Larry Hodges, himself a former two-time National Hardbat Champion and multiple time doubles hardbat champion with various partners.

I then switched to hardbat, but I did it my way.  I watched in slow motion, frame by frame, Ma Lin's rpb, until I could mimic that shot myself.  It took about a year to get it down with a compact head 6-ply Chinese penhold SuperHock made for me by Don Varian. 

I don't wish to tire you all out with my amazing accomplishments as a two-wing topspinning/chopping hardbat player from 2000-2005, when injuries, essential tremor and a year long episode of unipolar depression took me out of competition.  And yes Baal, I do know that you are not a young man. 

May we all live a hundred more years.  By then table tennis will be played by computers and supercentenerians like ourselves can content ourselves in our superannuated dotage with plain old cheap old hardbats.


Edited by berndt_mann - 04/03/2016 at 11:05am

berndt_mann wrote: And if you play on a piece of plywood on a sawhorse outside of Koza, Okinawa with wooden rackets uncovered with rubber,  what sport do you play?

This is a classic piece of misconception promulgated by lots of people on this forum.  The correct answer - and only answer - is table tennis.  It's table tennis from the very top to the very bottom; all the way down and all the way back up again, it's table tennis (or ping pong, same thing).

Sorry Tassie, but your argument is pretty asinine. When a bunch of kids are kicking dried cow dung they aren't playing soccer. They think they are. That's the difference.

Check out, JacekGM, the Sports Interrogation--Real Service Rules animated post by DTopSpirit (Greg Letts).  It's drop dead bust a rib funny, and grounded firmly on the solid bedrock of table tennis fact.

Edited by berndt_mann - 04/02/2016 at 10:04pm

Haha Berndt...I am even more curious to know if your count of "hundreds of millions" of table tennis players include drunk college kids playing beer pong half-naked?  There are a few million of them doing it right now in their Spring Break:

Edited by roundrobin - 04/02/2016 at 11:42pm

Again this (ending point with 3 ball attack) has been true since I played my first tournament 44 years ago.

PointEngineer wrote: I agree with this view point mostly.  However I also like the idea that high levels of spin are not part the game.  Gaining advantage via misunderstood spin achieved through hidden deception or confusion (either via tricky/illegal serve tactics or via very different rubber surfaces on a combination bat or slightly wetting the ball etc) though is in my view an ugly part of the sport.

icontek wrote: What is the core purpose of these seemingly difficult to enforce service rules? If we can agree that they are to prevent advantage of the server over the receiver by deception, umpires might benefit from viewing angles that match the receiver.