How to become a champion

I wrote this article two years ago for my friend junior player Michael Cai for a magazine he was producing  as an art project.
I'm reproducing it here because I guess it's still relevant.

How to become a table tennis champion
I am often asked by people who know me through the sport of table tennis how it is that the sport is still dominated by two old dinosaurs (myself and Joseph Dibbs).
How is it that these two, past their prime guys have featured in the National championships finals for each of  the last four years in a row despite the presence of so many younger talented rivals?
I believe that for these players to become champions, they need to focus on not just improving their skills at the table, but indeed they need to acquire the specific skill set that it takes to not just impress in tournaments, they need to learn how to become a champion.
For many years, I too used to go to tournament after tournament happy to impress and lose close games.
Happy to come close to winning, satisfied with the many runner up and semi finals trophies. In fact; beating everybody in practice matches, ruling the tables but never winning tournaments.
Today's promising youth seem to be following this trend.
Many of them are talented, actually more talented than, Dibbs or myself ever were and so in order for them to break through the glass ceiling and since I am near the end of my competitive career, I have decided to give a few pointers to these poor sops so they can finally step out from the long shadow that covers them all.
(Motivation for my young rivals LOL)
Here are some of the key pointers that will help you to take your game to the next level and make you into the next champion.

Respect your opponent: Many of you lose to opponents who are not as flashy as you are. They do not make as many spectacular shots as you do, so you don't respect them. The problem is that they are beating you time and again because you don't realize that in table tennis all points spectacular or not, are the same. If you respected your opponent, you might learn something about the game. I know something about every player who I am going to face, I never under rate their chances I treat each opponent as a potential upsetter and I give them no chances by being careless.
Conserve your energy especially for long tournaments: Too much energy is wasted knocking up throughout tournaments with the player going flat in the later stages of the tournament no matter how fit he thinks he is. I expect to go deep in every tournament I play, so I dont waste energy which I know I will need in the finals.
Pay attention to defence; offence is easy: I discovered when I play in major championships such as the worlds or other big games, your opponents tend to be as skilled or to tell the truth, far more skilled at serve and attack than the people who we normally play in Jamaica. This means that you will often find yourself on the defensive whether you like it or not. If you do not have a decent defence, you cannot create the opportunity to counter attack and your stay will be very short indeed.
Actively practice serve and attack and receive of serve as an integral part of training; I think far too much time is spent on open play by our youngsters as this is the more enjoyable part of table tennis and certainly the part which is also pleasing to watch. When I was younger, I felt that if I could get into the open play phase with any player, even a world ranked player, I would have a chance. The trouble is, good players never allow inferior servers, or receivers to get into open play; they destroy them in the first three balls.
Learn from your defeats: If every time you lose, you learn from the defeat and approach your next training session with correcting your weaknesses for the next match, you will definitely improve and are well on the way to becoming a champion.
Become a student of the game; Watch as much table tennis as you can. There is so much information and video material available now that I often wish I were just learning the sport again. I think its easy to become world class nowadays as you can learn from watching the techniques of the very best players in the world at the click of a mouse.