YANGZHOU, China, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- Playing table tennis with a penhold grip is never a dying art.

    Liu Guoliang, a proud defender of the Chinese traditional hitting style, is now coaching a team spearheaded by the world's top two-ranked players - Ma Lin and Wang Hao, both playing in a style which once had been branded as outdated as the wooden tennis racket, the scissor-style high jump and bowling underarm in cricket.

    Yao Zhenxu, technical chief of the International Table Tennis Federation, insists that the penhold style will never join these quaint sporting bygones.

    "It's not right to say that the penhold grip has headed for extinction," he said.

    The two styles play as their names suggest. A handshaker grips the racket as if he is shaking someone's hand and uses one side of the racket for forehands and the other for backhands.

    A traditional penholder uses only one side of the racket for both strokes and grips the racket as if holding a pen.

    The handshake style, or tennis grip, allows players to attack easily with topspin or flat shots from both sides of the table. But it leaves an opening in the middle of the table.

    The penhold grip, on the other hand, is well suited for flat forehands and defensive drop shots but is short on backhand power.

    "You can never judge which hitting style is better. It's the one who plays that style counts," said Yao during the Asian table tennis championships.

    Penhold vs. handshake is mostly about Asia against Europe.

    The handshaking Europeans dominated the world championships until the 1950s whereas the penhold grip was regarded ineffective and handshake advanced.

    The Japanese turned the table for penholders in the 1950s, clinching a lion share of world titles.

    China ruled the roost in the 1960s after sending to international competitions mostly with pendolders who played an aggressive attack-and-block game close to table.

    Europeans pulled even with Asians in the 1970s as they began to play a game mixing Chinese fasting-attacking with Japanese topspin play.

    Europeans honed their speed-and-spin play in the 1980s to snatch four world men's singles titles.

    Swedish Jan-Ove Waldner won in 1989, compatriot Jorgen Persson clinched the 1991 championship, Frenchman Jean-Philippe Gatien won in 1993, forcing these defenders of the penhold grip to improve on the style.

    At last, China produced a Liu Guoliang.

    Unlike the traditional penholders, Liu stuck rubber onto both sides of the racket and played topspin with backhand.

    With nearly perfect footwork, Liu attacked from both flanks of table. Once forced onto the defensive, he blocked, top-spun with backhands or counterattacked with forehands.

    With Liu's successes, almost all men's penholders on the Chinese national team have emulated Liu's play.

    The penhold style returned to the top of the world in the 2004 Olympic Games, where South Korean Ryu Seung Min beat Chinese Wang Hao in a clash of two penholders.