A visitor

I live at the end of the road. Corpus is not a table tennis mecca. No one comes through Corpus on the way to somewhere. There is one table tennis club in town and the nearest clubs are in Harlingen or San Antonio and we rarely get visitors. Last night we had a player from Chicago show up at our club. A 1900 level looper. Oh boy was it sweet to play someone a little better than me AND to play someone who plays a different style and is new. It is very easy to get used to playing the same few buys all the time. I lose all the problem solving ability. We all know each others weaknesses and strengths. I also have to initiate attacking or offense. Last night it was fun to have the back and forth of who initiated offense and to play someone who actually looped the ball and did not smash. I was able to have some blocking, some good fishing and an occasional counter loop. I was also able to work on preventing a powerful opening loop and work on spin variation and no spin strategy. Since I have gone to double inverted I need to visit some clubs around the state myself. Equipment wise I played most of the night with maze on FH and tenergy80 on BH of double fish carbon blade. I played El Visitor twice-the first time with my 729 HS champ carbon blade with Juic Nano Spin 2 and kept blocking his loops long from by BH. Lost 0-3 and was down 0-5 or so each game. I choose that blade cause I thought it would have more control, but it was the only match I used it all night. I played him the last match of the evening and won 3-1. Tenergy blocked better and sure pushed better than nanospin and I think either he was tired (looping takes a lot of legs) or he let up. I did play strategically better-varying spin, returning serve much better and even doing a couple of 3rd ball attacks. I also found a serve he did not return well.