Wrap-up: early Nov -

This early wrap-up is part of my attempt to be a little more conscientious about journaling my table tennis journey. 3 main days stand out:

8 Nov: I played two games with this Korean player at the local academy. I admired his stability with and the spin quality of every forehand stroke, it reminded me of An Jaehyun's. What's more remarkable was he wasn't even using his own racket. He's perhaps the 3rd player whom I've played with that I'd classify as a "true skill" type player (as opposed to a mixed bag / gimmick type player), after the two 60 or 60-plus y.o uncles sometimes referred to as "R" and "N" who play at HCC. 

13 Nov: This was possibly the closest thing to a TT gala for my local HCC. The wind blew cool but the skilled players came warm-bladed with the expectation of serious one-to-one combat. I enjoyed watching every one of these matches: Dark knight aesthetic guy vs A+ controlling M'sia-accented leftie, Dark knight aesthetic guy vs one of the best local shake-hand choppers, strongest penhold attacker "M" vs similar style Grandmaster level "N" followed by young shake-hand long pips pro "J". I only had the chance to spar briefly with the latter's friend, a skilled defensive player in her own right. This day seemed like a fluke; the next week, only a young modern style penholder - a true rarity - came that played with any shocking visual power, to whom I lost in a friendly match using Butterfly O.Caf. 

21 Nov: As the winds changed to mild, the local hole-in-the-building place once again saw a crowded night. Coming unprepared for some serious doubles, I found myself losing 3-1 in a friendly game with the usual 3. But it was great to know that really good table tennis could still happen in an open community space with no real experts or entry fees. 

What 5-6 mins of Dimitrij Ovtcharov vs An Jaehyun (2025) tells us about modern table tennis

Table tennis at the World 15-30 level is surprisingly non-strenuous 

An is World ranked 16, Ovtcharov is 29 at this point. Is that a high level? If so, why the misconception I sometimes encounter that the more advanced one gets, the more the physical strain? What is “high-level” anyway if one is not talking about something like Fan Zhendong vs Wang Chuqin? This match was 4 months ago. Look at how relaxed and sweatless they are and how short the highlight points & best / long rallies are. The highly elastic bounce produced by highly elastic rackets and tables today is responsible for this phenomenon. Add towel breaks after every 6 points, it’s a walk in the park. Both players – and many modern male table tennis players, I argue – could start a marathon immediately after 4 games and still complete it in normal time.

The inherent stability of short players mean they can neutralize giants effortlessly

An Jaehyun is 167 cm tall. Ovtcharov is 186 cm. That’s a 19 cm difference. An defeated the German giant 3-1, 42 points to 33, with 9 points to spare. Why? Experience and exploiting his height advantage. Knowing that he just has to spin low balls into the very vast backhand space around Ovtcharov’s right pocket or super-low anywhere really; these spaces and angles are a clear weakness for very tall players. If Ovtcharov still manages to attack these shots, An blocks with a simple arm extension. Standing with a line of sight that’s so optimal and with full stamina retained, he goes for strong continuous sidetop spin attacks on both sides. He knows a giant’s awkwardness in taking the ball early means a swing-and-miss is more likely than it’ll be for a 170 cm tall player for instance. To compensate for this weakness, giants must move around much more abruptly, leading to many more timing errors. Of course, shorter players have less defensive coverage on the one-step timing than taller players. However, their inherent stability in controlling the middle and dominating height-of-ball options is simply too overwhelmingly advantageous. 

WTT Highlight reels can be biased and misleading

For the third game, the video showed 4 Ovtcharov wins and only 2 An wins when An won the game. The video editor’s bias is showing. The editor also showed an equal win rate in the 4th game even though the game was won convincingly by An 11-7. 

My approach to the "everyday racket" choice (Part 2/2)

As if by happy accident, I finished testing all my rackets just as the hole-in-the-building table tennis place where I always test them is more or less shut down due to the seasonal winds. In the previous post I made a distinction between different tiers of rackets such as the "social racket" and the tournament racket. In this post, I will cover the idea of the strong social racket or the "main racket" (non-match day) and the criteria I used in choosing it. 

1) Power

It should be capable of immense power, at least on the forehand, to deal with all kinds of lobbers and loopers in the social game. This excludes the soft feeling Butterfly Outerforce CAF and made me opt for the Stiga Sense 7.6 blade. I will tie this with Victas Koki Niwa ZC which I've only shortlisted but not seriously considered eligible due to its OFF+ / not-very-social nature when paired with good rubbers.

2) Sense of control

Control is a difficult thing to quantify but it has much to do with the feeling of the wood and the consistency of the rubber in making all manner of shots. In the social game, control often equates to continuous fun and true table dominance and the winner in this category still is Stiga Sense 7.6 -- straight handle furthermore. This is after choosing a spinny backhand rubber to compensate for the blade's poor backhand reaction and propulsion while adding the spin game as another winning option. 

3) Style alignment 

The everyday main racket should obviously fit one's style. The Butterfly Outer Caf is clearly the winner in this category because of its backhand dominance bias, which suits me. It also wins outright for spin generation. As for blocking and smashing, it's tied with Stiga Sense. So we go to the last criteria to see if Butterfly can supersede Stiga. 

4) X-factor

This could be something as trivial as the sound it makes or how easily you can perform trick shots with the racket. Butterfly Outer Caf feels like a very standard racket, surprisingly well made. Stiga Sense feels like it works best as an actively attacking devil. And I'm an offensive player. So Stiga Sense 7.6 (with standard Tibhar and Andro rubbers) wins 3-1 to be my SSR / main racket.

My 6/6+/7/8/9 approach to construction of essential rackets

Needless to say, table tennis is both a local community as well as a tournament sport at the international level. And there is a vast space in between where academies clash and members of various schools compete at venues that may or may not be ITTF qualified. That calls for equipment - many rackets - that can meet the demands of variable tables and venues. Below is a construction guide that I've used for myself. The rackets to construct are listed by score (out of 10), with 10/10 missing because perfect rackets rarely exist. 

 

6: Non-Winning Standard racket for Medium-fast tables, non-tournament approved (NWSRM) or Social Racket (SR) - This would be something like a good-feeling Victas Quartet blade paired with “entry-level” rubbers or some particular all-Yinhe (soft carbon) setup, with the good feeling necessary to make up for the lack of crispiness from inelastic tables or balls in purely social games. 

6+: Strong Social Racket (SSR) - a more powerful version of 6-, this blade might be paired with faster rubbers for a higher win rate in social games, for example, a light Stiga Sense 7.6 blade paired with MX-P or K3 Pro rubbers. 

7: Winning, Offensive Racket for Medium-fast tables (WORM) - this racket would be suitable when playing on tournament grade tables that have aged so that they're colloquially no longer “Fast”, only Medium speed or Medium-fast. The winning racket formula on these tables tends to be extremely good feeling Offensive- (minus) as opposed to the Offensive+ (plus) type. Examples might include Butterfly Outerforce CAF paired with variable good rubbers or Darko Jorgic’s Tibhar blade with a slightly altered overall setup than him. 

8: Balanced Tournament Spare (BTS) racket: These would be well-crafted and balanced blades possessing certain shortcomings that make them just short of constituting all-time winning rackets, leaving them suitable only as spares. Examples include Victas Koki Niwa ZC, its shortcoming being its stiff backhand feel, or Joola Vyzaryz Hybrid, its shortcoming being its lack of absolute control. 

9: Tournament, Offensive, Winning, Extra-Good feeling Racket (TOWER) - These would be the standard or cutting-edge setups used by professionals. Examples include Butterfly Viscaria Super ALC paired with extra hard or tensor rubbers, or any number of similar range products. 

In my Stiga main era, lightweight is king

Imagine a 500 ml can of beer. Pack that into your bag with an extra tablespoon of water. That's how heavy a TT player's game day gear can be. I'm serious: my main Stiga Sense racket (185+ g), spare Penhold-config Butterfly CAF racket (~135 g), hard case and ball (~215 g) come to 0.54 kg, and I already have everything I need in addition to a good table and partner who may be barehanded if grip versatile. It's such an abbreviated sport and such a neglected cause of TT's growing popularity. If I've just made the perfect case against slacking from the sport, why then do I still feel so reluctant to play on usual game days? The weight factor makes the convenience of TT king in all of competitive sports. Good or bad? For amateurs, it lowers the barriers to entry -- if any table tennis enthusiast becomes clubbable to the main tables in an overpopulated residential area, the standards will also tend towards the average, the median. Myths may be perpetuated about the existence of certain cliques, for example the weekday night group is "very professional", only for curious newcomers to be disappointed. Because nobody seriously believes it's a moral thing to gatekeep and ostracize their neighbours, for example when there's a friendly competition or the club opens up its grounds to the public. Of late, so light is my bag I find it hard not to always think real table tennis is elsewhere. In the spirit of abbreviation, which is a topic worthy of another post, I've avoided reviewing my equipment because that's so yesterday. I've come to agree, with the YouTube uncle and the widespread sentiment, that as long as it's decent (and I might add not weighing like a brick), talk of equipment is overrated.

The market failure in community table tennis

For a brief length of time, I considered wearing brand clothing to a usual hole-in-the-building table tennis place, like stiga socks, butterfly jersey / shorts. And then I realised I'd be the odd one out because the kind of TT players I really like - the academy trained, go all-out ones - don't even visit the place. And I think it's mainly because it suffers from a market failure of having too many poor players and too few tables - there's only 1 that's almost competition grade - so the provision of really good table tennis games is woefully limited, and the format is often forced to be doubles which gets old real fast. 

But this post is not so much about branded apparel as it is about the problem of "stayers" in community sports venues. Given the table tennis space I'm talking of is not a hall or room - there are no bookings - wearing branded apparel is like wearing a tuxedo to a cheap food night market. Sure, it can also be a statement that one is a real table tennis player with skills to match the title, someone who has some qualification or accomplishments in the sport. Someone who's not just a stayer because he attends regularly but because other community club members value his game, mentorship or character. 

The economics of this form of open community table tennis is also interesting when one looks at the rackets the players bring. $400 - occasionally $700 - Sgd rackets galore, where $275 can already get you a racket Olympic medallists will tell you is good enough - with enough power to make errant balls bruise your fingers. But because of the half-outdoor and windy nature of the place and the ageing and therefore inelastic tabletop, energy loss in the ball bounce makes the game less than academy-level crisp and controlled. Another reason why top players might not want to play there. 

The problem of not-so-great stayers affects players who want to play really good table tennis in the community setting without having to drive or commute to an academy. There might be those who spend vast sums of money on rubber, blades or lessons, and are therefore incentivised to selfishly hoard the place to train because they think after investing so much they must be quite the professional, with the right to be an antisocial space hoarder. And there are those who use such poor equipment that they bring down the standard of doubles games, yet refuse to leave after losing. Perhaps roomification, setting up private TT spaces in community clubs, is the best way for really good table tennis to happen. As they say, "get a room"; in addition to open tables, community table tennis can be so much more.