Table Tennis Rules
Playing table tennis requires two players or teams of two players each. This is an Olympic racket sport where the players need to hit the table tennis ball back and forth across the net with the aid of wooden paddles . The table tennis game is somehow similar to the tennis game.
The area where play occurs is a table whose measurement is 30inches long, approximately 9 feet long and 5 feet wide above the ground. The table was divided by a 6 inch high net into half. The diameter f the table tennis ball s 40 mm. The ball is also hollow and made of celluloid. The basic elements such as the scoring, basic strokes will be tackled in this article.
The official rules mandated for the game of table tennis consists of either a best-of-five or a best-of-seven series games up to 11 points each game. The winner in the game can be determined by knowing who is the player who reaches a score of 11 points in a margin of two wins in a 2 set of game. The first player who wins 3 times in a best-of-five-match while in the best-of-seven match wins the game, the player who wins 4 times or in 4 games also with 11 points each game wins the game. In the 11 point game format, players alternate serves every two points. The players will serve alternate if the players reach a point of 10-10 in a margin of 2 points.
The preferred method for recreational table tennis game is the standard game of table tennis where 21 points are needed to be achieved after every five points.
To play table tennis, you need to follow the manners that will be stated below. To start each point, the server tosses the ball from his/her open palm into the air at least 6 inches high. The server strikes the ball with the paddle to make the ball bounce on the servers side court before striking the opponents side. A player wins a point if a shot that strikes the table is not returned by the opponent. A player of table tennis loses a point if he/she fails to return the shot made by the opponent, if he/she allowed the ball to bounce more than once on his side, if the player fails to hit the table with his/her shot or hits the ball twice, places his hand on the table, hits the ball if it still doesn’t hits the side of the opponent and lastly, if the player executes a legal table tennis service.
The table tennis players have a lot of different strokes at their disposal. An offensive table tennis stroke includes peed drive, loop drive and the smash. The speed drive is a shot. The speed drive is a shot of square racket face swung parallel to the table that results in a hard and flat shot. The loop drive is a shot hit with a close racket face swung nearly perpendicular to the table. The ground stroke in tennis is with a large amount of topspin-hit is the same as the loop drive shot in table tennis. The smash is the shot that is extremely offensive because it involves swinging the racket down on a high bouncing ball to create and produce a very large amount of speed depending on the force exerted by the player into his/her shot.
Here are some of the offensive shots. The chop is a table tennis’s version of slice shot. The player needs to execute the chop by swinging the paddle from high up to low with an open racket face while doing a backspin. Lastly, the block is a simple stroke used to counter attack shots made by the opponent.
To win a game, the players must strategically do a mixture or combination of right offensive and defensive shots for table tennis.