(by Steve Hopkins)

As much of the table tennis world is beginning to emerge from their various lock-down circumstances, we are beginning to see club and regional events as well as some larger challenge events.  The U.S. has been running Thursday night live, carefully playing one challenge match a week to help build enthusiasm here.  In Germany, the Dusseldorf Masters is running almost weekly small tournaments among the top pro players in the Budesliga there.  Last week, China ran a series of events titled the 2020 Olympic Warm-up Matches.

While many players coming out of their lock-downs have looked rusty, the Chinese players looked sharp.  In fact, if the video is any judge, Fan Zhendong seems to be playing the ball quicker off of the bounce and hitting the ball harder.

The first video is of Fan Zhendong and Lin Gaoyuan.  On some level, the players are a mirror image of each other – playing similar technique with aggressive backhand flips off of serves, solid short play, serves placed towards the middle, and once the point is open – blistering attacks from both sides with heavy angles and amazing footwork.

Lin Gaoyuan is currently playing with a Viscaria racket and Dignics 05 on the backhand, and Fan Zhendong is using Tenergy 05 on his backhand, so if you like what you see with some of these blistering backhand to backhand rallies, Butterfly has you covered.

China’s National Team was abroad as COVID-19 began to spread in their country in February, and they made a decision to stay abroad.  They first found refuge in Qatar, where they ran a training camp for 29 team members ahead of the ITTF Platinum Qatar Open.  When that event concluded in the first week of March, they then traveled to Macao where they remained as a group until August.  As described in a recent Xinhua interview, the team spent several weeks focusing on fitness and fundamentals, and then transitioned to inter-squad matches.  Inter-squad for China means 5 of the top 8 ranked men in the world and 6 of the top 7 ranked women in the world.

The videos shown below are the Men’s Team Final and the Men’s Doubles Final.

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