Table Tennis Away From Lawn Tennis

In the field of racket sports, lawn tennis is the most popular game. You can name numerous prestigious lawn tennis tournaments- Wimbledon, Family Circle cup and etc. - that are being joined by prestigious lawn tennis players. The major names in your list might be Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams. But have you imagined these people doing lawn tennis while reading a newspaper? Such circumstance might be out of your imagination until you tried being serious towards playing table tennis.

A table tennis player once told me, "Playing ping pong is like playing lawn tennis while reading a newspaper". It is like moving your body while moving your thinking. The statement might be an exaggeration for you. But for hard table tennis players, the statement just describes ping pong the way it is. Its nature of being a mind sport is only one of the qualities that set it apart from other sport. Let me give you two more special qualities of ping pong:

To have a strategy, you must read your opponent. And in reading your opponent, you are to know his/her weaknesses and strengths. By knowing these things, you are likely to do the shots that challenge his/her weaknesses; avoid the shots that will allow him/her to execute his/her strengths. In order for you to execute your strategy, you must be able to acquire the skills that you might need. You can learn the necessary skills from your personal trainer. If you don't have the luxury of having an immediate trainer, you can learn from instructional table tennis videos.

Ping pong is an easy to set-up sport. It would not take you to hire a construction company in order to put up a table tennis court. All you need is a vacated room wherein you can put a table and will still have a space for side stepping and for relatively little forward and backward movements. Of course, in order for you to play table tennis, you must have the necessary equipments: net, table, rackets and a ball.

Any sport is a mind game. You ought to think while you play. In lawn tennis, you ought to do the same. But in lawn tennis, you are not as pressured to think as in table tennis. In the latter sport, the court area is too small for you to merely outrun and outsmart your opponent.

Have you seen a 10 year old ping pong player having a good fight against a 17-year old player? I have watched one. This is amazing and interesting for me. In basketball, you may hardly see a good fight between a 10 year old and a 17 year old basketball player. The reason behind this is the principle of age and growth. A 10 year old boy is not as high as a 17 year old. The disparity in the height between these two basketball players might be too enormous.

Being a great ping pong peddler does not entail physical superiority. Of course, tall players have advantages over small players even in ping pong. But the advantage is not too huge. Tallness means having a longer reach and longer feet movement. But in ping pong, it can be compensated by the agility of small players. Unlike in basketball and lawn tennis, being tall is really an advantage. In basketball, you may limit the moves of your smaller opponent by using your body as a post. In the latter sports, being tall means higher service efficiency and steeper strokes. Table tennis is not the sport that makes a big deal out of the known physical advantages such as tallness and muscle volume.