Everything I write here is my relatively but not so humble opinion of course
NextLevel, Congratulations for doing so well and taking a match from Richard Dewitt. That is awesome stuff and your rating will go up decently as a result.
Thanks - I lost almost all my other matches so it's not going to really go up, but for me, that was besides the point. Trust me, when you have lost to someone like DeWitt as often as I have, one win is plenty. He hasn't lost to someone rated as low as I currently am in a while. The last time, it was one of those kids with a massive forehand that just hadn't been playing tournaments for a while - I believe the kid was about 2100 but sporting a 1900 rating. I am mid 1950 in rating but somewhere in that 1950 - 2050 range - not that underrated.
Before we all met this time Der_Echte was saying he was a level to a level and a half lower than NextLevel. The truth is, I am a level and a half lower than NextLevel and Der_Echte. We know that it is not a guess. And NextLevel and William are really at the same level. If they played 10 matches they probably would have gone 5-5. In the one match they played, 3 of the 4 game went to deuce and the first game had a score that made it look like it was from the days of 21 point games.
My friend Paul Misir, is SmashFan on MyTT. NextLevel, PingPongHolic and Der_Echte are really all about the same level. If they played each other enough matches they would be going back and forth over and over.
I really couldn't return their serves, but my problems with serve return with Der_Echte were really extreme. Anyone can look at the video and see what I Was talking about. Most of his serves went to my weak serve return spots (which are true for many people), but for me, the contrast in return quality because of the gap between my over the table backhand and my over the table forehand is larger than most.
If I struggled less, the score could be different, but serve and serve return is the real part of the game. I have been working hard on my serve game but it is nothing close to where Der_Echte's is. Smashfan's reverse serves also give me issues but his I would get better reading over time and they come long, so that for him would carry more risk if I played him in more matches.
NextLevel said: "Played a lot of great matches (lost all of them)."
That could make it sound like he did not win any matches. That is not the case. But the matches he won against me, I guess you could not call them "great" matches. Hahaha.
The first match he crushed me and the score may as well have been 3-3-3.
The next match we played later, he didn't play hard and for the first two games of the match he let me control the action and after I was up 2-0 he started forcing me to take more uncomfortable shots. Yes: he won 3-2. He is enough better than me he can spot me 2 games and win. And I don't think NextLevel is going to give too many mercy matches.
Well, it's not that straightforward and the score wasn't that bad in the first match - you got much better as the match went on. In the second, I actually didn't use my main blade, but I don't think that meant as much as that you didn't play into my patterns in the first two games of the second match and you reacted better to my main pattern in the second match. So I had to switch to a game style (push/flick, block hit with fast counters) that I usually don't play these days but which because I don't play it, I fail to realize that it is at a higher level than it was when I mainly played it.
One of the things I learned from training and playing players that train(ed) is that their speed is largely a result of your playing into their patterns and is often nothing special - put the ball in the spots where they are not expecting it and they become as slow as snails. It is a helpful tip for you because you probably don't train as much, but need to realize that whenever you face someone that does, if they are overwhelming you, it is because everything you are doing is something they have trained against properly. If you find a way of reasonably making them hesitate. or if you read the play as quickly as they do, you will play just as quickly. My inability to read spin on my opponent's serves slows me down, but I take consolation in only having played seriously for a short time (4 yrs) so there is still time and hope to develop better skills if health permits.
I did sort of make sure that NextLevel and SmashFan got to play each other and Der_Echte and PingPongHolic. I should have made Der_Echte play PPH also but I've seen those guys go at it before and I did not realize they would duck each other so I didn't bother.
Another thing to know about NextLevel: his shots are hard and fast and have a ton of spin. A high percentage of his FH loops are about a foot and a half above the table a foot before the end line and then they arc down fast and land, and KICK like a mule. He pushes the pace more than anyone else there at the club last night. He is much better than you could possibly tell from his videos. He is a really solid player. And even though he says he doesn't move much, he moves and he moves more than he may even realize.
The question is whether you are playing into a pattern or not. If you see someone play fast, you are playing into his patterns. Because you don't play a lot, your patterns are not standard and they slow some people down. But usually, I use heavy spin and pace to force lower rated players to play into my patterns and because I played as an adult and played lots of adult amateurs, I have a decent idea of what troubles most adult amateurs. For players above me and at my level, they have the weapons to slow some of that down, more so because I can't move as well as they do so certain plays that I could potentially overcome with athleticism become easy point winners for them (the difference between me and ppholic). My movement issues are subtle and footwork related and it's mostly that my knee pains and joint issues make training footwork hard pretty much impossible so I can only move on adrenaline and hope I recover relatively well the next day (doesn't help to play in a main club with concrete floors). It shows up on subtle things like refusing to back up after the serve return, getting to the wide forehand, counterlooping etc. I get better at them, but at a snail's pace compared to someone who can train them. It also makes it harder to move into position and use your feet to get power for quicker recovery. It's an either or proposition - I can't do both with my feet (but I am thinking about the problem and may find a solution some day if health permits).
One thing I saw in Der_Echte's game that I had not seen before, he took a lot of FH shots going to the BH side. He took a bunch of shots where he stepped around his BH to take the FH. And most of those were solid winners placed where the opponent wasn't going to get them.
I played everyone as well and against SmashFan, NextLevel, PingPongHolic and Der_Echte, I was not going to win any matches because I am just not at their level yet. That being said, Der_Echte and PingPongHolic can tell how much my level has changed since they last saw me in November of 2014. I am a couple of levels better than I was back then. But have a couple of levels to go to catch up to them still.
You are not as far as you think. The one thing I felt was that for the serve you had, you recovered too slowly to the wide forehand and since most hard flicks on that serve will go to the wide forehand, that is a big no-no. You may need to serve that from a more central location, or at least move to one unless you want to be using crossover footwork. The reason most players will put it to your backhand initially is that they don't fear your backhand attack (not you per se, but in general), but do realize that if someone tests your forehand and finds it lacking, you may have a long day with that serve. But since you serve mostly one serve, you have reduced the learning curve and all you have to do is be well prepared for the main responses and the spins your opponent can create. I had a similar background since I served mostly backhand coming up and I still do if I don't want to deal with being out of position on the third ball.
Your forehand is non-standard, but similar to that of some high level players, especially lefties. I would just make the finishing position more consistent when hitting practice loops so that it calibrates better and gets better faster. You have excellent touch on the backhand, but the technique could be more aggressive.
Now, 42andbackpains says he is rated 1421 and the USATT rating page supports this assertion. However, he is a much better player than the rating he says he has. I am not sure how he got that. But I suspect he sandbagged to be able to enter under 1500 and win.
We played a match and, yeah, I did win and yeah, I did win 3-0 but he was pretty close in all the games. And I played a high school kid later whose rating was 1779 and I had way less trouble against the high school kid than I did against 42andbackpains.
Against the high school kid, after winning the first two games at 5, the last game I was doing my best to let the kid get points and was going to let him win the game but he did something that pissed me off when he was up 9-7 so I decided to take the match then and there and won 11-9 in the 3rd game.
So I think, if 42andbackpains played a few more tournaments, it would be a matter of time till his rating was over 1600 maybe even over 1700. His technique is definitely solid. But it seems he is just coming back after a long layoff from play. And I can tell from his strokes that he used to be a much higher level player than he is now.
I have spoke to 42abps and of course, as a family man, his time is more restricted. But he tries to play in a sense like I do now, but he doesn't realize that you don't play that way by starting that way, especially if you don't train a lot - you build up to it with slower, heavier spin strokes and training, but more the slower strokes - the slower strokes create a game style that is much easier to support even when you don't train every day. Then over time add pace and then go up and down the range of pace and spin looking for your ideal sweet spot, but building the diversity because different opponents struggle with different things. Then you play mostly at your sweetspot, but vary it to annoy the opponent.
But anyone who starts out hitting the ball fast and only doing so will find it difficult to master the spin based game because many shots you get are really set up shots on tricky balls, and hard shots can only be played on easy balls (of course, easy is relative to level). If you cannot spin the tricky ball, you will struggle to get the chance to drive the easy ball. But there are many ways to get the easy ball and over time, you can get more consistent with harder shots on tricky balls. But not by driving them in the beginning. That's the road to nowhere. If you try to drive every ball, you will
never beat Rich DeWitt and his kind because they mix up the ball too well for you to tell whether they have spun the ball or not so you have to limit their options. The key is to mostly keep the ball in play and wait for the right ball to attack hard, or to spin the ball heavy in a way that limits their options so you can read the next ball more easily. Against other attackers, this is usually easy and based on your serve, but against defenders and counterattackers like DeWitt, you need to work harder at setting him up and getting a ball you can read.
All in all, we had so much fun that Der_Echte, PingPongHolic and I had to do it again for a few hours today.
Der_Echte already said something about that. I will say just a bit more. It was just a bit unfortunate for Der_Echte and PingPongHolic that on Sunday nights Spin NYC pulls down a few projector screens and plays music videos from Broadway Musicals way to loud for real table tennis play. If you were a sociologist watching odd behavioral traits in NYC hipsters, this would have been a great location for doing research. But loud weirdos singing loudly and badly with a crowd of happy young men avidly focused as they stare at the screen for the likes of Bette Midler is not exactly my cup of tea and I am not sure it goes so well with hearing the contact and the bounce of the ball to have your eardrums bombarded by that kind of assault.
Even still, we had a blast and a great dinner in NYC's Chinatown. Where we got to talk about getting more kids involved in playing the sport as one of the sanest options for growing the sport.
This weekend was awesome. We have to do it again. We can get more people from MYTT and here if we do it at an NJ club with a train station.
