(By Steve Hopkins / Photo by Bowmar Sports)
Worlds: USA Men/Women on to Next Stage
Team USA’s Men won both of their final day matches to finish the group stage of the Liebherr 2018 World Table Tennis Team Championships with a strong 4-1 record. Team USA finished in second position in their group behind Iran (who also finished 4-1). The men have advanced to the Division 2 knock-out stage where the competition will be for positions 25-36. Next up for Team USA is the Netherlands, a team that was seeded fifth in their group but outperformed their seeding (finishing third in Group E). If Team USA wins, the next round will be a rematch with Iran in the quarterfinals. The top seeds in the knock-out stage are Ukraine, Slovakia, Iran, and Italy. Teams that advance will continue to the Finals (with the winner taking position No. 25), and those that lose will continue to play against the other teams that lost in the same round until each position is determined.
Team USA’s Women finished 1-4 (with the one upset win over Egypt). The women had an uphill climb in the group stages as they were one of the lower seeds in the Championship Division, so they have not yet played a match where they have been favored. This knock-out stage will determine positions 13-24 in the tournament. Next up for Team USA is the Czech Republic. The Czech team defeated the Netherlands, but lost to each of the other teams in their group, finishing their group stage with a record of 1-4. If Team USA wins, the next round will be against Thailand – a team that finished fourth in their group with wins over Brazil and Luxembourg. The top seeds in the knock-out stage are Hungary, Thailand, Netherlands and Sweden. Teams that advance will continue to the Finals (with the winner taking position No. 13), and those that lose will continue to play against the other teams that lost in the same round until each position is determined.
Team USA Tournament Recap:
MEN: The USA Men began their campaign in Group H of Division 2. They defeated Spain, the top seed in the group 3-0. They then defeated Puerto Rico 3-1 but lost to Iran 2-3. They played two matches on the final day and defeated both Luxembourg (3-0) and Kazakhstan (3-1). Team USA was seeded fourth in the group, but managed two upset wins and tied for the best record in the group with Iran. Because Iran was their one loss, Iran placed first. If Team USA wins their first match in the knock-out phase, they will have a rematch against Iran in the quarterfinals.
WOMEN: The women upset Egypt on the second day, a dominating 3-0 performance. They also had a tough loss to Hungary, falling 3-2 but winning two matches against high-ranked players. The other three matches were more difficult with 3-0 losses to Japan, Austria, and Ukraine. There are no easy matches in the Championship Division – though each match at this level provides valuable experience.
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Amicus Prime owners, if you want a video of a Fethomania drill, you will need to manually link the video for a particular Fethomania drill with the following steps:
Download the video to the device that contains the Amicus app (probably to the Downloads folder).
Open the Amicus app on that device.
Select the matching drill in the Exercise List.
Tap on the Drill Description. The Set Exercise Properties popup window will appear.
Tap on Select Video button at the bottom of that window. Then navigate to where the video is located in the file directory and select that video.
Tap Save at bottom right of the popup window, Save at the top right of the main window, then Save in the resulting popup window.
Tap the Drill Description again and the title of the video should now appear in parentheses after Select Video.
To play the video, tap the Play Video button on the Play Exercise screen.
Amicus Prime owners, save these drills to your device via the following steps:
Click the Drill image below to download the file to your tablet, cell phone or other device that has the Amicus app on it.
Open that file and a window will appear in the Amicus app to confirm you want to import those drills. Tap Import to add the drills to the Exercise List.
You can then play those drills just like any other drill in the Exercise List.
Tip – After importing the drills from a Fethomania Session, tap on the drill description to reveal Stefan’s technique pointers for that drill!
For owners of models other than Prime:
The Google Sheets image takes you to a spreadsheet that gives the settings for each drill. While these won’t be the exact settings for the Control Panel on your robot, they will give you an idea of where to start, and you’ll need to adjust from there. At the bottom, we’ve included the ranges and defaults for the setting on a Prime so you can compare these to the ranges and defaults on your own robot. In general, default settings should give you a similar ball regardless of what model you have. If a drill has a change of speed, spin, or trajectory, you will be unable to replicate that drill on a Basic or Start model.