Slovak table tennis player Wong Yang was disqualified at the WTT United States Smash on July 5th, 2025 due to damaging the table after striking it with his racket hand. The umpire had previously called a fault on his serve for not throwing the ball high enough as required by the rules.

16 Comments

  1. If this serve constitutes a violation(height less then 16cm), then Wang Chuqin’s serves are in even more serious breach of the rules. Strict enforcement is essential.

  2. He should be punished for destroying the table. However, the false serve call by the umpire is definitely controversial. It’s frustrating to deal with that kind of distraction, especially in a deciding match where focus is everything. His toss looked fine — around head height (20–23 cm) — and he wasn’t hiding the serve or doing any extreme, angled tosses like Wang Chuqin or Lin Shidong with their hook serves, which often go unnoticed. The real issue is that the rules for a legal serve are too vague, and enforcement depends entirely on the umpire’s perception, which can vary depending on how strict or sensitive they are. If technology can be used to judge whether a ball clips the line or not, then surely we can implement something like a camera system to objectively measure toss height and serving legality — just like how line calls are handled with precision in other sports. In tennis, they use technology to judge whether a ball lands in or out, even down to millimeters. Why can't table tennis adopt a similar system — cameras or sensors that measure toss height and serve legality objectively? It would remove so much of the inconsistency and make things fairer for the players.

  3. This serve looks good to me. However, we have to assume the umpire is innocent unless there has been a history between Wang and the umpire. Mistakes are possible for human beings and technology may come to the help. Video challenging should be allowed.

  4. Illegal sevres are perfectly fine, it's a distinguishing feature in table tennis. Add to that another distinguishing feature, Idiotic umpires.

  5. I can understand that viewing the serve in real time without the benefit of slow motion that the umpire might have a hard time seeing whether the ball is being tossed high enough. I think he/she should err on the side of it being legal.

  6. My opinion is the same as the umpire. Yang lifts his hand before throwing the ball so even though his hand is high, since the ball didn't leave his hand the height isn't enough

  7. imagine you spent a lifetime practicing and you are here trying to follow your dreams. then this idiot umpire calls you for a perfect serve toss, COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND getting pissed. That toss was closer to 12 inches than to 6 inches. What they didn't explain, it seems like this might have been the SECOND or THIRD time the idiot umpire made this call in the match, bc Yang was triggered as though this was the second or third time

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