I find it difficult to play against a premade paddle!

[JoeZhendong]

Alright, so I need to know what I'm doing wrong!

A friend I play with uses a premade Timo Boll with Dignics05 FH and Pan Asia BH. I have no difficulty winning unless I'm just really off that day.

However, he recently switched back to his older premade paddle, which I believe is the Butterly 603 FL that has Wakaba 2.1 on FH and Wakaba 1.9 on BH. I have an incredibly tough time when playing against that. Even so when it use to be his main setup, there was a time when I just could not defeat him.

My skill level is a lot higher than his as I have a much better understanding of countering spin, footwork, attacking on both flanks, and using a variety of techniques. My play style is very much Chinese. I would consider him a pusher with loops that resemble tennis strokes. He chop pushes almost everything with BH so it comes to me as under right side spin.

Fast long serves to my backhand (left side table) is my weakness. With this Bty 603 FL he can consistently serve that. I tend to chop push it back to his BH side yet he side steps and hits a FH drive down the line. My returns tend to stay low to the net and drops at medium table with a lot of spin yet he just drives it. That's what I don't understand.

What can I do with my return to make it more effective? If his serve comes long (he does not serve short) to my forehand, should I always loop it?

How is his push so spinny with Wakaba?!

 

[NextLevel]

In the absence of a video and of a usatt/ttr rating, these descriptions tend to be incredibly subjective. Part of the reason I say that is that as someone who started playing tournament TT in 2011, it was amazing how different it felt playing the same player in 2011 vs 2015.

When playing against players with pre-made paddles, for a long time I struggled to play them because they didn't feed me topspin. If I was playing an inverted player, I would borrow their spin repeatedly until I made a mistake or they made a mistake. If I played a pips player, I knew I had to generate and fight as there was no spin to borrow. But these pre-made players looked to me like they wree doing the right strokes but my blocks went into the net so I had to just fight but without certainty on what to do.

And when playing a player with a serve that troubled me, I just couldn't figure out how not to pop it up. It looked like backspin so I always pushed it and when it popped off the table, I would try to push it on the table and hoped the opponent missed the attack. And since he didn't most of the time, I lost those matches. But I felt this was the way it was and this was the way it was going to be.

But something magical happened and then I realized why many of my advanced clubmates didnt struggle against those players. I started trying to play topspins against almost every ball and while I used to miss, I practiced changing the way I approached the ball in response to how I missed to have a better chance of making the shot. So I used rhe information from my misses to figure out how to adjust my swings. I would be lying if I said it was an easy fix or something that bore results overnight. But eventually, I stopped disconnecting from my misses completely and connected to the information within them as to what had to be on the ball for my stroke to work or fail. And since the ball doesn't lie, and I knew what the ball was doing to my stroke, I managed to adapt more returns to put balls on the table with topspin, which at the level I played usually won the point outright or got a block. Sometimes I had to learn to move etc. The main point regardless is that when one develops a framework for making and missing shots and applies it to understanding how to read and adjust to the ball, then a lot of these issues go away as you currently understand them.

That said, what I am prescribing usually requires a basically advanced level of play (TTR 1300‐1400, USATT 1600-1700). Your description makes it unclear but since I was struggling against pre-made even as a 1600 blocker until I became more like an 1800 topspin player, I can tell you that even experienced tournament players without a full framework for hitting the ball struggle with spins other than the ones they like to practice against.

 

[Migzkulit]

I concur, the tactic change here is to realise that there is inherently less spin. Early time everything, even his push chop you can forward loop as long as you time it right.

 

[zeio]

Go get yourself the same premade paddle.

 

[JoeZhendong]

In the absence of a video and of a usatt/ttr rating, these descriptions tend to be incredibly subjective. Part of the reason I say that is that as someone who started playing tournament TT in 2011, it was amazing how different ingest playing the same player in 2011 vs 2015.

When playing against players with pre-made paddles, for a long tike I struggled to play them because they didn't feed me topspin. If I was playing an inverted player, I would borrow their spin repeatedly until I made a mistake or they made a mistake. If I played a pips player, I knew I had to generate and fight as there was no spin to borrow. But these pre-made players looked to me like they wree doing the right strokes but my blocks went into the net so I had to just fight but without certainty on what to do.

And when playing a player with a serve that troubled, I just couldn't figure out how not to pop it up. It looked like backspin so I always pushed it and when it popped off the table, I would try to push it on the table and hoped the opponent missed the attack. And since he didn't most of the time, I lost those matches. But I felt this was the way it was and this was the way it was going to be.

But something magical happened and then I realized why many of my advanced clubmates didnt struggle against those players. I started trying to play topspins against almost every ball and while I used to miss, I practiced changing the way I approached the ball in response to how I missed to have a better chance of making the shot. So I used rhe information from my misses to figure out how to adjust my swings. I would be lying if I said it was an easy fix or something that bore results overnight. But eventually, I stopped disconnecting from my misses completely and connected to the information within them as to what had to be on the ball for my stroke to work or fail. And since the ball doesn't lie, and I knew what the ball was doing to my stroke, I managed to adapt more returns to put balls on the table with topspin, which at the level I played usually won the point outright or got a block. Sometimes I had to learn to move etc. The main point regardless is that when one develops a framework for making and missing shots and applies it to understanding how to read and adjust to the ball, then a lot of these issues go away as you currently understand them.

That said, what I am prescribing usually requires a basically advanced level of play (TTR 1300‐1400, USATT 1600-1700). Your description makes it unclear but since I was struggling against pre-made even as a 1600 blocker until I became more like an 1800 topspin player, I can tell you that even experienced tournament players without a full framework for hitting the ball struggle with spins other than the ones they like to practice against.

It's hard to say what my USATT rating is. I don't live in an area that has a league and the one TT Facility I had planned to enter tournaments removed TT. If I had to give myself a rough guess I would be anywhere between 1200-1500 but if I'm very consistent I can see it being up to 1600. I'm purely comparing to examples of players seen on youtube.

 

[JoeZhendong]

Go get yourself the same premade paddle.

Actually I plan to ask him next time to let me try it!

 

[Tyce]

I've had somewhat of the opposite experience. There was a guy in league with quite a high win percentage, and I noticed during the home game that he used a premade Butterfly bat.
He makes quite the movements and you'd expect to be fed heavy spin but the thing is was under the impression that it was actually effective.
I was the only person who beat him 3-0 that season. Why? Because I spun every single long ball and flicked a ton of short ones. There wasn't any heavy backspin on his pushes nor on his chops.

 

[NextLevel]

It's hard to say what my USATT rating is. I don't live in an area that has a league and the one TT Facility I had planned to enter tournaments removed TT. If I had to give myself a rough guess I would be anywhere between 1200-1500 but if I'm very consistent I can see it being up to 1600. I'm purely comparing to examples of players seen on youtube.

Rating is something you earn/estimate based on competitive results vs rated opponents, not something based on appearances (yeah, some experts may be surprised to hear that). People who haven't seen themselves on camera often overestimate how good they look (and sometimes even players who do often do the same). My main point with the rating is that as you get more advanced, you see things differently very often. Your opponent's serve might be spinny or might seem spinny but it might actually be relatively little spin and ripe to be attacked. But if you have a frame work and you play topspins, you can tell from how the ball reacts to your stroke whether you need to play more back to front or whether you need to play more upward, whether you need to add more brush or whether you to be a bit flatter with your contact. Figuring out how to put how you hit the ball into a frame work is extremely valuable for adapting to spin, it will enable you to hit balls that you have never learned formally how to hit.

 

[Gozo Zyreruna]

this rubber is not correct!