(by Steve Hopkins) Five Koreans, four Japanese, and four Germans have made it to the Round of 32 in the second ITTF event of 2021 – The WTT Middle East Hub Star Contender Event in Doha, Qatar.  Top seeded Harimoto will face India’s Gnanasekaran on Tuesday.  Second seeded Hugo Calderano will see is first action […]

(by Steve Hopkins) As the table tennis world emerges from shutdowns caused by the Pandemic, there are great opportunities to speculate on how those stoppages have affected the world’s best.  Some areas completely shut down facilities leaving players to struggle to find competition (Timo Boll, for instance, released videos of his solitary training with an Amicus […]

(by Steve Hopkins) The PongNow Interview Series – talking table tennis with some of the best players and personalities in the sport. The guests this week are the Alguetti Brothers.  Adar, Sharon, and Gal have each crossed 2600 on their rise up the ranks of elite US players.  They share some interesting stories and poke […]

(by Steve Hopkins) The first ITTF event of 2021 ended today with Dimitrij Ovtcharov’s dominating win over Lin Yun-Ju.  With the Olympics just four months away, Ovtcharov showed he may be peaking at just the right time.  In fact, his run to the this title, and its $15,000 purse, included consecutive upset wins over Falck […]

(by Steve Hopkins, photo ITTFWorld) UPDATE: Semifinal Results Simon Gauzy, France’s best player, is one of the quickest players in the German League – seemingly getting to every ball and often moving away from the table for deep drives or lobs.  Today, however, the quickness advantage is clearly on the side of Lin Yun-Ju – […]

(by Steve Hopkins) The WTT Contender Event in Doha is down to the Final 4, and three of four in the Men’s Semifinals are Butterfly Players.  Top seeded Tomokazu Harimoto had smooth sailing again with a 3-1 win over Korea’s Cho.  Dimirij Ovtcharov, World No. 12,  won the first, third, and fifth games on the […]

(by Steve Hopkins) Timo Boll posted a video of his warmup routine to his YouTube channel this week.  *He started out with a plug for his channel and noted that he had recently reached 25,000 subscribers. The video continues for over 10 minutes showing his normal routine including stretches, light warm-up, and work with a […]

(by Steve Hopkins) USA Table Tennis continued its T2 Challenge Series this week the first match of Season 2.  The players this week were Jimmy Butler from Team Alpha and Deng Zhen from Team Omega.  At 50 years old, Butler is one of the most decorated male players in US history, and Deng Zhen is […]