The dominant hand influence on technical and tactical activity and efficiency of top table tennis players in the world

The study, aiming to determine the dominant hand influence on technical and tactical activity and efficiency of top table tennis players, analyzed the 846 sets played by 77 players, participants in the final of the Olympic tournament, during the 77 duels. Each observation has been described trough a 28 variables set. The results were submitted to descriptive, inferential and multivariate statistical analysis. In the basic player sample 28 57% were left-handed players, which was an essential aberration from the representation of left-handed people in the general population. By the Mann-Whitney test was determined significant difference between left-handed and right-handed players in 10 variables. Binary logistic regression analysis extracted a set of 9 variables that were significantly differ the left-handed from right-handed players. The obtained regression model was highly significant (Hosmer-Lemeshaw p =.8451; AUROC p <.00001; sensitivity of 62.18%, specificity 89.25%) and correctly classified 69.03% of the analyzed observations. Discriminant analysis (Mahalanobis distance to centroid p <.00001) pointed to 8 variables with significant contribution to the canonical dimension that maximized the distance between the observed groups. It was concluded that the influence of the dominant hand in a top table tennis players game is significant and in favor of left-handed players, what one should pay attention to in the selection and training process.