Vietnamese table tennis needs to escape the philosophy of intuition

I do not remember whether that match entered the history books, but I clearly remember a dead ball at the end of the table. The match was part of a regional qualifier in the south. Two young table tennis players from Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi were fighting in the fourth game. The server had lost three consecutive points following the same pattern: a long backspin serve near the edge, the opponent attacked the forehand corner, then moved forward to finish. The coach on the sideline shouted only generic encouragement. No one offered a single number to change the way the player served. Three minutes later, the match ended. The players shook hands, wiped off sweat and walked away. The scoreboard stayed lit, fans clapped, and everyone moved to the next table. I leaned down and wrote a note: that game had nine serves, four direct winning points, two tactical traps from long service. If someone had seen that note before the match, perhaps the story would have been different. I have written about sports data for more than ten years. But it was not until I saw a table tennis coach holding a statistics sheet instead of a phone to record video that I understood why Vietnamese table tennis is still running on a different track. Empty arenas are not an excuse. In 2026, when the pandemic forced many tournaments to be held behind closed doors, I had the chance to observe a series of internal table tennis matches. Without the noise of the crowd, bold decisions decreased. Players returned to safer shots and experimented less with angles. This shows that a large part of on-court performance does not come only from technical skill, but also from psychological state amplified by spectators. In Vietnam, however, the real concern is not the number of spectators. It is that we do not have the habit of collecting evidence. After every match, coaches often say: “You played well but not patiently enough,” “You need to be more active on the third ball,” “You should observe your opponent more.” All of these statements are true, but none are measurable. How much is “more active”? Five attacks or ten? Does “patience” mean waiting until the opponent returns a short ball, or waiting until a certain score? In football, people use xG to explain how good a team’s chances are. In basketball, effective field goal percentage reveals shooting efficiency. Table tennis, despite its clear point-by-point rhythm and fixed serving structure, has largely left analytics untouched. Every serve is a fixed situation, every return is a decision that can be coded, every third-ball rally is a probability puzzle. Yet we often rely on words like courage, instinct, or form to explain everything. Form is a deeply misunderstood concept. A player who wins three matches in a row is called “in form,” but if we look at the points won against the opponent’s serve, he might simply be meeting opponents with simple serving patterns. When he faces a player with a varied side-spin serve, everything collapses. Conversely, a player who loses three matches but always loses the fifth game by narrow margins may be very close to a breakthrough. If we only look at win-loss records without examining point structure, we will misjudge true ability. I often use a simple test: record how often a player wins the point within the first three shots of a rally. If this rate is high, the player controls the rhythm. If it is low, the problem is not the final stroke but the way the point starts. Many young players have powerful forehands yet lose repeatedly because they can only unleash that power when the ball is in an ideal position. Data will point out that they need better footwork to create that ideal position, instead of simply trying to smash harder. At major training centers around the world, this philosophy has long been applied. They record entire practice sessions, use sensors on rackets to measure spin, and analyze ball trajectory with computers. Every drill is designed based on each player’s specific weaknesses. Vietnam does not need to invest immediately in expensive technology. Simply maintaining consistent note-taking would already move us far ahead of relying only on the naked eye. The key is to distinguish noise from signal. One painful defeat may simply be an outlier. If a coach quickly overhauls the whole tactical system because of one match, he is reacting to noise. If he sees a losing pattern repeated over ten matches, that is a signal. In the current environment, however, review meetings are often emotional: everyone remembers the beautiful points, everyone remembers the final mistake, but few remember exactly how many points were won from long serves. During one practice match between two young female players, I counted 18 attempts at forehand smashes after a high return. The player won 11 of them. But she also attempted that smash seven times from too far behind the table and lost all seven. The coach sitting next to me said: “You need to be braver.” I wondered: if I were the coach, I would say: “Only smash when the ball is within one meter of the table; outside that zone, use a topspin loop to keep the rally alive.” That is the difference between an opinion and a verifiable instruction. I am not against intuition. In decisive moments, when the score reaches 9-9 or 10-10, no model can replace the body’s feeling of distance and rhythm. But the intuition of a great coach is actually a data system encoded in the brain after thousands of hours of observation. That coach does not need numbers to notice that an opponent is losing focus. The problem is that when he leaves, that system disappears. If we record tactical decisions as data, knowledge will be preserved and passed on to future generations. I once made a mistake that I still see many people making: applying the formula of one sport to another without adjustments. In football, xG works well because the goal has a fixed position and shots can be measured by distance and angle. In table tennis, the table is much smaller, but the variety of spin and speed creates countless variables. A useful table tennis model must include racket type, rubber surface, air humidity, ball quality, and even competitive pressure. Without that, numbers become a sophisticated trap. I once watched a player underestimated because of a low rate of direct aces from serves. On the surface, this seems like a weakness. But when I watched the video closely, I realized his serve was designed to force a long return, creating an opportunity for the third-ball attack. Direct point totals did not reflect true value. An analyst who only looks at a simple statistics sheet might say he needs to change his serve. Someone who understands context would say he is doing the right thing and simply needs better accuracy on the third ball. The same data, two completely opposite readings. That leads me to an important principle: data does not provide answers; it provides better questions. A statistic showing that a player loses too many points on the left side does not automatically mean he needs more left-side training. Perhaps the problem lies in reading the direction of the opponent’s serve, or perhaps he is moving too late. If we jump to conclusions, we may make the athlete practice the wrong drill for months. That is why I am careful with those who claim numbers never lie. Numbers never speak on their own. Those who collect, process, and interpret them are the ones who create the story. If the collection process is wrong, every later analysis is meaningless. If the analyst has biases, he will find data to support those biases. The most important thing is not a beautiful spreadsheet, but an honest process. For Vietnamese table tennis, I believe the first step does not need to be huge. Start at youth training centers, where each player has a notebook recording every match: the number of serves, points won from serve, third-ball mistakes, and points won after long rallies. After three months of persistence, data will begin to tell stories the naked eye cannot see. Practice sessions will no longer be designed by inspiration alone, but based on the specific gaps of each person. I also believe domestic tournaments need standardized data at the organizational stage. Instead of only publishing win-loss results, organizers could publish additional figures such as average game duration, timeouts used, and serve-win percentage. This not only gives the media more material, but also helps coaches compare the progress of their athletes across seasons. A tournament without detailed data is like a match without a referee: everyone can see the ball, but no one can determine the correct boundary. Some may say Vietnamese table tennis has bigger problems: limited facilities, a thin pool of young players, and unstable funding. I agree. But data analytics is a smart way to use resources. It prevents us from wasting money and time on wrong methods. A center does not need expensive sensors to start; it can begin with a computer and one person dedicated to note-taking. The value lies in consistency, not in the complexity of equipment. Recently, I talked with a youth team coach. He said many of his players had very good technique, not inferior to their international peers, but they often lost at decisive moments because they had no backup plan. When tactic A failed, they did not know how to switch to tactic B based on specific signals. They simply tried to play tactic A better. This reminds me of the concept of the decision loop: a good athlete constantly gathers information, compares it with prior experience, and adjusts behavior. Data is the fuel for that loop. Without data, the loop relies only on memory and emotion. And human memory is unreliable. We remember beautiful shots and forget ordinary ones; we remember the latest defeat and forget the previous winning streak. An honest notebook helps athletes see themselves without distortion from temporary emotion. I do not want to draw an overly perfect picture. Data has its limits. It cannot measure the heart of a young man walking into his first national final. It cannot explain why an 18-year-old player beats an opponent ten years older on a night when every shot works. But those unmeasurable moments highlight even more the value of what can be measured. The better we understand the measurable, the more we appreciate the unmeasurable. Vietnamese table tennis is at a crossroads. We can continue to rely on individual coaches’ instincts, continue to say that a loss was just luck, or we can begin to build a system of data recording and analysis. That system will not vanish when a coach retires, nor will it be distorted when a defeat makes everyone lose their temper. It will stay there, quietly recording, quietly comparing, quietly showing the path of progress. After that regional qualifier match, I walked over to the young player who was still sitting with his head in his hands. I did not comfort him with empty words. I simply said: “If you remember exactly how you lost the ninth point, write it down. If you do not remember, then you have already learned your first lesson.” He looked up at me and said nothing. But I hope that afterward, he began to take notes. Because the scoreboard only tells us who won and who lost. Raw data, if recorded properly, tells us why. When we stop asking only whether someone played well and start asking where, how, and under what conditions they played well, Vietnamese table tennis can move beyond emotional praise and criticism. That journey does not need to start at a large research institute. It can start with a small notebook on a youth coach’s desk, with a spreadsheet opened after every training session, with a simple question: was this loss technical or tactical? If we are brave enough to answer with evidence instead of emotion, the gap between Vietnamese table tennis and the region will no longer be a story written by someone else.