Short game practise drills

[homer_123]

Hi all,

Looking for some really good short game drills or suggested practise to improve my short game.

Any and all advice welcomed.

Homer.

 

[WiWa]

Maybe it is good to imply short game pieces in ur normal drills. For example if u are practising loops u can start the rally with a short push, so that u will practise to recover from playing short as well. What u can do as well is when u get multiball sessions let the feeder play a random ball short every now and then, so u practise ur response to that. Since most of the short playing u will do will be from service/receive, you are never sure if the ball will come short. That makes it good to train them irregularly implied in another drill I think.

 

[homer_123]

Maybe it is good to imply short game pieces in ur normal drills. For example if u are practising loops u can start the rally with a short push, so that u will practise to recover from playing short as well. What u can do as well is when u get multiball sessions let the feeder play a random ball short every now and then, so u practise ur response to that. Since most of the short playing u will do will be from service/receive, you are never sure if the ball will come short. That makes it good to train them irregularly implied in another drill I think.

Thanks WiMa - I like that idea - will look to implement a little more randomness in the drills.

 

[Dan]

Nice thread!

Good point from WiWa, you should always implement short game practice into your regular exercises as this makes your training match specific!

I do a lot of short game training with Gavin Rumgay and heres some good exercises we do. We play a game up to 11, where we can only touch short... if we think the ball is coming long you have to spin the first ball on the table. If you spin the ball onto the table you get 3 points. If you miss this first spin up your opponent gets 1 point. If push goes into net then your opponent gets 1 point. So you can see how you can make things competitive even in training.

Other short game exercises can be just literally practice touching short for 10 minutes a session. Try and move your body early into the table and touch the ball with a little bit of backspin. Try not to have an outstretched arm when doing the touch shot. Its important to have it bent with your head quite close to the raquet (gives more control) .

---Interesting tip---

Try aiming for the top of the net when your receiving short in practice. You will notice you will keep the ball low. Play a game up to 11 points. First player to hit the top of the net and onto the table 11 times wins Its good fun and you will see the control you will get as you have to contact the ball early to keep the ball that low. (Just do this in a fun situation,, don't play a match and aim for the top of the net ,,, this is just for control practice and experimenting)

Other exercises can be getting your team mates to serve against you and you try to receive short. Alternatively do multi ball drills where one ball is short then next ball is long.

Here to help Homer!

Dan

 

[Mr. RicharD]

What Dan and Wiwa have said are great drills to practice. I'd suggest practicing service returns as well to aggressively start the point. So ask a partner to serve short dead or light underspin balls so you can start to see which are the best balls to flick and/or loop. Then ask your partner to throw in some random heavy underspin balls so you can read it more like a game.

The best way to drill is multiball short underspins and just splitting the table into a 3x3 grid. Aim for each spot 10 times each and then switch multiballing.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Serve and receive drills are great for what you are looking for as well. One person serves, the other person receives and then you play out the point but you are not counting. There are any number of ways to set this up. The first person can be serving to a particular spot and the second person can be attacking the serve (as RicharD suggested), the second person can be pushing to a particular area. If the return is pushed the first person can be working to attack the third ball with the forehand or the backhand, but the third ball could also be pushed back. Serve and receive drills can be random as though you were playing a match and each player is trying to do what will give them the best advantage. The only difference between this and a match is that you are not counting the points for this. Or, serve and receive drills can be specific like:

1) 1st person serves short underspin to backhand.
2) 2nd person pushes short to forehand.
3) 1st person pushes long to middle.
4) 2nd person pushes long to middle.
5) 1st person uses footwork to attack with forehand.
Then play out point.

There are an unlimited number of ways of varying these kinds of drills. After one person is the server for a certain amount of times (2 serves, 10 serves, a whole bucket), then you switch who serves.

 

[homer_123]

Hey all,

Thanks, I've taken a few days off training due to family commitments back on track as of tomorrow. Got matches on Thursday and Friday this week - so will be utilising some of the above - will advise how it goes.

Cheers Homer.