| Lesson 1: Stance and Grip
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| Lesson 3: The Drift
Alright, you're standing in the proper stance, and holding the mallet correctly. Your first opponent will be the most difficult: your own reflexes. The most important ability for beginners to learn is puck control. You need to be able to move the puck around on your side of the table without losing control of it. If you lose control, you're giving your opponent free opportunities to score on you and wasting scoring opportunities of your own. Take a deep breath. Relax. Now, take the mallet off the table, turn on the table, and place the puck on the table. Watch the puck.. it's not moving much, is it? Put the mallet back on the table. Relax. Let the puck move around on its own, and touch it with the mallet occasionally. The goal here is to move the puck around on your side of the table without losing control of the puck. The softer you hit the puck, the easier it will be to control. If you hit the puck hard, the odds are that you'll lose the puck or it'll score in one of the goals. Check out Figure 1. Keep practicing having the puck on your side of the table until you are able to maintain control of the puck within the gray ring shown there. Once you can handle that with ease, make the ring smaller. Eventually, you should be able to keep the puck from moving a few inches from a particular spot. Again, the key is soft touches with the mallet. Remember, the harder you hit the puck, the faster it will go, and the more likely you are to lose it. When the puck is on your side of the table all you have to concentrate on is getting the puck under control. Only after you've got the puck under control should you start thinking about taking a shot on your opponent's goal. Patience, grasshopper, that lesson is coming soon.
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