Butterfly Favorites: Dang Qiu’s Forehand – Ovtcharov as Trainer

February 12, 2021

(by Steve Hopkins) Butterfly player, Dang Qiu gained reputation during the lockdown competing in the weekly Dusseldorf Masters events and accumulating more points than all of the other competitors. Qiu is currently No. 53 in the World – the sixth ranked German, but quickly moving up in the rankings. In fact, at the start of […]

Fakel Gazprom Orenburg – Europe’s Other Top Team

February 10, 2021

(by Steve Hopkins) Most table tennis fans are familiar with Timo Boll’s team, Borussia Dusseldorf, and its long history of success in the German Budesliga. And in the US, many have been following another German team, Liebherr Ochsenhausen, as they have USA’s Kanak Jha and the other great player from this hemisphere, Brazil’s Hugo Calderano. But […]

Sally’s U19 Taiwan Team Qualifications

February 8, 2021

(By Sally Moyland) Under nineteen is a whole new category in the table tennis world. The main change was splitting the under eighteen qualifications into under seventeen and under nineteen tournaments. The new rule was implemented this year, and we just had the first run of this tournament in Taiwan. The level of competition in […]

Coaching Tip of the Week: Locking Up Your Opponents

February 8, 2021

(By Larry Hodges) The easiest and simplest way of beating a player is to “lock him up.” This basically means forcing him to do what he doesn’t want to do. A classic case would be to force an opponent with a weaker backhand to go backhand to backhand with you. Another example would be take […]

WAB CLUB FEATURE: North Texas Table Tennis Club

February 7, 2021

(by Steve Hopkins) North Texas Table Tennis is a premier table tennis club operating two locations in Plano, Texas. Their Independence location, which used to be called the Xtreme Table Tennis School, operates out of HuaYi Education on Independence Parkway in Plano. HuaYi Education provides after school programs and camps designed for social and academic […]

German League Title Chase

February 7, 2021

(by Steve Hopkins) Entering the final few weeks, the Butterfly-sponsored Borussia Dusseldorf squad is securely installed as the top seed. They need one more win to officially clinch the top position – they are 8 points ahead of second place in the standings, having lost only one match since December. Dusseldorf stumbled against Ochsenhausen in […]

PongNow: Tom Wintrich

February 5, 2021

(by Steve Hopkins) The PongNow Interview Series – talking table tennis with some of the best players and personalities in the sport. Thomas Wintrich didn’t take table tennis seriously until he was 29 years old – but over the next five years he played and practiced and loved the game so much that he was […]

Ochsenhausen Narrows the Gap: Tops Dusseldorf 3-2

February 5, 2021

(by Steve Hopkins) Two of the leading contenders met today with Ochsenhausen winning 3-2 over Dusseldorf. Dusseldorf was without Timo Boll in the line-up – Timo has been suffering from a sore back. They moved Anton Kallberg, currently the Bundesliga’s top scorer to the No. 1 position, moved Kristian Karlsson up to the No. 2 […]

Promoting Paralympians – Timo Boll Shows His Support in Exhibition

February 5, 2021

(by Steve Hopkins) Timo Boll’s VLOG this week focused on his support of Germany’s Paralympic Players as they work to prepare for the Tokyo Paralympics later this year. As a part of the video, he practices with Valentin Baus and Thomas Schmidberger, two of Germany’s top wheelchair players. Boll, one of the World’s best able-bodied […]