(by Steve Hopkins) Calderano, Qiu, Franziska, and Aruna are the headliners in Durban this week as the WTT Contender Series opens the New Year in South Africa. Each of those top four seeds has reached the Quarterfinals.  On Saturday, Hugo Calderano will face a 17 year old rising Chinese star, Lin Shidong.  Patrick Franziska will […]

(by Steve Hopkins) Table Tennis Minnesota has three locations in the greater Minneapolis-St.Paul area.  The Training Center location is on Concord Street in South St. Paul, the Jewish Center location is on Cedar Lake Road in Minneapolis, and the Bloomington Armory location is in Bloomington.  Normally, the Training Center is open Monday-Thursday and Sunday and […]

(by Steve Hopkins) USATT closed out the 2022 American table tennis calendar with the US Open.  In other articles, we covered the Open Championship titles – Ukraine’s Lei Kou topped Californian Xin Zhou in the Men’s Final and Amy Wang topped Lily Zhang in an All-American Ladies’ Final.   We can also add that Lei Kou and […]

(by Steve Hopkins) Neu-Ulm has won the Pokal-Finale – the midyear Final Four championship of the German Table Tennis League. A year ago, it was all that TTC Neu Ulm could do just to stay in the middle of the pack in the German Table Tennis League.  The squad had solid players – in fact, […]

(by Steve Hopkins) The countdown is on for the 2023 Butterfly Puerto Rico Open Teams.  The clock running on the PR Open Teams Information page currently notes that the tournament starts in 82 days.  *There are already 41 teams signed up – and the big news this week is that defending champions Zhou Xin and […]

(by Steve Hopkins) China holds the top three spots to start 2023 with Fan Zhendong, Ma Long, and Wang Chuqin holding those positions (in that order).  Tomokazu Harimoto has dropped two placed to fourth and Truls Moregard has held the fifth position. The next five are Liang Jingkun, Hugo Calderano, Lin Yun-Ju, Darko Jorgic, and […]

(by Steve Hopkins) The Alameda Ping Pong Gym is a new club in the Bay Area.  It offers 10 tables and lots of space with newly-renovated lighting and flooring.. With its location on Lincoln Avenue, the Alameda Ping Pong Gym is conveniently located for players on the East side of San Francisco Bay.  Alameda is […]

by Steve Hopkins In 2022, Butterfly worked hard to provide entertainment and information through videos, articles, reviews, and interviews.  Below is a list of 10 of our favorite Bowmar Sports videos of 2022. Our most viewed video was a March edition of ASK THE EXPERTS featuring David Zhuang discussing the Timo Boll ALC blade and […]

by Steve Hopkins From the classic VISCARIA and PRIMORAC blades, to the ALC and ZLC blades made popular by players on the ITTF Tour, here are are the TOP 10 blades of 2020 – from the top table tennis company in North America. A quick overview of Butterfly blade terminology:  “ALC” is Arylate Carbon Fibers […]

by Steve Hopkins The TENERGY and DIGNICS series dominated the top 10 sellers this year – with nine of the top sellers in one of those two series.  These are the most used rubber series on the tour, and the high quality and advanced technology provides all players with the same advantages sought by the […]