The Blank Notebook and the Uncounted Table Tennis Players

On an April morning, the Lạch Tray arena still smelled of fresh paint. I sat in the third row, opened my worn leather notebook, and realised I had nothing to write. In front of me, two U15 players from Hải Phòng and Đà Nẵng were locked in a match whose electronic scoreboard carried no full names, no set-by-set score, not even rally time. The organisers recorded the final result on an A4 sheet placed on the referee's table. No cameras. No one counting rallies.

I once read a technical report on table tennis in which every data field was blank: no player, no tournament, no head-to-head, no ranking. Back then I thought it was a transmission error. Sitting here now, I understand it was not an error. It is the true portrait of Vietnamese table tennis — a sport where everything lives inside the coach's head, and nowhere else.

The topsoil has been trampled by cleats, but what we need still lies undisturbed beneath it.

A sport without memory

Vietnamese table tennis has a history. We once had Trần Tuấn Quỳnh, who entered the world's top 300. We have names that brought home SEA Games medals across many editions. But if you ask me: "How did Trần Tuấn Quỳnh play in 2026 compared with 2026?" — I have no answer. No one does.

In Japan, the national table tennis federation archives every rally played by young athletes from primary school onward. They track spin rate, placement, and win rate by serve type. China keeps an analysis team that records every national-team match, including internal friendlies. South Korea runs a data centre dedicated to national tactics.

What does Vietnam have? We have good coaches, men and women who hold thousands of matches in their heads. But personal memory cannot replace a system. When the teacher retires, the data leaves with him.

I have followed Vietnamese table tennis for more than forty years. I have sat in arenas from Phan Đình Phùng to Hải Dương, from Pleiku to Bắc Ninh. Everywhere, I see the same scene: a notebook, a pen, and whatever people happen to remember.

The numbers no one records

With a data system, we would know things that seem simple.

How many topspin serves an U15 player delivers per set, and the win rate of that serve. The forehand loop speed in revolutions per minute, compared with the age-group benchmark. The head-to-head win percentage against each rival in the national top group. How long the wrist injury took to heal, and how performance shifted afterwards.

Without that system, we judge talent by feel. And feel is shaped by many things: who the coach is, whether the family has money, whether the child is obedient, and sometimes — only sometimes — whether the child is genuinely good.

I remember one case. In 2026, I attended a youth tournament in central Vietnam. There was a thirteen-year-old boy from Quảng Nam with a very unusual backhand. He won the title, but no one recorded how he won it. Two years later I asked after him; he had quit table tennis to help his family. No one knew he had ever won. He vanished from the history of this sport as if he had never existed.

There are generations not measured by trophies, but by what they dig out of the ashes. But to dig, you need to know where you are digging.

A match no one can rewatch

I once wanted to rewatch a national youth final. I could not. No footage, no score sheet, only the memory of some thirty people in the hall. Of those, perhaps five still recall the exact set scores. The other twenty-five, after a few years, will remember wrongly.

This is what I want to say to anyone thinking of investing in Vietnamese table tennis: start by recording. No complex system is needed. Just one person, one computer, and a habit of note-taking. From there, everything else can be built.

When the rankings say nothing

World table tennis ranking and points systems operate relatively clearly at professional level. But at youth level, in domestic tournaments, we have almost nothing. A national youth championship can gather hundreds of players, yet no one compiles: who improved fastest over two years, which age cohort is rising, which province is producing the most talent.

In China, analysts measure age-group depth — the number of young players capable of replacing the senior generation within three to five years. In Vietnam, we do not even know how many genuinely promising players exist in the current U15 cohort. We discover them at twenty, or when they have already quit.

An industry that cannot be measured

Behind every player is an ecosystem. Blade, rubber, and table manufacturers. Private training centres, clubs, and amateur tournaments. Media, sponsorship, and small investors.

In large markets, the value of this whole ecosystem is measured. People know how much a young player's commercial value rises after winning a national title, how many sponsors are drawn in. In Vietnam, we cannot even measure rubber consumption in a single year.

This shortfall reaches all the way down. What does a child need to play table tennis seriously? A suitable blade, a coach, a training hall, opponents. If no one measures that demand, no one invests. And if no one invests, the demand withers by itself.

The rivalry context: the gap is not only at the table

When Vietnam's national team meets China, Japan, or South Korea, the gap is visible at the table. But the real gap lies behind the table — in meeting rooms, on computers, in the data files one side has and the other does not.

Our rivals know every weakness of every Vietnamese player. They know who serves short well but loops poorly from distance, who is strong in the first set but fades in the fifth. What do we know about them? We know what the media has reported, and what a coach managed to jot down during one match.

This is not about winning or losing a single match. It is about preparing for the next ten years.

The teacher and the memory

In Vietnam, table tennis coaches are usually former players. They carry a treasury of experience accumulated over years of competition. But that treasury exists only as long as they stand on court. When they leave, it disappears.

In strong table tennis nations, experience is converted into curricula, into data, into a coaching-education system. In Vietnam, it is converted into word-of-mouth, into conversations over tea, into scattered advice.

This does not mean Vietnamese coaches are inferior. On the contrary, many of them achieve more with fewer resources. But a system cannot depend on exceptional individuals. A system must depend on structure.

A counterintuitive view: data saves no one

I have to say this, even though it contradicts what I wrote above: data is not the cause, but the symptom.

If tomorrow the sports authorities decided to fund a national table tennis data system, and the day after that system worked perfectly, I do not believe Vietnamese table tennis would automatically get better. Because the bigger problem lies elsewhere: too few tournaments, too few quality coaches, poor training conditions in disadvantaged provinces, and no career path for a young player after graduation.

Data is only useful when someone uses it to make decisions. A data system nobody reads is as meaningless as a notebook nobody writes in. We can buy software, hire experts, install cameras — but if no one genuinely wants to look at what the data says, it is all formality.

I have seen this in other sports. People build systems, hold conferences, then leave them. A few years later, the system is obsolete, the data stale, and no one remembers the login password.

So the question is not whether we have data. The question is whether we are ready for data to change how we see a young player. Even when data contradicts a coach's intuition. Even when data says the boy everyone loves does not truly have potential. Even when data says a player from a distant province, whose name no one knows, is improving faster than everyone else.

What I found at fifty-six

I found myself at nineteen in a ball boy on a side pitch. But in table tennis, no ball boy gets his name recorded. There was one boy, twelve years old, who collected balls at a youth tournament in Hải Phòng for a whole week. He collected very fast, very precisely, and always watched the player's hand before the ball dropped. I asked if he played. He said yes, but no one taught him. No one wrote his name on the player list. He was simply there, collecting balls, learning with his eyes.

With a system, perhaps he would have been recorded. Not to become a champion, but so that at least someone would know he once existed, once had a notable backhand, once had a chance.

An empty stand exposes the cracks that the years have plastered over. A tournament with no spectators, no data, no one remembering — that is the largest crack of all.

What remains

Vietnamese table tennis does not lack talent. We lack memory. And a sport without memory cannot learn, cannot correct itself, cannot progress sustainably.

Do not ask who a young player is; ask what he will fossilise into. The answer depends on whether we are willing to dig the topsoil — the layer that time, indifference, and old habits have trampled flat.

Dreams do not leave; they settle into sediment, waiting for another rain. But before the rain comes, someone must remember that the ground once held a seed.