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[Anders]

I came across a clip on YouTube of Matt Ritter's 2004 World Yo-Yo Contest performance.
I couldn't dig up much information on this guy aside from a smattering of clips on YouTube of his various performances.

But, man..he is excellent.  Is he still prominent in the scene?

Granted, this was 19 years ago since he was on that stage, and it's hard to gauge how old he may have been during that time.

Any ideas?

[ta0]

I believe that the last time that Matt came to a contest was in 2008 when he was a judge at worlds. He was dominant in his time, a three-time world champ. But then he got into a band, soon got married, had a child . . .
The state of the art has improved dramatically since that time. Matt did crazy tricks, but always used bearing tops. Freestyles nowadays are mostly done with fixed-tip tops.
He was around 22 at the time, so he would be about 36 now.
Few of the players of the US spintop scene at that time are still active: Mark Hayward, Chris Neff, Mike Hout, Jon Gates, myself . . .

[Anders]

I believe that the last time that Matt came to a contest was in 2008 when he was a judge at worlds. He was dominant in his time, a three-time world champ. But then he got into a band, soon got married, had a child . . .
The state of the art has improved dramatically since that time. Matt did crazy tricks, but always used bearing tops. Freestyles nowadays are mostly done with fixed-tip tops.
He was around 22 at the time, so he would be about 36 now.
Few of the players of the US spintop scene at that time are still active: Mark Hayward, Chris Neff, Mike Hout, Jon Gates, myself . . .

Why is it that most freestyles are performed with fixed-tip tops?  I think it'd be the opposite..the longer spin time of a bearing-tip top would allow for a greater number of tricks to be done in X amount of time (yes? no?)

Or is the ability to regenerate the spin of the fixed-tip top part of it?  Is it more impressive to keep the top spinning whilst performing an array of tricks?

[ta0]

Why is it that most freestyles are performed with fixed-tip tops?  I think it'd be the opposite..the longer spin time of a bearing-tip top would allow for a greater number of tricks to be done in X amount of time (yes? no?)
Or is the ability to regenerate the spin of the fixed-tip top part of it?  Is it more impressive to keep the top spinning whilst performing an array of tricks?

Good question. There was a time when the ability to regenerate itself was part of the score, but not anymore. For current advanced players, regeneration is second nature. I'm surprised myself, remembering the struggle to first learn regenerations, how now I just assume the top is going to continue spinning, no matter what I do One reason that they are used in freestyles is that you can concatenate more tricks in the same amount of time. A second reason is that there are more tricks available. Not only you can do all the tricks that involve wire walkers, but also most tricks that we used to believe that could only be done with bearing tops, now are done with fixed tip. Of course, there are still some binding tricks that can only be done with bearing tip and you still see some freestyles that have sections with bearing tops (or one-bearing tops) but many routines have none.

[the Earl of Whirl]

The last I heard, Matt was still living in Tallahassee, Florida.  He is married and finished his degree to be a nurse.  I also believe he secretly follows this forum!!!