#ITTFSmashback 

Open your eyes

Cuz it was Analog. Analog was good

What do you mean?

But back then all serves were illegal, sadly.

@@秦頌 you are chinese, so it is programmed in you to like ma long. Don't worry about it.

Exactly the touch to net rekt his whole psychology and he lost it :/

If this is 1998, Waldner was 32 or 33, and the reigning world champion.

@@12TrapporAccording to Waldner himself 1998 was the worst season of his career.

@@dickn.ormous1064 Sure, but he still wasn't 37 years old. :)

@@12Trappor He was 33 yo.

That was effective because he could hide the whole thing behind his body so you can't tell whether he used inverted or pimple rubber to serve. But serves have been nerfed

Ma Long is way better though

@@void0350 I know that you are born in China, but Ma Long is not better. He is just has more power.

​@@theunknownexplorer1944 Ma Long doesn't have more power than Waldner.Flat hitting doesn't equal power otherwisea 14 yo Harimoto wouldn't be good in that department.

​@@void0350ma long is just built different

So much more interesting to watch. Today's game is becoming tough to watch especially with the side camera angle WTT does!

Absolutely agree!!

If u dont like it just dont watch

Modern table tennis is better bruh

@@gab5012 nope theres literally little rallies in modern table tennis because of the new ball. The old table tennis has more rallies and much more entertaining to watch

@@renereyes3630 The new ball means a big spin and speed loss and you say that lowers them amount of rallies? Bull crap.

@@gab5012 yes with the new technique. you're probably new to table tennis if u loop the ball or attack the ball slowly the opponent can easily flat drive the ball that's why theres little rallies in todays game

Not only intelegince. Big deal were Liu's rubbers. Prohibited later, no?

@@imemine246 When you cannot beat Chinese players, then change the rules with the hope to beat them, but Chinese players can still figure out a way to dominate the game.

，

@@imemine246 Don't blame or credit any equipment which is legal and available to all.

@@syzygy6769 Don't take the last bit of fun away from a loser mate.

Or more capable people in charge.

@@Al-ImprovEd2022 And more people enjoying :(

​@@luisdelacruz1471 The angles, though? Cameras panned to the players like crazy for nearly 50% of the match!

Golden era of table tennis.After table tennis became an Olympic Sport National Associations got decent funding and table tennis flourished in Europe/Korea which elevated the game to new heights.

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qgDbu8sdcks.html

I agree he was in the driving seat in the last game but seemed to lose his composure at a vital moment.

@@dickn.ormous1064 He struggled with his old man back rather than with mentality.

@@JohnSmith-of4vh Yes , he ate a peanut butter sandwich....with Extra peanut butter.

@@dickn.ormous1064 He never turned it around for Ma. Sure he beat him in 2004 but that was a one-off. Ma wasn't mentally prepared and was still 3-4 years from his peak. The overall head-to-head still favours Ma significantly and Waldner admitted this in an interview.

What is a grand slam? I mean what is count beside olympics and wttc

Olympics, world championship and world cup

these days players tend to want to end the point as soon as possible, resulting in shorter rallies, so the ball might be slower but the rallies are definitely not longer imo

I disagree. For the final between Mattias Falck and Ma Long, the crowd was equally passionate. Massimo had a lovely article on this match in the ITTF website.

Agreed. We don't have crowds like this anymore and the game is even faster despite ITTF trying to slow it down.

If Europe had another superstar like Waldner, you can bet there would be large and enthusiastic crowds in Europe again. These days, it's the Chinese fans who watch and cheer live all over the world. As well, more fans get their fixes via videos these days.

@@syzygy6769 agreed. and yet, times will pass, players will come, but this one game is to remember.

bbn tu GB bn n n

Boosted before every match.

I think he noticed and somewhat was paused by it. Believe it or not, I could almost feel a thought crossing his mind "do I have to change my feather every game from now on forward? How will I make my ends meet then"

I see you've entered the "where the fuck am I" stage of the quarantine

The 38mm ball had extreme spin. I started out learning TT with that (was a headache though), and while I became an intermediate player, the ball changed, and boy was I glad! The 11-point game now levels the playing field a lot, asking the champions to dig even deeper to establish their dominance. I love that.

@@venkataragavanchandrasekar7409 So! The 40mm ball TT is nevertheless the hybrid TT. Even the 40mm ball produces fewer rpms but you still have to read the spins as accurately as possible. If not, you will probably lose every service-received.

He used some tricky short pips that didn't react much to spin,so he had more margin for error compared to Waldner who used speed glued inverted rubbers.

@@benthekeeshond545 I quite agree! Just that I faced difficulty when I started with the 38mm, and by the time I reached an intermediate level, the 40mm was the norm and I liked dealing with comparatively less spin.

@@venkataragavanchandrasekar7409 oh no. No-no-no-no. Pick covered rocket answers to spin just as any other. Where it is weaker, is at producing spin. They say the pins produced advantage in attack, by producing faster recoil. This is where I shudder. Guoliang has to unwind spins of opponent, by means of sheer speed of cutting movement, significantly faster than that you would normally need with smooth resin, to produce faster attack. In fact he reverses entire trend to advance gain with technology, denying advances of polymers and engineering, in order to get back to something a lot more simple and yet more powerful, to get closer to recoil of plain wooden surface of the blade. But he has to pay for it a price of having to out - speed the ball rotations by means of reading and cutting the spin of opponent in ways I thought humanly impossible. Those technology advances are not an average thing to beat with plain hand.

ho yes!!

At the time in sure he used donic rubbers could have been yasaka mk 5 though not sure a lot of Asian players back then used friendship

Friendship was used for its dwell time qualities if you notice Asian players bats sounded like a crack on contact this was because of hard sponge with sticky rubbers

Liu has short pips on forehand, mean black rubber

Liu used TSP Spinpips on the forehand side, and Stiga Mendo on his backhand. Waldner was using the Donic JO Waldner rubber on the forehand, I forgot what his backhand rubber was in the 38mm era. Waldner's blade at that time was the Donic Dicon. Liu used a cpen version of the Stiga Clipper.

Well i couldnt agree more wid U, definitely waldner is the GOAT. But i feel its not jus abt LGL or Kong Linghui, its abt the vast range and the variety of world class Chinese players he faced back on those days. At the highest level he has competed against the strongest Chinese players in each era, be it Jiang Jialiang/Cai Zhenhua/Wang Tao/Kong Linghui/Liu GL/Wang Liqin/Ma Lin/Wang Hao/Ma Long having won almost all. Now China cannot be compared with any other country in the world afa Table Tennis is concerned due to the mass production of tt athletes. On the other hand i m not even sure if TT is even a popular sport as Football is widely popular in the Kingdom with a scarce population. With 38 mm ball being more receptive to spin and thus required more mental and tactical prowess, I believe it was even tougher for the Europeans back in those days to compete wid the dominant Chinese until they came with an agressive powerful backhand. The world owes a lot to greats like Waldner/Persson/Gatien/Samsonov for making the world believe that the Chinese were not competely invincible and thus keeping the Sport popular around the globe. These days its jus the Chinese winning anything and everything.

​@@bikenthapa6753 The main problem of Europeans during the 90's was the big number of Chinese penhold players. They were unfamiliar with their game cause there wasn't any decent penhold player in Europe to practice with.Chinese shakehand players like Kong Linghui,Wang Liqin,Ma Wenge didn't have a really strong short game therefore weren't really invincible.Samsonov had a positive winning/loss score ratio against Wang Liqin and was pretty even against Kong Linghui but against Ma Lin and Wang Hao he was pretty desperate.

@@bikenthapa6753 I love the passion in your reply. You are correct in the lack of variety in the modern game today. It,s all about power ,power,power, so boring now.

@@dickn.ormous1064 Now here is a man that knows his stuff, could you please get a magic wand to transport us back to those wonderful times you talk about.

​@@sten2246 We can only hope Harimoto will hone his skills to match the old players in touch and wizardry.He is so young but he has great skills as opposed to Fan Zhedong,the ultimate loop machine.

人不算计枉少年🐶

这两人经常互吃发球

Chen Zhang 因為這兩人在那個年代發球技術是數一數二的。

FREE HONG KONG CHINA VIRUS-19

I believe the pace was faster back then with boosted rubbers and smaller balls

@@samuelCWM has anyone measured the speed of the smash hits like they do in tennis or is it not possible with the available technology? Seems a simple high frame rate video analysis would be able to do that.

@@dubmob151 I believe the speed of the ball is definitely not as fast as tennis, but due to the size of the table the reaction time of the players have to be insane

I think with every passing decade, as the game becomes more popular, the players fitness, agility & their techniques become more advanced & sophisticated. For example, take a look at one of the 1963 matches between Zhuang Zedong & Ichiro Ogimura. These two were world number 1 & 4 back then, but their game looks rather basic when you compare with today's standards.

​@@thyagtubesTable tennis becomes more popular?In what county?Fan Zhendong with his pot belly is fitter?How come he has knee injuries aged 25 yo? You forgot to mention Fred Perry who won the WTTC and went to win Wimbledon and other tennis players said he it was unfair to compete against him 'cause he was too fast and strong.

颗粒不是问题，老瓦打中国队这么多年，打过的正胶多了。江嘉良陈龙灿王涛

老瓦在小球时代碰到的中国选手里，颗粒选手比纯反胶选手多很多

yes , it was legal to do . But not anymore

@@logosnaki wow I didn't know that

@@cobrandrewg9995 by the way didn't you notice Liu Guoliang also did that too but mostly with his shoulder , under arm :))) it was fine but also more tricky

@@logosnaki oh yeah, now I noticed Thank God the rules have changed

Well, you surprised me. I didn't know it is against the rules. Regardless, you never read serve by watching the ball or blade of opponent.

Combination bat with TSP Spinpips and inverted plus great skill and disguise. Notice how he hides the bat under the table, twiddles and even brushes the ball with the opposite side at times. A nightmare for the returner.

@qq 同意, 現在近檯技術差不多完全消失, 像這場這樣的發球相互計算的博弈場景蕩然無存, 只餘下體力化如打網球的對拉, 還有每次發球前總要花近一分鐘搞一大堆小動作才發球, 場場如是真的不知有什麼好看?

@qq 网球每个球有多少回合？再者，观点可以不同，我们都有自由表达。但说话有教养些。另外，我已经打了快60年的乒乓球了。这是我的体会。

现在的乒乓球极度单调，发球、拧起来、对拉、完了。

FREE HONG KONG CHINA VIRUS-19

FREE HONG KONG CHINA VIRUS-19