My name is Tahl Leibovitz and I'm here at SPiN, New York.
I am a professional table tennis player who has been competing internationally since 1995.
I am here today to speak to you about the intermediate and beginner aspects of the Olympic
sport of table tennis.
I'm going to discuss the different points on where to hit the table tennis ball, and
it's very very important to know these points.
We're going to discuss four points.
The first point is being able to hit the top of the ball.
The reason we hit the top of the ball is because we want to keep the ball from going off the
table, and this happens when our opponent imparts a lot of top spin to the ball.
They brush the ball with a lot of spin, so we want to try to get on top of the ball so
that it doesn't go over the table.
The other point, which is the exact opposite, is underneath the ball.
That's when we want to hit under, and the reason for that is when our opponent goes
underneath the ball we want to stop the ball from going directly to the net.
Our goal is to get the ball over the net, and we do this by hitting underneath the ball.
The other point, which is really important, is being able to hit the middle of the ball.
We hit the middle of the ball when the ball usually doesn't have a lot of spin on it,
or it's slow, or warming up with our opponent, and this is very important because we want
to keep a rhythm going, like a rally going.
And the final point, which is really really important also, is being able to hit the side
of the ball, and the reason we hit the side of the ball is because the ball has a lot
of spin on it.
And when it has a lot of top spin or back spin, if we hit directly into the spin, we
feel the spin more, but there's less spin on the side, because the ball is spinning
this way.
So what we do is we just try to hit the side of the ball.
And those are the four important points of hitting the ball.