What hand grip is better... Penhold or Shakehand?

  • Penhold

    Votes: 10 25.0%
  • Shakehand

    Votes: 15 37.5%
  • Both have same advantages and disadvantages

    Votes: 15 37.5%

  • Total voters
    40

Dan

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Liu Guoliang made a statement that he believed that pen hold players were better then shakehanded players. The Chinese National Team head coach made this statement which bought along the tournament, Shakehand vs Penhold 2011.

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Atlanta, 30 July 1996, Games of the XXVI Olympiad. Table tennis, men's doubles: Guoliang LIU of China serves during the doubles final. Credit: Getty Images/Doug Pensinger

This amazing tournament consisted of two teams. The penhold team was Olympic champions Ma Lin and Ryu Seung Min and Chinese sensation Wang Hao. The shakehand team consisted of Ma Long, Zhang Jike and Germany's Timo Boll. In the picture below you can see the two teams promoting the event.

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Photo by: CFP

So TTD members and viewers this has bought me along to ask the question. What grip do you think is better..... the shakehand or penhold grip?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the two grips. Perhaps you feel both grips equal in terms of playing.

Perhaps we can use today's players to indicate whether their grips give them an advantage over their opponents. Does Wang Hao's pen hold grip give him that advantage over Timo Boll's shakehand grip?

Who can back up Liu Guoliang's statement.

Discuss below...
 

Bai

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in most situation shakehand's backhand are more powerful then penholder. In European most players are shakhanders.
 
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look at penholder's legs and compare with shakehand's legs.. what difference!!! To play as a penholder you must have a good footwork.

Amazing observation !But timo is hiding his legs ! Zhang Jike is more back hand oriented and does not use his legs that much but does a lot of running around his forehand to take it in backhand ... and Ma Longs legs are comparable I think to the penholders ... so may be this is something we cannot generalize. But overall I guess it evens out at the top :
1. Penholders have better short games and better flips but weaker defence and weaker off the table game
2. Shakehand has more power and more variety in shot making but less guile
3. Penholders have an advantage in service spinny serves but disadvantage in switching to backhand ( eventually RPB affects the wrist of most )
.... and the list goes on ... but ultimately its not the style .. its the player and what is between the two ears .. I am sure Ma Lin would still be around if he was shake hand and like wise Waldner would still be legend if he was penhold ... just to name two extremes
 
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Zhang Jike is more back hand oriented and does not use his legs that much but does a lot of running around his forehand to take it in backhand

The angle of the photo makes it hard to see. Zhang Jike has some of the strongest legs I have seen. That is where a lot of the power in his shots comes from and he gets tons of power and spin.
 
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They should replace Ma Lin with Xu Xin to equalize the age gap difference, as well as balance out the lefty-righty ratio.
 
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I used to play with japanese penhold for years before switching to handshake grip. With jap penhold, I had to be alert on my BH side since I have to take the ball early. If the ball goes over my chest or gets too low, I have a problem going on the offence. I have to take the ball early with an offensive block every time the ball goes to my BH. Not so with the handshake that I am currently using.

Till this day, I still use my japanese penhold bat occasionally just for fun. What I love the most is the variety of serves I have using this grip, and the best part is that I can deceive my mates with my serve.

After reading a thread of different type of grips recently, I am in the midst of acquiring a pistol grip blade, and it would be interesting to see what I can create with it. I think it's the most natural way of holding a paddle.
 
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I used to play with japanese penhold for years before switching to handshake grip. With jap penhold, I had to be alert on my BH side since I have to take the ball early. If the ball goes over my chest or gets too low, I have a problem going on the offence. I have to take the ball early with an offensive block every time the ball goes to my BH. Not so with the handshake that I am currently using.

Till this day, I still use my japanese penhold bat occasionally just for fun. What I love the most is the variety of serves I have using this grip, and the best part is that I can deceive my mates with my serve.

After reading a thread of different type of grips recently, I am in the midst of acquiring a pistol grip blade, and it would be interesting to see what I can create with it. I think it's the most natural way of holding a paddle.

Thanks to alluding to my thread :D
Yeah it seems that the pistol grip is natural to human's hand anatomy.
Too bad ITTF haven't approved it and the blade is quite seldom seen in market..
 
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I'm originally Jpen, but after stopped playing for like 12~13 years, I switch to Cpen (just because for RPB fun), but still play with Jpen occasionally. And I do found that I still able to play more fluent using Jpen lol..

I sometimes does play with shakehand with my friend for fun. To me, it is far easier to use shakehand for backhand loop. But I have a real problem to attack/loop with forehand lmao

@Azlan, how about give this kind of penhold a try?

http://www.hsjsport.com.tw/product.html
 
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look at penholder's legs and compare with shakehand's legs.. what difference!!! To play as a penholder you must have a good footwork.

look at the Chinese legs and compare with European legs... The Chinese players seem to have more strenght in their legs in general :)
 
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this is such a hugely hypothetical question, and of course it ultimately depends on the player. But if I truly had to come to a conclusion, I would have to go with new age penhold. In certain situations it is weaker than the shakehand backhand, but in other situations its also better. Namely, its close to the table, or over the table flips and whatnot, create a level of spin that is really hard to match with shakehand, though Zhang Jike comes either close or matches for the most part.

But overall, table tennis, in my mind, boils down to who can control the short game well enough to maximize the times that they can attack first. I think if we were to take a hypothetical scenario, and took Ma Lin's short game control, and gave him Wang Hao's backhand, he would be as close to unstoppable as any player out there. Wang Hao doesn't match up, because his short game is quite inferior compared with Ma Lin's. But if you took a combination of the two players, that would be one unstoppable force. Wang Hao has already shown in his matches against Ma Long, that despite Ma Long being the most impressive counter looper, possibly ever, if you are able to attack first, if that attack is of high enough quality, even Ma Long has a great deal of trouble. Therefore, if you took Wang Hao's forehand and backhand power, and then gave the touch and short game mastery of Ma Lin to him, he would be able to increase his chances of being the first to attack, in which case, I don't really see anyone, shake hand or otherwise being able to compete with that.

The Chinese coaches already say that when Wang Hao plays at his top level, he has probably the greatest/highest combination of the three different areas of table tennis, speed, power, and spin. So if you add the better serves and better short game of Ma Lin, he would be able to be the first one to attack probably 65%+ of the time, and that statistic by itself would make him unstoppable.

Shakehand players are inherently worse at the shortgame, they advantages come mainly in the latter portion of a point, so if they can't get to that part, its useless. Someone who is able to hit high quality initial attacks would more often than not win the point, because its simply too hard to get back the first attack if its high enough quality, as evidenced by games between Ma Long and Wang Hao.
 
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After all Ma Lin and Wang Hao are both already talking about their retirement from CNT while ZJK is starting his second Grand Slam and Ma Long is yet to prove he is the king. To say who is the best from 2 different era is all assumption depend solely on personal preference, not fact. What is fact is that the best ZJK can beat Wang Hao, the best Wang Hao can beat Ma Long, the best Ma Long can beat ZJK and the best Ma Lin can beat Wang Hao. How can one say Wang Hao's style is weak when he keep beating 99.9999% of shakehanders around the world but only lost to 1? And what about the new world number one prince Xu Xin?

In the short history of TT in Olympics, there are 2 Korean Jpen, 2 Chinese Cpen, 2 Chinese shakehand and 1 European shakehand Gold medalist. I am sure we will see more shakehanders taking Gold in the coming years after Wang Hao and Ma Lin leave the arena and Xu Xin become the only penholder in the top ten. But so far the ratio of 4 vs 3 is nothing less than impressive considering the actual ratio of penholder vs shakehander in the world of professional TT. May be that's why LGL said penhold is better.
 
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TurboZ said:
In the short history of TT in Olympics, there are 2 Korean Jpen, 2 Chinese Cpen, 2 Chinese shakehand and 1 European shakehand Gold medalist. I am sure we will see more shakehanders taking Gold in the coming years after Wang Hao and Ma Lin leave the arena and Xu Xin become the only penholder in the top ten. But so far the ratio of 4 vs 3 is nothing less than impressive considering the actual ratio of penholder vs shakehander in the world of professional TT. May be that's why LGL said penhold is better.
in the last 8 WTTCs ( 1999 and after that ) there are 2 Chinese Cpen , 5 Chinese shakehand and 1 European shakehand champions . in 4 grand slam champions 1 is Cpen and 3 are shakehander . penholder WAS a better grip but NOW shakehand IS better grip .
 
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Penhold is harder to master which requires only 3 fingers to hold a swinging blade so it is not young player friendly. It is true that less people use penhold and even less will get to the top. Don't know about the actual figure but I don't think there are more than 10 penholders in the top 100 of world rank. If the statistic is telling the truth then any ratio larger then 1:10 for penhold winner is worth mentioning considering the much much larger population of shakehanders out there.

Again when Wang Hao keep beating every shakehanders with his penhold style except ONE in the world then all I can see is "ZJK is better than Wang Hao". But how can this translate to "shakehand is better then penhold" as a whole?

No doubt shakehand is easier to learn and get result in competition. I remember once a CNT coach (could be LGL) suggest young generation to start with shakehand style. After they get older and master all the basic skills then he can switch to penhold style if he shows the will and talent. And people with special talent is rare. May be that is the reason why LGL said penhold player, not the penhold style, is better.
 
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