In the beginning was the half-volley: The history of defence in table tennis-revised

Abstract

The term “defensive play” is known in many different sports. In the field of
racket sports, however, the word defensive player is quite distinct to table tennis.
While technically relying to a great extent on backspin defence, defensive players in
table tennis are also called “choppers”. This article on the technical development of
table tennis shows that defensive play in this sport is as old as competitive table
tennis itself. Nevertheless, it becomes evident that playing a long-range defence
while standing rather far away from the table, as it is commonly known, was
originated not earlier than around 1930; this was about three decades after the start
of competitive table tennis. It is said that choppers were dominating the early era.
Beginning in the 1950s, various alterations in table tennis turned to a decline of
backspin defence. Inventions such as rubbers based on sponge and sticky surfaces,
the modern topspin stroke (loop drive), the fresh-gluing of rubbers, and the so-called
two-color rule favoured offensive play. In this article it is described how defensive
players continuously reacted and adapted by finding effective remedies to ensure
that defensive play can be a still existing specific style in the world of table tennis.
KEYWORDS: stroke technique, racket covering, match strategy, variation, adaptation,
postmodern defence

Full text

PROCEEDINGS BOOK OF THE
16th ITTF SPORTS SCIENCE CONGRESS
Budapest (HUN), April 19th – 20th, 2019

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Straub: In the beginning was the half-volley: The history of defence in table tennis–revised
333
In the beginning was the half-volley: The history of defence in table
tennis-revised
Gunter Straub1*
1Association of German Table Tennis Coaches (VDTT), Germany
(E-mail: straub@vdtt.de)
Abstract: The term “defensive play” is known in many different sports. In the field of
racket sports, however, the word defensive player is quite distinct to table tennis.
While technically relying to a great extent on backspin defence, defensive players in
table tennis are also called “choppers”. This article on the technical development of
table tennis shows that defensive play in this sport is as old as competitive table
tennis itself. Nevertheless, it becomes evident that playing a long-range defence
while standing rather far away from the table, as it is commonly known, was
originated not earlier than around 1930; this was about three decades after the start
of competitive table tennis. It is said that choppers were dominating th e early era.
Beginning in the 1950s, various alterations in table tennis turned to a decline of
backspin defence. Inventions such as rubbers based on sponge and sticky surfaces,
the modern topspin stroke (loop drive), the fresh-gluing of rubbers, and the so-called
two-color rule favoured offensive play. In this article it is described how defensive
players continuously reacted and adapted by finding effective remedies to ensure
that defensive play can be a still existing specific style in the world of table tennis.
Keywords: stroke technique, racket covering, match strategy, variation, adaptation ,
postmodern defence
1. EARLY TECHNIQUES – EARLY STRATEGIES (1901 - 1910)
Defensive play is as old as competitive table tennis. One of the very first open
table tennis tournaments was held in the London Royal Aquarium from 11 to 14
December 1901 with over 240 competitors (Duke, 2009, 2017). The winner was R. D.
Ayling, a defensive player with a very cautious half-volley game close to the table
(Wesasa, 1902). The half-volley was perhaps the most popular stroke among table
tennis players in those days. For a lot of athletes, the half volley was the main
technique (Harrison, 1901/2000). The half-volley was characterized as a purely
defensive shot where “the ball was taken at the moment of bouncing, and rebounds
almost by its own impetus” (“The Language of Ping Pong”, 1902, p. 3). Nevertheless,
a half-volley was a quick shot that passed over the net low and was placed close at
the net. Around the year 1900, backhand play was more common than forehand
play (Harrison, 1901/2000). That meant that on the forehand side of the table the
ball was frequently played with the backhand side of the racket (Gurney, 1993; “How
to Play Ping Pong”, 1994; Mainland, c. 1902/2001). About 25 years later, at the time
of the first World Championships, this technique was called “fore-backhand”
(Szabados, 1936; Uzorinac, 2001) or “forehand backhand” (Barna, 1950/2010). At
the beginning of the last century, plain wood rackets were in use, as well as rackets

Straub: In the beginning was the half-volley: The history of defence in table tennis–revised
334
covered with sandpaper, vellum, cork, or plush (“Tournament Items”, 1902). Besides,
rubber faced bats were already used (“Club Notes”, 1902; Ritchie, 1902/2005), and
battledores with vellum were still known (Ayres, 1902; Uzorinac, 2001).
At the beginning of the year 1902, there was a debate in the world of table tennis
on the so-called “stonewall tactic”, a strategy which cast a poor light on the new
emerging sport of table tennis (Ritchie, 1902/2005). The writer of a letter to the
editor described it as follows:
“[…] I think that all who watched tournaments will agree, that a more
uninteresting spectacle than a couple of ‘stonewallers’, playing a soft half-volley
game in the centre of the table, would be difficult to find. […] The ‘stonewaller’
returned every shot in exactly the same manner, never making the smallest attempt
to attack, or give a stroke that a novice could not return easily. […]” (Rae, 1902, p. 3)
Matches between stonewallers sometimes lasted several hours. At the Oxford
Open Championships, the duration of a game (!) was two hours, and one of the
rallies included 175 hits (“Notes”, 1902). Apart from this overcautious way to play
table tennis, there were further playing styles at the beginning of the 20th century.
Arnold Parker, winner of the 1903 All England Table Tennis Championship and
author of a famous early textbook on table tennis, was known as an uncompromising
offensive player (Schmicker, 2000). Besides, the term "all-round" was in use (“The
North London Ping Pong Championships”, 1902). The "Ping Pong Craze" (Pardy,
1902) did not last for very long: In England, National Championships were held until
1904 (Schmicker, 2000). Central Europe experienced a "minor boom" between 1905
and 1910 even so (Uzorinac, 2001).
2. PING PONG’S RETURN (1921 - 1929)
After a phase of recession, Wales and England were pioneers at the beginning of
the 1920s in running table tennis competitions (Grant, 2010; Trimming, 1995;
Uzorinac, 2001).1 The first World Championships took place in London from 6 to 13
December 1926 (“The First World Championships”, 2003). The most successful
players of this tournament, the Hungarians Maria Mednyanski, Roland Jacobi and
Zoltan Mechlovits, played the “old” style based on half-volleying. Defensive and
offensive shots complemented each other (Schmicker, 2000; Uzorinac, 2001).
“The Hungarians with Dr. Jacobi, Mechlovits, Dr. Pecsi were vastly superior to
other nations as far as the even mastery of offense, defence and constantly varying
the game was concerned.” (Eckert, 1954, p. 46, translated by the author)
Ivor Montagu (England), the first President of the International Table T ennis
Federation, considered a student from India the progenitor of all defensive players.
“[...] R. G. Suppiah, small, dark, curly-haired, fierce and concentrated in play, full
of smiles between games, [...] and from whom (through Bull and Perry) all defensive
players of the present day are descended.” (Montagu in an article entitled “Famous
Men”, cited after Hoey, 2012)
1 The Table Tennis Association of Wales was founded in 1921 (“Table Tennis Association of
Wales”, 2018), the English Table Tennis Association was refounded in 1921 (“English Table
Tennis Association”, 2018).

Straub: In the beginning was the half-volley: The history of defence in table tennis–revised
335
Suppiah reached the semi-finals in men’s singles at the 1926 World
Championships. Charles Bull and Fred Perry, whose names are also included in the
quotation, became runner-up in men’s doubles at the 1928 World Championships
and third at the World Championships one year later. The future Wimbledon Lawn
Tennis Champion in men’s singles, Fred Perry, won the gold medal at the 1929 Table
Tennis World Championships. In those days, the players used pimpled rubber or
wooden rackets (Eckert, 1954; Uzorinac, 2001).
3. THE “MODERN” GAME (1929 - 1951)
It was in Vienna in 1929 when Victor Barna and Miklos Szabados, young leaders
of a second generation of Hungarians, showed that it is possible “to return a ball
while standing in four meters distance from the table” (Eckert, 1954, p. 22,
translated by the author). In retrospect, Barna described this change in table tennis
technique as follows:
“[…] Then we came along. By ‘we’ I mean chaps like Szabados, Bellak, Glancz,
Kelen, Hazi and Liebster, who were pioneers in developing the art of long-range
defence. Our seniors had taught us ball control, how to score with a hit, and how to
use the half volley for close defence. But on top of this, we had youth and speed of
foot - in a word - the agility to be able to retrieve the ball further from the table and
still be capable of getting up for the drop shot. Our game was called the ‘modern’
game, and I believe that there is little, if any, difference between the game we
played in the early 1930s and the game as it is to-day. What difference there may be
is due rather to changes in the rules than to anything else. Fundamentally the
technique is the same. It is interesting to note that rubber-faced bats were
introduced with the idea of improving attacking strokes and to baffle the half volley
defence. This, in turn, led naturally to the counter-measure of long-range defence. A
new kind of spin required an adjustment of the old kind of style. To -day, however, I
realise that rubber, with its capacity for heavy chop, has improved defence far more
than attack […] The solution must be found in equipment which gives greater
advantage to the attacker than to the defender […]” (Barna, 1950/2010, p. 10)
Thus, the emergence of the long-range defence seems to have taken place
almost 30 years after table tennis had become a competitive sport. This is
interesting, especially if one has in mind that backspin per se, seen as a kind of spin
and named “under-cut”, was already known at the beginning of the 20th century
(“The Language of Ping Pong”, 1902). In international competition, athletes
appeared whose play was mainly based on long-range defence or chopping,
respectively (e.g., the Pole Alojzy “Alex” Ehrlich and the Frenchman Michel
Haguenauer). It is said that defenders were dominating this era (Li, 2009). Some
defenders carried it to an extreme extent and specialized on nothing but pushing,
chopping and lobbing. They almost never attacked which made playing against them
very time-consuming. This development can be seen as a kind of retrogression
(Angenendt, 1995) and reached its climax at the 1936 World Championships in
Prague. Michel Haguenauer (France) and Vasile Goldberger-Marin (Romania) played
a marathon match which lasted more than 7 hours and was decided by a coin toss
(Angenendt, 1995; Uzorinac, 2001). The duration of the final in the men´s team

Straub: In the beginning was the half-volley: The history of defence in table tennis–revised
336
event was 11 hours, and the match between Alex Ehrlich (Poland) and Farkas “Lupu”
Paneth (Romania) included a famous rally whose length was about two hours. In
regard to the exact time, four diverging specifications exist – from 1 hour 58 minutes
up to 2 hours 15 minutes (Angenendt, 1995; Uzorinac, 2001).2
The half-volley lost its status as the shot which dominates the game. It was still
seen as a defensive answer to strokes with topspin and backspin (Purves, 1945), but
it was used more selectively, for example, in case there is not enough time to gain
space for a long-range defence (Leach, 1951). Besides, it was a kind of bridge unit for
the change from long-distance defence to offense close to the table (Fuller, 1942).
The toolset of strokes became differentiated. The term half-volley remained until the
late 1960s (Barna, 1970; Carrington, 1960), but it was substituted by the word
“block” much earlier (Fuller, 1942). The expression “push” occurred naming a shot
where the ball is hit near the peak of ball flight trajectory (Purves, 1945). Trude
Pritzi, World Singles Champion in 1938, mainly relied on a defensive game and had
the surname “The Queen of the Push” (Uzorinac, 2001). Friederich (2018) gives us a
list of the diverse techniques shown in the 1930s (translated by the author):
Offensive strokes:
Topspin drive (drive shot, ball gains topspin)
Plain-hit (shot with a vertical blade or smash)
Drop-shot (sudden short shot)
Flick (ball is taken above the table and gains topspin)
Defensive strokes:
Half-volley (ball is taken shortly after the bounce, regardless the type of ball spin)
Chop (ball gains backspin)
The emergence of the high defence, named “balloon defence” (Leach, 1951),
took place in the 1930s and 1940s, too. Leach (1951) describes it as a kind of double
or parallel invention. He reports that he did not develop this technique consciousl y,
but it occurred accidentally. Leach never observed this particular stroke in other
players until the day he saw Richard Bergmann playing for the first time. Bergmann
was a long-range defender who won the world singles title four times. He also
performed balloon defence. By observing Bergmann Johnny Leach felt motivated to
improve his balloon defence even more (Leach, 1951).
Leach’s recollections may support two conclusions: To begin with, his balloon
defence was not just borrowed from tennis, where a high defensive ball is known as
a “lob”, nor was it directly connected to the technique of “lobbing” in table tennis,
which already existed at the beginning of the 19th century (Ritchie & Parker, 1902, p.
39). Leach’s remarks make clear that his balloon defence developed on its own.
2 In the World Championships of the following year (1937) the outcome in the women´s
singles final was spectacular: Trude Pritzi (Austria) and Ruth Aarons (USA) were disqualified
because they exceeded a newly created match time limit of 1 hour 45 minutes (Uzorinac,
2001). Starting from the same year, the net height was reduced from 16.75 to 15.25
centimeters in order to promote offensive play (Clemett, n.d.; Östh & Fellke, 1992).

Straub: In the beginning was the half-volley: The history of defence in table tennis–revised
337
Furthermore, Leach’s balloon defence might be only an early form of what we call
balloon defence in the modern era.3
“The aim is to return the ball without any spin, and so, although the point of
contact is under the ball as in the long range backspin stroke, instead of swinging the
bat downwards, you swing up from underneath and behind the ball. In effect, you
are playing a push stroke a long distance from the table. Playing the ball in the way I
have described, it naturally rises and bounces fairly high at the other end of the
table. […] If your return is short, you can expect no mercy; but, strangely enough, a
high deep return without spin is one of the most difficult shots to attack. […] One
balloon shot should be mixed in after a rally has got going with your opponent top-
spinning and you defending; after hitting back four or five of your backspin shots, he
will probably be unprepared for a change in your next stroke and will overlook the
fact that it has no backspin to lift.” (Leach, 1951, pp. 71-72)
Thus, the Englishman emphasizes that playing the balloon defence in principle
means “pushing” the ball, whereby no particular spin is imparted to the ball. Besides,
it is stressed that balloon balls do not only have a considerable high trajectory but
also a placement which should be near the baseline.4 From a modern perspective,
one might describe Leach’s original version of balloon shots as float balls which are
deliberately played fairly high. The starting point for Leach’s innovation was the
experience that in table tennis high balls, which are supposed to be received easily,
are frequently missed by opponents. Leach was encouraged by his coach, Jack
Carrington, to experiment by playing the ball much higher than usual (Wykes, 2012).
At the beginning of the 1950s, the terms “short-chop” (“Kurz-Chop”; Mauritz,
1954, p. 146), “close-to-the-table backspin” and “short-range defence” (Leach, 1951,
p. 51, pp. 79-81) were in use. One idea behind this stroke was producing a rather fast
defensive play near the table not allowing the opponent enough time to get into a
good position to attack. Another idea was to be in a good position to return drop-
shots. A short defence should also be a kind of makeshift move either to get into the
position to attack or to gain space on the table later on (Leach, 1951). The notion of
a “short-arm defence” can be traced back to the 1930s (Findon, 1936). The playing
style of Richard “Dick” Miles was substantially based on the short-range defence,
which was occasionally combined with a strong forehand attack (Schöler & Schöler,
2012; Uzorinac, 2001). The well-known player from the USA even advanced to the
semi-finals of the men’s singles event at the 1959 World Championships. After
having beaten two opponents from the Middle Kingdom, Miles lost against China’s
very first World Champion Rong Guotuan by 2-3 (Uzorinac, 2001). As early as in
1952, it could be heard that “the very hard close-to-the-table chop defence and
3 Despite that nowadays a high defensive shot is officially called “lob” in the English-speaking
world (Tepper, 2003), sometimes the word “balloon defence” has been used instead (e.g.,
Muhr, 2003; Munivrana, Furjan-Mandić, & Kondrič, 2015; O’Sullivan, 1974).
4 This all corresponds with Eckert’s definition of the term “balloon defence” as a “high and soft
defence, without spin, preferably on the opponent’s baseline” (1954, p. 150, translated by the
author).

Straub: In the beginning was the half-volley: The history of defence in table tennis–revised
338
sudden smash game […] always caused problems for the pengrip player” (George in
the Swaythling Club Bulletin, Oct., 1985, 2-3, cited in Boggan, 2003).
Throughout the 1950s, a couple of medal winners at World Championships could
be identified who played defensively very near the table, mainly relying on pushing
and blocking (Schöler & Schöler, 2012). Hiroji Satoh from Japan probably was the
most noted representative of this steady playing style, albeit chopping was part of
his game too (Wild Goose Productions, n.d.). The 1952 World Champion in men’s
singles was a penhold player and the first World Singles Champion from Asia. He also
became famous because his racket was covered with sponge which had a thickness
of seven millimeters (Montagu, 1952; Uzorinac, 2001).
An established table tennis technique at that time was the “chop-drive” (Leach,
1951) or “side chop smash” (Bergmann, 1950). This was an aggressive stroke which
put backspin on the ball, preferably shown as an answer to a somewhat higher ball
by the opponent which descends near the net.
In addition, the drop-shot could be observed frequently and followed a particular
logic. It was preferably combined with attacking shots in order to unsettle the
opponent as far as assessing the right distance was concerned. The intention to play
a drop-shot should be concealed as long as possible. There was the advice to play a
drop-shot when the opponent was engaged in a backward movement trying to put a
distance between him and the table (Barna, 1970; Leach, 1951).
The post-war World Championships from 1947 to 1951 were dominated by agile
and stable defenders who performed chop defence or half-volley defence. Famous
players from the pre-war period like Pritzi, Barna, Bergmann, and Bohumil Vana
(Czechoslovakia) still belonged to the top of the world (Albers, 1990). Richard
Bergmann, four times Men´s Singles World Champion between 1937 and 1950,
played one of the most dramatic and significant matches in the history of defense
play. It took place in the semi-finals of the 1948 World Championships in which
Bergmann was confronted with the Czech attacker Ivan Andreadis. Bergmann finally
won “the most nerve-racking match of [his] career” by 3-2. Personal reports on this
epic semi-final encounter can be found in the books of Bergmann (1950, pp. 119-
122) and Uzorinac (2001, pp. 86-87).
In 1951, the Englishman Johnny Leach won for the second time the Singles World
Championship title, and this was the last time the men´s singles crown was captured
by a man whose play mainly, or to a large extent, relied on defence (Barna,
1949/2007; Uzorinac, 2001).
4. HARDBAT VERSUS SPONGE – “THE FUTURE BELONGS TO OFFENSIVE PLAY” (1952
- 1959)
At the 1952 World Championships in Bombay (now Mumbai), sponge as a surface
for a racket took centre stage. Sponge enabled the athlete to play faster and
prevented that the opponent could hear the bounce of the ball on the bat. Some of
the Japanese players were equipped with this modern material (Eckert, 1954).
Athletes from Japan won four of seven gold medals. Throughout the following years
there was a political dispute in the world of table tennis about this rather new kind
of equipment, and only a part of the players changed to this innovation (Uzorinac,

Straub: In the beginning was the half-volley: The history of defence in table tennis–revised
339
2001). In addition, table tennis tactics and technique were developed further by the
players from the Far East. They showed a game which was rendered conspicuous by
powerful shots and a very good footwork (Östh & Fellke, 1992). After the 1954
World Championships, the General Secretary of the German Table Tennis
Association, Josef “Jupp” Schlaf, was quoted as saying: “The future belongs to
offensive play!” (Eckert, 1954, p. 72, translated by the author) As Table 1 shows, this
prediction seems to have proven true in the short run as well as in the long run.
The most successful female player of the 1950s, however, was Angelica Rozeanu
(Romania), who was a defensive player. She won the gold medal in the women´s
singles event of the World Championships six times in a row (1950-1955). Beside
other things, this series of wins was due to fact that she improved her offensive
game in her late twenties (Uzorinac, 2001). The first European Champion in men´s
singles was a defensive player too. Zoltan Berczik (Hungary) won the gold medal in
1958 and successfully defended his title two years later. Berczik was a very passive
player who could produce strong backspin (Uzorinac, 2001; Hudetz, 2008). After the
1959 World Championships surfaces made of pure sponge were abandoned. From
now on the blade of a bat had to be covered with pimpled rubbers or sandwich
rubbers (Clemett, n.d.). The latter is a combination of sponge and pips-in or pips-out
rubbers.
5. THE RISE OF THE LOOP (1960 - 1969)
In 1960, the Japanese national team played some matches against a European
squad and showed a new technique, the so-called loop or topspin shot (Hudetz,
2008; James, 2008). The term “top-spin” had been part and parcel of competitive
table tennis since its beginning (“The Language of Ping Pong”, 1902), and words like
“topspin drive” or “topspin attack” had been in use over the past decades
(Friederich, 2018; Leach, 1951). The term loop, or topspin stroke in its modern
definition, names an offensive stroke whereby the racket movement is distinctly
marked from down behind to up and forward. The racket hits the ball tangentially
producing a strong topspin. The development of the loop benefited from sandwich
rubbers with sticky pips-in surfaces which had been invented in Japan in the 1940s
(Östh & Fellke, 1992). Originally, the topspin stroke in its exaggerated or modern
form had been developed as a technical mean against defensive play and made the
Japanese players quite successful at the beginning. However, the defenders learnt to
compensate heavy topspin as time went by (Hudetz, 2008).
The 1960s generated some masters of lobbing on international stage. These
included Sweden’s allround player Hans Alser and Japan’s Nobuhiko Hasegawa. The
progenitor of balloon defense, Johnny Leach (England), had emphasized that a high
defence from a long-range distance is a technique that is thought to lift or push the
ball near the baseline of the opponent, trying to impart no spin to the ball (Leach,
1951). Now, in contrast, Alser and Hasegawa performed high defence in a modern
form, that is to say, decidedly with topspin and considerably higher than it probably
was on Leach’s mind. The Japanese World Champions in men’s singles, Ichiro
Ogimura (1954, 1956) und Toshiaki Tanaka (1955, 1957), had already shown the

Straub: In the beginning was the half-volley: The history of defence in table tennis–revised
340
“high lob” in competition throughout the past decade (Wild Goose Productions,
n.d.).5
In the 1960s, new options were created for defensive players in regard to
equipment. Usually, defenders played with two inverted rubbers or one pips-in
rubber combined with pips-out but no sponge (Uzorinac, 2001; Nelson, 2010). At the
1968 National Championships of Austria, Anton “Toni” Hold advanced to the final in
men´s singles using a homemade anti-topspin rubber. Over the course of the
following years he distributed this rubber through inhouse production (Nelson,
2009b). The anti-topspin rubber most notably comprises of a non-sticky pips-in
surface which deactivates spin. In subsequent years, this kind of material was
produced by diverse firms. By Hold´s own account, the anti-topspin rubber was
already existing since 1965 (Hold, 2018). Trupkovic (1978) speaks of a player from
Yugoslavia named Stolcer who played some kind of anti-spin rubber in 1960 or
shortly after. Hudetz (2004) refers to the Hungarian defender Janos Börzsey who
played in the singles final of the 1968 European Championships using an anti-topspin
rubber.
A long-pimpled rubber was used for the very first time around the year 1960 by
Zhang Xielin (China) who was a defender playing the penhold grip. A penhold player
in those days used one and same side of the racket for forehand and backhand
strokes. A special penhold grip for defenders was taught which enabled the player to
hit forehand and backhand strokes with the same side of the racket (Ogimura, 1973).
The very first National Champion of China, Chiang Yung-Ning (1952), was a penhold
chopper too. At the 1953 World Championships, Chiang defeated two-times World
Singles Champion Johnny Leach. This was the first time an athlete from China beat a
World Champion in any sport whatsoever (James, 2010).
Zhang came across long pimples rather accidentally in Shanghai during the severe
Chinese economic crisis resulting from the Great Leap Forward. In the spring of
1959, Zhang was in search of a substitute for his old worn pips-out rubber and found
a top sheet of an inverted rubber in the waste of a factory which produced table
tennis equipment. This top sheet had rather long pimples (1.5 mm) which originally
had been glued to a sponge in the traditional way. The penhold defender from China
did this the other way around: He glued this top sheet to his racket so that the
pimples faced the outside (James, 2009). Long-pimpled rubbers have the effect to
twist if the player strikes the ball tangentially so that the spin is reinforced by this
catapult-like mechanism (Geske & Mueller, 1999). Zhang won the bronze medal
twice in men´s singles at World Championships (1961, 1963). He earned the
nickname “Magic Chopper” (Boggan, 2000a) or “Shanghai Wizard” (Uzorinac, 2001)
because his uncommon way of playing compelled his opponents to make many
mistakes which defied any explanation. In the men’s team final of the 1963 World
5 Much earlier to this and for long periods in table tennis history, topspin shots could be of a
distinct defensive nature when balls were played with slow speed or a high trajectory (see
Straub, 2015, for references). For example, Montagu (1961) mentioned that “lob-topspin” was
part of a strategy used by Alfred Liebster, who competed for Austria at World Championships
between 1928 and 1938.

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Championships, his two Japanese opponents did score less than ten points in each
(twenty-one up) game which was played (James, 2009). On the backwash of Zhang,
there were further Chinese players in those days who started using the so-called
combination bat. A combination bat is a racket covered with two different types of
rubbers, which has been also called “Yin-Yang” in the Middle Kingdom (Liang, 1981;
James, 2009).
Not only German table tennis supporters remember Zhang Xielin because at the
1965 World Championships in Ljubljana he faced Eberhard Schöler in “the most
thrilling table tennis match ever played” (Brucker, 1983, p. 117, translated by the
author). About 10.000 spectators watched this men´s singles quarterfinal match. It
lasted more than two hours and was won by the German in the decisive set by 27 -25
(Riess, 1970).
In 1963 Zhang Xielin became World Doubles Champion. This was the first doubles
title for China at World Table Tennis Championships. Zhang Xielin´s partner Wang
Zhiliang, who was a shakehand retriever, used two inverted rubbers and perfected
the variation of chop and float balls. In contrast to the first named technique, where
backspin is imparted to the ball, the last-mentioned technique looks like a chop, but
no perceptible spin is produced (Hammersley-Parker & Eaton, 1985). Wang Zhiliang
“celebrated as the first world-class defender the art of radical and simultaneously
hard to read backspin variation” (James, 2010, p. 18, translated by the author).
However, the idea of varying the amount of backspin is much older (Fuller, 1942). In
Germany, there is a very own term for varying the amount of backspin in successive
shots: This is traditionally called “Schnittwechsel” (“spin change”; e.g., Gäb &
Schneider, 1977).
The women’s team event of the 1965 World Championships produced a tactical
masterstroke. As coaches, Fu Qifang and Rong Guotuan, decided to nominate Lin
Huiqing and Zheng Minzhi for the final, and the two chopping players won th is team
match against Japan by 3-0. In the earlier rounds, two players who preferred the
attacking style had competed for China (“Abwehrfalle schnappte zu”, 1965;
Uzorinac, 2001).
A peak in the history of defensive play was the individual silver medal of
Eberhard Schöler (Germany) at the 1969 World Championships in Munich. In 1965
and 1967, he had already won the bronze medal in men´s singles. Schöler’s playing
style was based on quick feet, outstanding anticipation, continual variations in terms
of chopping and a severe attack (Gäb & Schneider, 1977). In addition, he was very
self-controlled and showed a high mental strength in competition. Thus, German
sport journalists named him “Mr. Pokerface” (Gäb & Schneider, 1977). In the course
of the 1960s, three female defenders reached the singles final of the World
Championships and secured the silver medal: These were Maria Alexandru from
Romania (1963), Lin Huiqing from China (1965) and GDR player Gabriele Geißler
from East Berlin (1969).
6. THE COMBINATION BAT PLAYERS ARE COMING (1971 - 1983)
Male and female chopping players from the Middle Kingdom appeared on the
international political stage at the beginning of the 1970s. Lin Huiqing, her doubles

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partner Zheng Minzhi (runner-up in women’s singles at the 1971 World
Championships) as well as Liang Geliang and Zhang Xielin were part of the squad and
delegation that travelled to the USA in April 1972 in order to play friendly matches.
This was a return visit happening as a part of what was called “ping-pong
diplomacy”. During the ping-pong diplomacy era, the People’s Republic of China and
the United States of America resumed their political relationship which was
interrupted by the Cultural Revolution (Boggan, 2000a, 2000b). In 1971, defensive
player Dick Miles was in the U.S. delegation that had originally been invited to the
People’s Republic. During the stay China, Miles, who was a bronze medalist in men’s
singles at the 1959 World Championships in Dortmund, played an exhibition match.
His Chinese opponent was a player Miles had defeated back then in Germany
(Weber, 2010).
At the 1971 World Championships, the rather unknown Frenchman Jean-Paul
Weber defeated some world-class players using an anti-topspin rubber. Weber was a
defensive player (Boggan, 1999a), and he was good at feinting: He relied on a
distinct arm movement and feigned heavy backspin chops which actually had only
little spin (Östh & Fellke, 1992). Apart from the anti-topspin rubber, long pimples
became a permanent feature in the table tennis world of the 1970s.6 At the 1971
World Championships, Liang Geliang (China) used a combination bat covered with an
inverted rubber and a semi-long pimpled rubber (Gotsch & Ziegler, 1998). After the
1975 World Championships, long-pimpled rubbers became effectively popular
(Tamasu Co., n.d.). Shakehand players who preferred the defensive style usually
employed two different types of rubbers which had the same colour. Combination
bat players began to twirl their racket during the rally or shortly before the serve so
that the forehand rubber became the backhand rubber and vice versa (Uzorinac,
2001; Östh & Fellke, 1992). By doing this, the defensive player could vary their game
even more. Additionally, their opponents had problems to see which rubber was
actually used because, back then, both sides of the racket usually had the same
colour. The two Chinese Lu Yuansheng (Östh & Fellke, 1992) und Huang Liang
(Uzorinac, 2001; Boggan, 2008) became role models in terms of this tactic of twirling
the racket. At the 1977 World Championships, Lu and Huang won the silver medal in
men’s doubles. Both used a combination bat with pips-in and long pimples.
Later in this period, combination bat players began to stamp a foot in order to
disguise the sound a ball made when it contacted the rubber. Furthermore, a new
generation of anti-topspin rubbers was produced. The surface of these rubbers
looked very similar to ordinary rubbers. This meant that, acoustically as well as
optically, it became very difficult to distinguish which one of the two materials on
the racket has just been used (Glatzer, 1982; Sklorz, 1983). The combination bat was
used by some well-known offensive players too (Hudetz, 2004; Östh & Fellke, 1992;
Liang, 1981).
6 However, as a counterexample, Japan’s famous defensive player Norio Takashima, who won
a bronze medal in men’s singles at the 1975 World Championships, can be named. He used
inverted rubber on both sides of his racket almost throughout his entire career (Feldstein,
2015).

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During the 1970s, the best defensive players in the world increasingly used
offensive strokes. Again, a leading figure was the Chinese defender Liang Geliang
who saw himself forced to give up playing his semi-long pimples after 1971. Jiang
Qing, who was the fourth and influential wife of Mao Zedong, considered the use of
long pimpled rubbers as unfriendly. At the 1973 World Championships, Liang was a
pure offensive player. Later on, he returned to the defensive style (Gotsch & Ziegler,
1998). Liang did not only perform effective offensive shots but also worked on
reducing the length of the arm movement when playing the chop (Uzorinac, 2001 ;
Gotsch & Ziegler, 1998; Freise, 1986). Liang Geliang was a very successful athlete. He
was a World Champion six times in men’s team, men’s doubles, and mixed doubles.
In men’s singles he won two bronze medals at World Championships (1977, 1979). In
1976, he became Asian Champion in men’s singles, and in 1974 and 1978, he
received the gold medal in men’s singles at the Asian Games.
Simultaneously, the topspin stroke became a mainstream technique in the 1970s
mainly due to a new successful generation of Hungarian and Yugoslavian players.
The traditional offensive style which was based on direct plain-hit or counter strokes
lost ground. Playing topspin was closely linked to the change of rotation and speed
as well as varying placement (Hudetz, 2008). In the second half of the 1970s fresh-
gluing came up (Fellke, 2008; Östh & Fellke, 1992). More and more offensive players
applied fresh glue to the sponge before playing. The emitted gas of the fresh glue
infiltrated the sponge and the surface of the rubber. This resulted in a tension and a
catapult effect when the ball touched the rubber. Controlling a fresh glued rubber
was rather difficult, but by fresh-gluing a topspin shot gained much more spin and
speed.
In the 1970s, there was another famous Chinese player who performed defensive
strokes while playing the penhold grip. The female athlete Ge Xinai occurred at
World Championships for the first time in 1975 and became World Champion in
women´s singles in 1979 (Uzorinac, 2001). Ge Xinai was known as “the penholder
retriever”. However, she did not play the classic defensive style but frequently liked
to attack and block close to the table (Uzorinac, 2001; Jeler, 2011). Eight years ago,
at the 1971 World Championships, Lin Huiqing (China) had already won the title in
women´s singles by playing an orthodox defensive style (Uzorinac, 2001). In 1981,
Tong Ling (China) won the Singles World Championship title, and this was the last
time so far, the women´s singles crown was captured by a defensive player. All three
world champions, even penhold player Ge Xinei, used combination bats with pips-in
and long pimples (Schmicker, 2000; Uzorinac, 2001). At the end of the 1983 World
Championships, Martin Sklorz, the outgoing National Coach Education Manager of
the German Table Tennis Association, concluded:
“According to Chinese sources, 20 to 25% of all players in China are defenders
though. […] Defensive play has become more popular. Whenever possible, good
long-range defenders take the opportunity to smash a badly placed drop-shot.
Counter-looping on occasion belongs to the tactic of some defensive players in order
to put the offensive player off his stride.” (Sklorz, 1983, p. 28, translation by the
author)

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7. FROM 1983 UNTIL THE END OF THE MILLENIUM
In order to reduce the number of inexplicable errors and to make the game more
transparent for spectators, the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF)
introduced the two-colour rule, which came into effect internationally on 1 January
1984 (Nelson, 2009a; Oakley, 1984).7 From now on, the two sides of a table tennis
bat had to have different colours. The twirling of the racket during a rally or shortly
before the serve in order to confuse the opponent lost effectiveness. The anti-
topspin rubber was not any longer used at world-class level, to a great extent due to
the two-colour rule (Schmicker, 2000; Hudetz, 2004; Nelson, 2009a). Apart from
that, stamping a foot while serving was banned starting 1 July 1983 (Giesecke, 1983).
Since the 1970s, offensive play progressed favoured by fresh-gluing. Erik Lindh
(Sweden) was inspired by impressions made in a 1980 training camp in China and
became the pioneer of “the playing style of the 80s” (Östh & Fellke, 1992, p. 55,
translated by the author). The most distinctive feature of this new way of playing
was the counter-loop close to the table whereby the ball was hit in the rising phase
of its trajectory with a short and quick arm movement. Likewise, passive play
became more dynamic. Beginning in the 1980s, a distinction could be made between
a passive block and an active block (Sklorz, 1976; Michaelis & Sklorz, 1982). Besides,
offensive pushing had been observed in competition (Hudetz, 1984). The two-colour
rule made the table tennis industry focus on further developing long pimpled
rubbers. Since the mid-1980s, pimples were sold whose length was more than 1.5
millimeters, which had been common so far (James, 2009; Kamizuru, 2011). The
extension of long pimples should increase the amount of spin produced by a chop.
Furthermore, there were long pimples with a reduced width so that they were
thinner and more instable than former products. A medium-fast ball which
contacted the rubber diametrically made long pimples bend in an unpredictable
manner. The flight characteristics of such “flutter balls” were hard to anticipate by
the opponent and baffled them (Petrasch, 2009a).
In the 1980s, the numbers of medals won by defensive players in men´s and
women´s singles at World Championships were lower than in the foregone decade
(see Table 1). Between 1981 and 1989, only one male defender captured a singles
medal: Chen Xinhua (China) won bronze in 1987. But, in addition, Chen was the only
defensive player, male or female, who won the World Cup in the singles discipline
(1985), an annual event which is held for men since 1980 and for women since 1996
(“Table Tennis World Cup”, 2018). He was charismatic and full of smiles, and because
of this reason he was called “the Smiler” in German-speaking countries. Chen liked
to attack but also to play chops and floats with his forehand. He used long pimples
on the backhand and a pips-in rubber on his forehand with a 2.0-millimeter sponge
(Glatzer, 1985). Thus, Chen´s inverted rubber was quite fast compared to forehand
rubbers used by other choppers in those days (Lauer & Schäfer, 1984).
In 1987, the female defender Guan Jianhua (China) could win a bronze medal in
women´s singles at the World Championships. At the 1989 World Championships,
7 Since 1 July 1986, one side of the racket has to be bright red and the other side has to be
black (Hughes, 1918).

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the North Korean men´s team won the bronze medal, led by Li Gun-sang, a defensive
player who achieved a 16-3 record (Nelson, 1989). In 1993, Li Gun-sang won the
Asian Cup ahead of Wang Tao and Liu Guoliang, both from China (“Asian Cup Table
Tennis Tournament”, 2018).
Ever the tinkerer, Toni Hold who had already developed the anti-topspin rubber
in the 1960s started to refine long pimples in the 1980s (Hold, 2011; Neubauer,
2011). He treated the surface of the pimples by using a special spray and liquid in
order to varnish or polish them (Nelson, 2009b). Frictionless long pimples offered
only little resistance to a ball when contacting the rubber diametrically so that the
amount of spin was hardly reduced (Petrasch, 2009a). Thus, frictionless long pimples
promoted chop-blocking among recreational athletes. Some players could
experience optical illusions: Offensive player Erich Arndt (Germany), for example,
saw “zigzag balls” in his final against Toni Hold at the 1988 World Veterans
Championships (Arndt, 1988). The frictionless long pimpled rubber was a bestseller
on the market so that it was copied by other providers.
A vivid element in the table tennis world of the 1980s was “Le Show Secrétin
Purkart”. In the “Show Secrétin Purkart”, 1976 European Singles Champion Jacques
Secretin played exhibition matches against two-time French Singles Champion
Vincent Purkart including plenty of funny moments and gimmicks in between
(Stöckmann, 1981). Chopping as well as lobbing were substantial building blocks of
the show as far as table tennis technique was concerned.8 Secretin, also World
Mixed Doubles Champion in 1977, was known for frequently lobbing in serious
competition too. Lob defence remained a part of table tennis in the modern era. In
somewhat more recent times, the Dane Michael Maze showed tremendous
character to come back with the help of the lob in the quarterfinals in men´s singles
of the 2005 World Championships. He had already used this technique successfully a
couple of times the round before (Nelson, 2005).
In the 1990s, there was another male defender who played in the semi-finals of a
World Championship singles event: Ding Song (China) won the bronze medal in 1995
using short pimples on the backhand side of his racket. Ding had a spectacular strong
forehand attack and, as a server, preferred attacking over defending (Nelson, 1998).
Ding started his carrier as an offensive player and switched to the defensive style at
a later time (James, 2010). In the Middle Kingdom, Ding Song might have been seen
as a kind of confidential matter because, after his international debut in 1990, he did
not emerge at world-class level until the 1994-1995 season (Schäfer, 1995). Ding
switched to short pimples in 1993, and in those days, defensive play in China was
8 Show presentations in table tennis had been already executed in the first decade of the 20th
century (Gäb & Schneider, 1977). The legendary chopping player and four times World Singles
Champion Richard Bergmann gained publicity by playing such show fights throughout the
1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. During World War II, Bergmann played for the benefit of the Red
Cross (Bergmann, 1950), later on he went on tour for his own financial purposes. Beside other
events, he showed up in the accompanying program of the Harlem Globetrotters (Uzorinac,
2001). In England, however, there had been show presentations in table tennis prior to
Bergman’s journeys around the world (“The Tour of England”, 1936; Grant, 2010).

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taught with short pimples as a matter of principle (Geil & Ziegler, 1998; Nelson,
1998). Short-pimpled rubbers enable the defender to generate backspin
autonomously, regardless the amount of spin of the oncoming ball. This also makes
the variation of spin (chop and float) much easier (Nelson, 1997; Petrasch, 2009b).
Furthermore, short pimples are faster than long pimples so that the ball comes back
to the opponent more rapidly (Geil & Ziegler, 1998). Ola Einarsson (1998), at that
time Coach of the Hessian Table Tennis Association in Germany, classified Ding Song
as a modern defensive player whose game was characterized by three features:
1. forehand attacking shots first and foremost after his own serve and if a chance
has opened up during the rally (e.g., as an answer to soft offensive shots or drop-
shots)
2. backhand chops comparatively close to the table (with short pimples) and
forehand chops and floats (with the pips-in rubber), but also forehand counter-loops
at mid-distance from the table with the inverted rubber
3. very early contact point on the ball when pushing short serves and attempts to
attack with the forehand when the opponent serves mid-long or long (Einarsson,
1998, p. 5, translated by the author)
The distinction between an aggressive and a passive form of defensive play in
table tennis can be traced back at least to the early 1980s (Leiß & Wolf, 1983;
Boggan, 1999b). In modern China, defenders seem to be conceptionally
characterized and denoted as “chop-and-attack players” or “chop-attacking players”
(Chen, Sun, & Ding, 2013; Wu & Tang, 1996). Experts were sometimes split about the
potential and future of defensive play. After the 1995 World Championships, Radivoj
Hudetz (Croatia), an internationally known authority in table tennis, stated that
defensive play is on the decrease even among female athletes (Hudetz, 1995). Two
years later, he took the view that defensive play had no chance of being successful at
the very top of the table tennis world. At the same time, he admitted that defence
was capable of surprising because even some world-class players showed
weaknesses against this particular playing style (Hudetz, 1997). As opposed to this,
the German table tennis journalist Rahul Nelson felt positive about the prospects of
defensive play. At the 1997 World Championships, some good results of male and
female defenders made him conclude the following:
“Despite all prophecies of doom: Defensive play is still alive, partially because
more and more athletes have problems to play against defence, but also due to
innovations such as short pimples.” (Nelson, 1997, p. 8, translated by the author)
As long ago as in the mid-1990s, Hudetz pointed to the fact that in China
defensive play was far more than a margin phenomenon, that is to say, defence play
was an integral component of the training system over there. In China, a higher
percentage of players was schooled as defenders, and the play against defence
belonged to the basic table tennis education in the People’s Republic (Hudetz, 1995).
In 1986, Anton Lehmann and Georg Silberschmidt from Switzerland had already
travelled to China and reported later on that there had been one defensive player in
each training group (Lehmann & Silberschmidt, 1987).

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On 1 July 1999, the ITTF reduced the aspect ratio of the long pimples, that is the
ratio between their length and their diameter. The aspect ratio decreased from 1.3
to 1.1. Long pimples became somewhat thicker again, more stable and better to
control (Nelson, 2009a; Petrasch, 2009a). At some time before, a rather new playing
style had emerged, essentially due to the refined long pimpled rubbers. This new
playing style was called chop-blocking. Chop-blockers normally use a pimpled rubber
and play rather close to the table. They actively block with backspin on their
backhand side, and if the opportunity is given, they try to end the rally with a killing
forehand shot. In the 1985 World Championships, chop-blocker Lo Chuen Tsung
(Hong Kong) took the bronze medal in men´s singles. The origin of chop-blocking can
be traced back to the early 1970s or even 1960s where it emerged as a part of the
Chinese playing culture. Boggan (2000c) points out that the penhold attacker Li
Furong, three-time men’s singles finalist at World Championships (1961-1965), was
very good at chop-blocking. This allowed him to vary the spin very much (backspin,
topspin, no-spin). At the 2001 World Championships, Kim Yun-mi (North Korea),
bronze medalist in women’s singles, shocked her opponents with an inconvenient
playing style which was described as follows:
“The penhold player uses an inverted rubber on her forehand and performs
consistent as well as powerful loops. On the back of the racket, she uses long
pimples to stab disgustingly the ball without twirling her racket. This made one after
the other opponent despair. […] Remarkable alternatives are established for the
classic weak point of penhold play, which is the backhand. Besides the use of the
long pimples which enable Kim to take the ball in the ascending phase and pulling
down the racket as in chopping, there is the possibility to play backhand counter and
backhand block which are performed with the inverted rubber in the familiar
penhold style.” (Nelson, 2001a, p. 18, translated by the author)
8. DEFENSIVE PLAY AT THE START OF THE THIRD MILLENIUM
At the beginning of the third millennium, the block shot in table tennis had
already experienced another metamorphosis: Top-class players had started to
perform “topspin blocks” with the backhand on a regular basis (Hampl, 2002). Now,
it could be distinguished between a topspin block and a punch block (Schmittinger,
2001).9
On 1 October 2000, the 40-millimeter table tennis ball was introduced
internationally. The diameter of the new ball was two millimeters larger than the
diameter of its predecessor. Thus, rallies should lose speed and spin and become
more attractive to spectators. The former German national coach of the women´s
team Martin Adomeit (2001) predicts that the somewhat bigger ball will have to face
more air resistance and lose momentum. He names some new challenges for
defensive players:
9 However, following Tim Boggan’s observations in the era of ping-pong diplomacy, or even
earlier, the idea of aggressive blocking is much older: He writes that “[s]ometimes the Chinese
can block a shot almost as hard as they can slam the ball” (2000c).

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➢ Drop-shots will become shorter
➢ Speed contrasts performed by offensive players will become more severe
➢ Offensive players will have more time to adjust to the next ball contact
➢ Defensive players will have to modify their footwork: They have to reinforce
the training of forward movements and ought to stand closer to the table in
principle
➢ Attacking will become more difficult for defenders: Counter-loops and
topspin shots close to the table will be slower
➢ It will be more difficult for defensive players to generate heavy backspin as
well as to mix varying degrees of backspin
Despite all difficulties brought by the introduction of the 40-millimeter ball,
defensive players called attention to themselves. At the 2001 German Open, Nelson
noticed that two female defenders from South Korea were able to create extreme
backspin, in spite of the larger diameter of the new ball in use. He attributes their
success to several causes (Nelson, 2001b):
➢ The players applied fresh glue to both rubbers on their rackets. Thus, even
the long pimples were freshly glued
➢ The players made good use of their wrists
➢ While chopping, they contacted the ball very early, often in the rising phase
of the ball trajectory. This increased the time pressure for the opponent and
made attacking close to the table easier for the defender
➢ They combined backspin with sidespin using an aggressive arm movement
which made the shot more offensive
➢ The change of the point scoring system, which also took place in 2001
(Clemett, n.d.), shortened the duration of a game and did not give an
offensive player so much time to adjust to defence
➢ Half‐long high‐toss backhand serves made it difficult for the opponents to
attack
➢ In women’s doubles, variation of backspin was very advantageous: One
player preferred generating heavy backspin while her partner favoured float
balls
At the 2003 World Championships in Paris, defensive players came impressively
into picture with Joo Sae-hyuk (South Korea) leading the way. As number 61 ranked
player in the world, he advanced to the men´s singles final. By winning the silver
medal in this event, he emulated Eberhard Schöler who had won silver in singles 34
years before in Munich. This success was mainly due to both his outstanding
forehand counter-loop (using a freshly glued rubber) and awesome chopping on his
backhand side. In addition to Joo Sae-hyuk, Austria’s Chen Weixing could advance to
the quarterfinals. On their ways, each of them had defeated an opponent from
China, Joo in the quarterfinals and Chen in the round of 16. At that time, it was
observed that more and more young players and even the Chinese showed a deficit
against defensive play. This deficit could be attributed to the fact that young top

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players have less and less opportunity in daily training and competition to play
against defence (Amizic, 2004; Nelson, 2003). Another cause for the wins of Joo and
Chen against opponents from China could have been the fact that in the Middle
Kingdom defensive players were mainly equipped with short-pimpled rubbers in
those days (Geil & Ziegler, 1998). Joo and Chen both used long pimples on their
backhand (Nelson, 2003).
At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, the female defender Kim Kyung-ah (South
Korea) won the bronze medal in women´s singles. In 2007 and 2009, Joo Sae-hyuk
reached the quarterfinals in men’s singles at the World Championships; in 2004 and
2011, he became fourth and third, respectively, at the Men’s World Cup (ITTF, 2018).
The top-class performances of Joo Sae-hyuk and Kim Kyung-ah were historically
flanked by further high-class results achieved by defenders in major international
tournaments (see Straub, 2012, for an overview from 2000 and 2012). Regarding the
European continent, the highlights in the history of defence play throughout the last
decade have been the three European Championship titles in women’s singles
(Viktoria Pavlovich from Belarus in 2010 and 2012; Li Qian from Poland in 2018).
Besides there are the victories of Li Qian in the 2009 Europe Top-12 tournament and
Li Jie (The Netherlands) in the 2017 Europe Top-16 tournament. Panagiotis Gionis
from Greece shall not be forgotten: He reached the semi-finals in men’s singles at
the 2013 European Championships. The last defender who had won a bronze medal
in this event was Tibor Kreisz (Hungary) in 1978.
Effective from 1 July 2008, frictionless long-pimpled rubbers were banned by the
ITTF. Currently, only nonslip long pimples are allowed to be used (Neubauer, 2018).
Since 1 September 2008, fresh-gluing or using volatile organic compound-based
glues, respectively, is illegal too (Fellke, 2009a). Defenders and chop-blockers who
had used frictionless long pimpled rubbers had to give up the opportunity to use the
full amount of the oncoming spin. Attackers without freshly glued rubbers need a
better hitting technique and footwork now (Fellke, 2009b). For the vast majority of
male world-class defenders, forehand topspin shots play a voluminous role
nowadays. Straub (2013b) suggests the term “postmodern” defensive player to
denote defenders who play in principle topspin strokes on the forehand side when
standing rather far away from the table. In contrast, the old words “modern defence
player” (Einarsson, 1998) and “aggressive defence player” (Leiß & Wolf, 1983) refer
to defenders who still rely on forehand chops to a significant extent. Switching
racket sides by twirling still makes some sense for serving, but only a very few
individuals at world-class level twirling their bat during the rally.
Further rule changes and changes in material and equipment are discussed now
and then. Some of them could affect defensive play, such as increasing the net
height, increasing the diameter of the ball once again and developing rubbers which
are even faster than the current ones (Petrasch & Teuffel, 2006). In the meantime,
defenders give thought to new weapons, such as:
➢ rackets with two pips‐in rubbers (Nelson, 2010)
➢ a tactical mix of chopping and lobbing (Nelson, 2010)
➢ chop balls with sidespin (Leidheiser, 2007; Nelson, 2010)

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350
➢ improving the short game above the table (Adler, 2010)
➢ block and topspin shots with the backhand (Adler, 2010)
➢ an even more graded spectrum of spin variations, in regard to backspin as
well as topspin (Shibutani, 2007)
9. DEFENSIVE PLAY IN THE WORLD OF TODAY
At the international level, on 1 July 2014, the celluloid balls were replaced by new
plastic or poly balls (Table Tennis England, 2019). Due to a new production method,
these 40-millimeter balls are slightly larger than the 40-millimeter balls that are
completely made of celluloid. As a consequence, the capability to impart spin to the
ball is somewhat reduced. In addition, compared to the old celluloid ball, the poly
ball which is nowadays in use shows a somewhat steeper ascent and higher bounce
when backspin is on the ball (Fürste, 2014). Both consequences of the plastic ball are
also true for topspin balls. In general, these attributes tend to make heavy chopping
as well as varying the amount of backspin more difficult. Hence, a long placement of
the ball and a rather close posture of the chopper’s body to the table might become
even more important in the future (Nelson, 2018).
Even after the year 2014, defensive players have been able to show that they can
still be successful at the highest level. Kim Song-i from North Korea won the bronze
medal in women’s singles at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. China’s Wu
Yang advanced to the quarterfinals in women’s singles at the World Championships
three times in a row: two times before 2014 and another time after 2014 (2011,
2013, 2015). At the time of this writing (December 2018), there were 13 female and
3 male defenders ranked among the Top 100 of the world (ITTF, 2018). At the time
of the publication of the original article in English language (Straub, 2012), there had
been 19 female and 9 male defenders ranked among the Top 100 of the world (July
2012). Thus, despite the fact that defensive play in table tennis has proven itself to
be competitive (Straub, 2013a), the number of defensive players at elite level in
table tennis currently seems to decrease. It might well be that more than ever skilled
coaches are needed: skilled coaches who are able to identify specific talents, skilled
coaches who have a broad knowledge about (defensive and offensive) techniques
and tactics, and, after all, skilled coaches who have the courage and social
competence to take up and pursue this special way of playing table tennis (Straub,
2013a).

Straub: In the beginning was the half-volley: The history of defence in table tennis–revised
351
Table 1. Medals in men’s and women’s singles won by defensive (“chopping”) players
at the World Table Tennis Championships 1949-2017 (see already Straub, 2013a)
Year
(Number of
championships)
Number of
medals won in
men‘s singles
by male
choppers (gold
/ silver /
bronze)
Number of
male defenders
who won these
medals
Number of
medals won in
women‘s singles
by female
choppers (gold /
silver / bronze)
Number of
female
defenders who
won these
medals
1949 – 1953 (5)
7 (3 / 1 / 3)
5
8 (4 / 1 / 3)
4
1954 – 1959 (5)
2 (0 / 0 / 2)
2
4 (2 / 0 / 2)
2
1961 – 1969 (5)
7 (0 / 1 / 6)
4
5 (0 / 3 / 2)
4
1971 – 1979 (5)
4 (0 / 0 / 4)
3
7 (2 / 2 / 3)
5
1981 – 1989 (5)
1 (0 / 0 / 1)
1
2 (1 / 0 / 1)
2
1991 – 1999 (5)
1 (0 / 0 / 1)
1
0
0
2001 – 2009 (5)
1 (0 / 1 / 0)
1
0
0
2011 – 2017 (4)
0
0
0
0
Table 2. Obstructive framework conditions and resulting adaptions in the
development of defensive play in table tennis
Time
Period /
Starting
Point
Obstructive framework
conditions
Adaptions
Pre-
1930
Introduction of rubber-
faced bats “with the idea
of improving attacking
strokes and to baffle the
half volley defence“
(Barna, 1950/2010)
Starting around 1929: “This, in turn, led naturally to
the counter-measure of long-range defence“ (Barna,
1950/2010)
1952
Sponge as a surface for a
racket took center stage (J.
Schlaf: “The future belongs
to offensive play!", cited in
Eckert, 1954)
● Remaining passive while producing strong backspin
(Z. Berczik)
● Including more solid attacking strokes in one’s
defensive play (A. Rozeanu)
● Short-range defence (R. Miles)
● Lobbing (I. Ogimura, T. Tanaka)
1960
Invention of the loop as
the topspin stroke in its
exaggerated or modern
form using backside
sandwich rubbers (sponge
+ pips-in)
● New options were created in regard to equipment:
Anti-topspin rubber (around 1965), long pimples
(starting in 1959), combination bat (two different
types of rubbers)
● Perfecting the variation of chop and float balls
(“Schnittwechsel”)
1970s
Continual improving
attacking play favoured by
fresh-gluing (starting in the
second half of the 1970s)
● Feinting arm movements (J.-P. Weber)
● Twiddling the combination racket during the rally or
shortly before the serve (whereby both rubbers had
the same colour)
(to be continued)

Straub: In the beginning was the half-volley: The history of defence in table tennis–revised
352
Time
Period /
Starting
Point
Obstructive framework
conditions
Adaptions
1970s
● Reducing the length of the arm movement (Liang
Geliang)
● Stamping a foot in order to disguise the sound a ball
made (at the beginning of the 1980s)
1983/
1984
Banning foot-stamping in
service / Invention of the
two-colour rule
● Immediately focusing on further developing long-
pimpled rubbers: Extending the length of the pimples,
reducing their width, frictionless long pimples
● Starting to counter-loop (around 1983)
● Starting to use thick pips-in rubbers (2.0 mm)
● Intensifying attack play („modern defence“)
● In the 1990s: Using short-pimpled rubbers for
chopping play
1999
Decreasing the length of
long pimples and
increasing their diameter
(“aspect ratio”)
● Fresh-gluing for defensive players too
● Contacting the ball in the ascending phase of its
trajectory when chopping
● (Counter-)Looping with the forehand in principle
(“postmodern defence”)
● Combining backspin with sidespin
● Modifying the footwork: Reinforcing the training of
forward movements and standing closer to the table in
principle
● Improving the short game above the table (Chen
Weixing)
● Block and topspin shots with the backhand (Ruwen
Filus: “One might call me an allround player”, cited in
Petrasch, 2009b)
● Establishing an even more graded spectrum of spin
variations, in regard to backspin as well as topspin
2000
Introduction of the 40-
millimeter ball
2008
Ban of frictionless long-
pimpled rubbers
2014
Introduction of the plastic
or poly ball
Intensifying a long placement of the ball and a rather
close posture to the table might become even more
important
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*Correspondence to: straub@vdtt.de