This article is for new or intermediate Table Tennis players who are buying a new table tennis table or wish to upgrade, we will be talking about wh...
This article is for new or intermediate Table Tennis players who are buying a new table tennis table or wish to upgrade, we will be talking about what you need to look for when buying a table tennis table.
Remember they want your cash!
All manufacturers are trying to convince you that their product is the best for you! So you must get it clear in your mind what you need from a new table. You must focus on what is important to YOU before you buy a table. Are you playing with a few mates in the garage after school, or can you see yourself as the next Olympic Champion, because in this day and age not many people have got money to burn right!
Is this your Families First Table Tennis Table.
If you intend to allow all of the family to use the table I would suggest looking to the budget end of the market. Lets face it young families tend to give a table a hard time when learning, so it makes sense to buy carefully at first, and later upgrade if somebody shows real flare and commitment to the sport.
Fixed or Folding Table.
Few people have the room to leave a table tennis table set up permanently in the house so i would recommend a folding table as they are very easy to use, and make good starter tables. Ensure the table can be setup and closed by 1 person. Good tables have rollers so you can move it around. You don’t want your table to move during play, so ensure the brakes work well.
Even if you determine that you can leave your table set up all the time, things can, and inevitably do change so a folding table can make very good sense in the long term.There are many factors to consider when making a big purchase such as this.
Is Table Thickness an issue?
Tables that are used for competitions are always 25mm or 1 inch thick and are quite expensive for most users. I think most people will be perfectly happy with a good quality 19mm table. I’m sure even Olympic champions didn’t start on top spec competition standard tables so consider all the options first. Manufacturers like Stiga make marvellous tables, so unless you can find a 25mm table at an irresistable price, this would be my recommendation.
When you are playing competitions it makes sense to practice on a table of the same standard as your competetors, so now is a good time to upgrade.
Don’t just look at the playing surface.
Good tables don’t just have a great playing surface, make sure you check out the support legs. All good tables have leg levellers. This is essential if you plan on playing outdoor table tennis. All Tables should be 76cm from ground level. Quality is crucial if you want your table to last, so look at the ancillaries like net fittings, are they going to fall apart?
All these small points add up and you deserve to get a good quality product for your money. These days good quality and value for money are important and if you follow these points I’m sure you will find a great table
Paul Bucannon has been playing Table Tennis for many years, and knows how vital it is to get a quality product for a great price when Take a look at his site for more money saving information for your next
Dinara Safina, a Russian skilled tennis player was born in Moscow on April 27, 1986. She’s the younger sister of former World’s Number One Marat Safin. She’s trained by Glen Schaap, former trainer of Nadia Petrova. Her mother, Rauza Islanova was previously her coach when she was younger yet still offers tips to Dinara. Her dad was the Director for the Spartak Tennis Club in Moscow.
On July 29, 2002 she appeared into The Top 100. She also received her very first WTA Title in Sopot, defeating Nagyova and becoming the ever youngest Tour Champion in four years and first qualifier to grab the title in three years. On the same year, she defeated a top-notch 20 player Silvia Farina Elia who had previously been seeded 14, the very first time in Moscow, at the age of 16. On July 14, 2003, she broke on the top 50. She won her another WTA Title over Katarina Srebotnik in Palermo. In that particular year, she hit the fourth round on the 2003 US Open and also reached the Quarterfinals in Doha, Sopot & Shanghai. She defeated the defending champion Magdalena Maleeva in Russia.
For the 2004 Australian Open, Safina upset Amanda Coetzer of South Africa before losing to Kim Clijsters of Belgium. For the first time, Safina ended the year for the Top 50 and reached third career final at Luxembourg where she lost against Alicia Molik. She conquered her biggest career Singles Title at Paris Indoors beating Amelie Mauresmo . Partnering Elena Dementieva, she won the crucial Doubles Rubber at the Fed Cup final in 2005. She surprised the World’s Number One Maria Sharapova during the QF in the 2005 Kremlin Cup, winning 1-6, 6-4, 7-5.
In the 2007 Australian Open, she achieved the Tier I in Rome Final by defeating Top Ten Tennis Players Kim Clijsters, Elena Dementieva and Kuznetsova, but was also defeated then by resurgent Martina Hingis 6-2, 7-5. In the 2006 French Open, she reached the Quarterfinals for the first time in her tennis career. During the fourth round, she defeated number four seed Sharapova 7-5, 2-6, 7-5. In the third set, she trailed 1-5 but managed to drag the upset of almost 21/2 hours of play. To start the grass season, following her excellent execution on clay, she reached her very first Grass Court Final on the Ordina Open, but got lost to Krajicek 6-3, 6-4.
In her first tournament of 2007, Safina battled her best right through to the finals of the Tier III Event at Gold Coast, Australia. She defeated the number one-seeded Martina Hingis during that final 6-3 3-6 7-5 on her first WTA Tour Title since May of 2005. That victory also saw her rise to the World’s Top-Ten.
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Samantha Stosur was born on March 30, 1984 in Brisbane, Australia. She is a tennis player and as a doubles player, she was ranked first in Top 100 with Lisa Raymond. Right after she became a competent tennis player in 1999, she conquered four ITF Singles, twenty-two WTA Doubles and eleven ITF Doubles.
Lisa Raymond is often her teammate and they have won two Grand Slam Title in the Doubles Competition. The first title was in 2005 in the US Open where they competed Elena Dementieva and Flavia Pennetta. And also the second title, a year after in the French Open. There they competed the finals against Daniela Hantuchova and Ai Sugiyama. In 2006 they played the final again within the Australian Open but lost to Yan Zi and Zheng Jie.
Yet another defeat in the finals happened in 2005 during the Australian Open where she and Scott Draper lost to Liezel Huber and Kevin Ulyett. The twenty-two WTA Doubles were gotten at Sydney, Amelia Island, Luxembourg, Moscow, Tokyo, Memphis, Indian Wells, Miami, Charleston, Stuttgart, Linz, Berlin, Eastbourne and many others. Twenty of them were won along Lisa Raymond and the first two along Bryanne Stewart from Australia. Her game being a player in Singles in the Grand Slam Tournament was not very impressive. She has achieved the second round in 2004 in the US Open coupled with the same result at Wimbledon in the years 2006 and 2007.
During the French Open in 2007 she stopped in the third round and in the Australian Open in the fourth round in 2006. A major success for this lady was to defeat Mauresmo at the Rome Masters in 2007 inside the second round. Unluckily she was stopped during the third round by Patty Schnyder from Switzerland.
She is definitely talented but until now she had crucial achievements being a player in Doubles than as a Single player.
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Agnieszka Roma Radwanska is a rising female tennis professional player from Krakow, Poland. She was given birth on March 6, 1989 to father, Robert, who is also her coach and mother, Marta. Her younger sister Urszula Radwańska is also an accomplished tennis player in her own right, a Grandslam Tournament Winner in the Junior Level, and also the Top-rated Junior for the year 2007 within the ITF rankings. Agnieszka began her tennis enthusiasm at an early age of four, when her father presented the lady to the game. She also spent her childhood years playing tennis in Gronau, Germany where her dad performed as a club pro.
Agnieszka became professional in 2005 but she played her very first event on ITF in 2004. She conquered one Singles and two Doubles Title in ITF Circuit and in that particular year she turned professional. Her very first year playing Tennis on Tour around 2006 was quite impressive as she got into the Quarterfinals in main debut at Warsaw. Her another break for the season was when she got into 4R in the Wimbledon Event. And as the season ended, she has moved up all the way towards Top 54.
Season 2007 was yet another breakthrough success for Agnieszka when she garnered her very first Tour Singles Title at Stockholm. She also had three Top 10 wins at the moment. Agnieszka reached her second career ITF Circuit Singles Title at $100K ITF/Biella-ITA. Throughout the earlier part of 2007, she penetrated into the (January 29), Top 40 (May 28), and Top 30 (September 10).
Agnieszka is 5′8″ tall and competes right-handed having a two-handed backhand strokes. She usually uses and wears a Babolat racket and wears Nike Air Max Breathe Free II shoes. She had obtained the “Tour Newcomer of the Year Award” on her 2006 accomplishments, which was presented to her in March 2007.
At present, she won 4 ATP Titles with no Grand Slam as of this moment. However, she already won a Juniors Title at 2005 Wimbledon, and at 2006 Roland Garros.
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Commonly, your level and style of play effects your need to restring your tennis racket. If you practice and play with the same extraordinary spin and power as the elite college players or tennis professionals, you will restring more often than regular juniors or social players. Prevalence of your practice and competition play will also effect the frequency of your restringing.
Breaking a string is the number one reason why most juniors and social players get a restring. Their stings wear thin overtime and without much warning they snap when least expected.
For the professionals and elite college players the main reason for a restrings lies in their quest for perfection and need for consistent performance. Due to their construction, tennis strings lose their tension overtime. This loss of tension tends to reduce the stiffness of your racket string bed and inadvertently increase its power. An increase in power may lead to more errors. Not what your average or top professional wants or needs when doing battle.
A Tennis professional or elite college player, will usually have their rackets restrung before every practice and match. Many professionals will have as many as twenty rackets freshly strung ready for practice and play. Venus Williams of the USA has been known to have up to 10 freshly strung rackets, available for practice alone.
Restringing your rackets can be a very expensive affair. Nylon strings will cost from $25 a set, but some special strings can be as much as $90. This cost prohibits most social or junior players restringing frequently. Professionals and college players will generally have a string sponsor who picks up their bill.
If you can afford to restring before every match or practice, your game will benefit and most probably improve. However for most tennis enthusiasts, restringing will be limited to as often as can be afforded or on breaking a string.
Consider buying your own stringing machine and string if you want a more consistent response from your racket. Experimenting with different strings as you learn to become a competent stringer can be a bit of fun.
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Jelena Jankovic was born February 28, 1985 in Belgrade, Serbia. She is one of the Top Tennis Players in the world and former World’s Top One. She was acquainted into tennis by her elder brother as well as fitness instructor Marko when she was 9. Her mom, Snezana, travels the world with her and was really a big influence on her tennis career.
Jankovic won her first Junior National Title at the age of 11. Right after such success, she was sent to Florida where she entered Nick Bollettieri’s Training Academy.
Being a Junior, she won the 2001 Australian Open thus becoming the Junior World’s Number One Junior Tennis Player. In 2001, she started to play in the WTA Tour. She then became a professional tennis Player in 2002. Jankovic has reached the Singles Final from the US Open (2008), the Singles Semi-finals of the Australian Open (2008) and the French Open (2007, 2008). In 2007, she conquered the Wimbledon Mixed Doubles Title with British partner Jamie Murray.
She was recognized as the World’s Number One Player for seventeen consecutive weeks but was overtaken by Serena Williams on February 2, 2009. Before the season ends, she was recognized the World’s Number One in 2008, the first player in the entire history within the WTA Tour to do this without winning a single Grand Slam Title.
Jelena has downplayed her inability to win a Single Grand Slam Tournament stating that there are a lot of tennis players who’ve won Grand Slam Competitions but most women have ended the season as World’s Number One. However, she can’t be regarded as the best player if she is not able to got some Grand Slam Competitions in her tennis career.
Although Jelena has great ground strokes, she doesn’t have a serve which could bail her from tight spots. Her emotional outburst causes the lady to lose points. She is easily disturbed on court. Also, she doesn’t take defeat too seriously which is really a good characteristic when it comes to sportsmanship but may reduce her need to go all out to win matches. We will have to wait and find out if Jelena Jankovic has the capacity to win some Grand Slam Competitions during her career.
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American tennis player, Venus Ebony Starr Williams was given birth on June 17, 1980 in Lynwood, California. Certainly one of Richard and Oracene Williams’ five daughters, Venus, along with her younger sister, Serena has redefined women’s tennis with her strength and exceptional athleticism. Since turning pro in 1994, she has captured seven Grand Slam Titles, which included five Wimbledon Championships, joining Martina Navratilova and Steffi Graf as being the only women to have accomplished this.
By the age of ten, her serve topped 100 MPH, a fantastic serve she used to go 63 on the US Tennis Association Junior Tour. On October 31, 1994, she she became a pro, something she showed she was a lot more than prepared in her first match. She beat 50-seeded Shaun Stafford in the Bank of the West Classic in California.
In 1997, she became the first unseeded U.S. Open Finalist in the Open Era. She was defeated by Martina Hingis. In 2000, Williams won both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, paving the way for her to ink a forty million dollar contract with Reebok. She then went out and defended her titles in 2001.
At the 2000 Olympics in Australia, Williams captured the gold medal within the Singles Tournament and then took a second one with Serena in the Doubles Competition. The sisters have credited one another with pushing themselves in tennis both equally as teammates and as competitors. Together, the pair have already triumphed 10 Grand Slam Doubles Title and also have squared off more than 20 times including the finals of eight Grand Slam tournaments. Along with the moment spent together on the tennis court they also share a house together in Florida. Their parents continue to coach them.
Recently, Venus had struggled with injuries where she played in only a couple of tournaments in 2006 but returned to perform in 2007 winning the Singles Title at Wimbledon. She repeatedly got the success a year later when she overpowered her sister for a fifth career Wimbledon Championship, placing her fifth all-time in women’s Wimbledon Singles Championships. Several months after, the Williams’ sisters partnered to get the Doubles Title in the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
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Elena Viatcheslavovna Dementieva was born October 15, 1981. She’s a Russian tennis player. She has already conquered two Olympic Medals (Singles) including Gold in the Beijing Olympics in 2008. She also reached the Finals of two Grand Slam occasions. Her career’s high ranking was World Number 3 which she achieved on April 6, 2009. And as of May 2010, her ranking is World Number 5 thus earning her the existing Russian Top 1.
Dementieva was given birth in in Moscow to Viatcheslav, an engineer, and Vera, a teacher. They were both recreational tennis players. Dementieva played and got her first international tournament, Les Petits As, in France when she was thirteen. In 1997, she entered the WTA Top 500. She turned professional in 1998 and entered the Top 100 in 1999.
Dementieva is an aggressive player with powerful groundstrokes off both sides and excellent defense. Her chosen groundstroke is her forehand which she hits hard and flat. Particularly, her running forehand which she seldom misses is a key weapon when she’s on the defensive. Dementieva is usually known for her outstanding athleticism and swiftness around the tennis court. She creates few net approaches except to return drop shots or to take advantage of poor returns from her opponents although last 2009 Wimbledon she’s been more intense most of the times.
Dementieva has no specific preferred surface as her playing prowess allows the lady to adjust very easily on each surface although her best results have tended to be on hard courts and she looks less comfortable moving confidently on clay. While her heavy groundstroking baseline play would not appear to be that suitable for grass. Her athleticism and well improvised serve, particularly her slice serve have led to two succeeding Semifinal performances in Wimbledon.
Dementieva’s serve indicates enhancement since 2008 committing less double faults and occasionally managing aces. She is regarded as certainly one of, if not the most gifted player to have not yet win a Grandslam within the tennis community.
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When it comes to buying a gift for someone who’s into sport, instead of buying equipment or sportswear why not totally surprise them with a sport themed gift experience? Whatever sport you’re into there is a gift experience to fuel all sorts of sports fan fires!
Football Stadium Tours
Any soccer fan would love to visit the favourite team’s stadium. And that’s what you get with a football stadium tour. From visiting the dressing rooms and – most importantly – the trophy rooms, you will learn all about the history of famous clubs like Arsenal or Liverpool and even walk down the tunnel to the pitch itself. An ideal birthday or christmas gift ideas for the soccer lover, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Lord’s Cricket Ground Ultimate Tour
If football isn’t your game, then may be a tour of the legendary Lord’s Cricket Ground would be more your sort of thing. It’s enough to excite any keen fan of cricket, that’s for certain. Walk in the footsteps of cricketing legends, like Boycott, Botham and Willis; visit the museum, the players dressing rooms and the Long Room. Hows-zat for a gift experience! The MCC Lords Cricket Ground tour would be a for the cricket lover in your life.
Wimbledon Experience
Wimbledon – one of the Grand Slam tennis venues and the home of tennis in England. This legendary venue – which has been host to never-to-be-forgetten finals such as Bjorg and McEnroe and Agassi vs Sampras – is yours to discover. Take a complete tour of this typically English venue. You will even get to visit many of the areas that are out of bounds even for tournament ticket holders. However, you don’t need to worry; no umpire will call you out for a foot fault! You will even get tickets to the centre court for a day’s play, during what is regarded as the highlight on all tennis players and tennis fans circuit.
A Round Of Golf
Relax with a round of golf. With top courses around the UK and Ireland, there are gift experiences to suit all skill levels. You can learn how to swing a golf club, book a lesson with a Pro, or simply take to the fairways with your friends.
Don’t give a sideline gift; get in on the action with a super sporting gift experience instead.
Matt Greene works with Find Me A Gift, provider of , unique and unusual gift ideas for all tastes and budgets. Visit them at http://www.find-me-a-gift.co.uk.
Spend your time on court creating good habits. Repetition and practice create permanent habits, however your habits may not always be perfect. The drills suggested below are a guide for sound and systematic practice of your ground strokes using a hitting partner or ball machine to feed you balls.
Any of your ground stokes can be practised systematically by following the suggested directions in the order of consistency, control, spin and speed.
Tennis is a game of error management, winners simply make less errors than losers. Treat your errors as critical feed back rather than condemnation and your systematic practice with these drills will reduce them dramatically.
From the baseline corner of the court have your machine, or practice partner feed as though a cross court rally is in progress. Try to keep the speed of the feeding at your normal level of play.
1.Consistency – Set level at 20 consecutive strokes, in court over the net, relatively deep.
2.Control – Hit to a target in the opposite corner from your machine/ball feeder, aim for 20 shots in a row, on or near target.
3.Spin – Choose to hit topspin, then hit 20 consecutive shots without mistake to your target, being sure of a good net clearance with every stroke.
4.Power – Ramp it up a little, put some sting in your shots, but look to temper your power by hitting your target for 20 shots in a row.
After one session using this method you should have a pretty good idea on the areas of your game that need work. Act on the feed back from your errors as to consistency, control, spin and power.
I often see players attempt to practice these skills in reverse order, but spin, control and consistency are needed ahead of power. So temper your power until you have your strokes under control.
The results of this kind of practice can be seen on any tennis video of a top 10 ATP or WTA player.
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