Table Tennis (ping pong to the unwashed masses)

[goodal]

My 11 yr old has his first tournament tomorrow. Hes not half bad, but I don't expect him to place or anything. Just trying to get his feet wet. I played in a few tournaments in high school, but haven't done much in the last 15 years until he got interested. I love playing and it gives us all something to do as a family. We bought a robot to practice against. I am wore out and covered in sweat after 10 minutes. Any other enthusiast out there?

 

[jglavin PE]

A robot? Like this?

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIIJME8-au8

 

[goodal]

No. Like this.

View attachment 7571

 

[knight1fox3]

How much does something like that cost?

 

[Ship Wreck PE]

Forrest Gump might help you out?

 

[Supe]

I would get my butt kicked by any serious player, but we played every day in college. Put the table in our dorm living room. Didn't lose over a two year span to them. Made it to the finals in our phys ed tournament, lost by a point there, and then was massacred by our teacher, who was a retired tennis pro/coach. I attribute my moderate, drunken success to years of hand/eye refinement from competitive shooting. My real net game calling was in doubles badminton, though.

 

[Supe]

I should note that most of my success was with relatively hard/not grippy paddles. As soon as you put the baby soft rubber on the paddles where your opponent could put a wicked spin on the ball, I couldn't return against a good player to save my life.

 

[goodal]

This was his first tournament so he started at the lowest starting rating of 700. The best in the world is 2700 to give you an idea of skill level. He beat 3 out of 9 opponents and was only outmatched by one of them. The rest where close, but he couldn't pull it together. This video (if I posted correctly) is a portion of his match against a 9 yr old Indian boy that was awesome. The nearest in age to either of them was an 18 yr old or so that they both beat. I'm not sure I could have beat the 9 yr old. My son is on the right and always backing away from the table (not a good thing).
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxvSTCktoo8