Table Tennis

I drove down to the Pleasant Grove table tennis club on Wednesday. I played for two and a half hours. Now I am sore. Good start to exercising again.

I was in the lower middle of the club skill-wise. Matches were best 3 of 5 games. Two people I clobbered. Another I had close games with, but we could both tell I was better and I won three straight. I was up 2-1 against John C, but he took me to five games and ultimately won. He gave me a backhanded compliment: "You have good form; you're just too slow." Give me a couple weeks and we'll see who's too slow.

Yuan beat me pretty handily but I could take some points from him. I took one game from Tom, who is 67 and considers himself the second-best player there. I guess my style matches up well with him or he was going easy, because I could see myself beating him, while if I am not misremembering he said he beats Yuan regularly.

Finally, the best player there that night was Glen, 60, who completely destroyed me. I think I took eight points total as he beat me in 3 straight games. 10-2, 10-2, 10-4. Glen plays an unorthodox style where he only uses one side of his racquet at a time -- not penhold, sort of the opposite, with thumb and forefinger making a V against the back. He has very different rubber on each side of his racquet, and he turns it around frequently, so you have to pay close attention to see what kind of spin he's adding. He's not very aggressive, but never makes unforced errors.

Glen looks like he has sub-10-percent body fat and could probably bench more than I. Tom said he plays basketball three times a week, too. Impressive guy.

The bad news is, a year ago they changed the rules for service to be totally wimpy. Now you have to move your hand completely off to the side as soon as you toss the ball. I am not a strong server, and my only one that was at all hard to return was one where I would toss the ball high, then hit the ball under my tossing arm, which made it difficult to see if I was serving with topspin or backspin until the last second. With that gone I have no real serving advantage which hurts against people who do, which was almost everyone at the club.