Short Pips Forehand Weaknesses

[TenPercentWinRate]

Is there any way to mitigate the lack of effective defence in short pips forehand? Since it’s very easy to lose points when opponents play an aggressive and high quality shot to the forehand (at least from observations of my gameplay and pros as well).

The only exception was for Falck in R64 of Europe Smash last year, where first backed away from the table, and made mid distance flat hits and under the table loops against Franziska. Absolutely insane.

 

[MOJOJOJO-74]

Is there any way to mitigate the lack of effective defence in short pips forehand? Since it’s very easy to lose points when opponents play an aggressive and high quality shot to the forehand (at least from observations of my gameplay and pros as well).

The only exception was for Falck in R64 of Europe Smash last year, where first backed away from the table, and made mid distance flat hits and under the table loops against Franziska. Absolutely insane.

Either a) Don't let them back you away from the table, b) practice with your short pips against more aggressive players, or c) Twiddle to use inverted side so you take away that weakness of the short pips

 

[TenPercentWinRate]

Is the best solution just to be more aggressive?

 

[allencorn]

Watch some Jonny Huang videos. Not much weakness on forehand, though he didn’t defend much with it. Placement and quickness at the table are key.

 

[MOJOJOJO-74]

Is the best solution just to be more aggressive?

Well if you get pushed back, you can always chop, but being aggressive with short pips is fun but difficult.

 

[kase]

It's tough to chop with fast thick offensive short pips. Don't move away from the table. You need to be able to handle aggressive attacks to your (I assume) backhand inverted, close to the table. If you can't or don't want to, maybe switch to penhold short pips so you can use the pips on both sides like He Zhi Wen.

 

[J-fed]

It's tough to chop with fast thick offensive short pips. Don't move away from the table. You need to be able to handle aggressive attacks to your (I assume) backhand inverted, close to the table. If you can't or don't want to, maybe switch to penhold short pips so you can use the pips on both sides like He Zhi Wen.

I’m more a fan of small diameter short pips. Seems you can do more with them, including chopping. SP on the FH though is is as mentioned quite difficult. Not sure I see many people benefiting from them. So many misses. Sure it’s horrible to deal with those flat drives but I see so many long misses even from Falck that I’m not sure it’s worth it in the way that LP is on the BH.

 

[TenPercentWinRate]

It's tough to chop with fast thick offensive short pips. Don't move away from the table. You need to be able to handle aggressive attacks to your (I assume) backhand inverted, close to the table. If you can't or don't want to, maybe switch to penhold short pips so you can use the pips on both sides like He Zhi Wen.

To clarify, I do play penhold short pips.

The problem is that once forced into a defensive position, it’s impossible to cover the wide forehand side with TPB, which opponents will exploit (or maybe just so happen to direct it there).

Forehand blocking isn’t really easy either, especially without sufficient room. Falck does it, but at the price of backing off the table, which is basically giving up the point.

 

[Takkyu_wa_inochi]

play the high risk game and always attack first to win quickly the point - that needs to be your style

 

[blahness]

I never saw good FH sp attackers ever retreat from the table... either they land a vicious counterattack or block or they miss. You gotta be fast and have no fear lol

 

[TenPercentWinRate]

In an event that the opponent gets an upper hand in the point, is it ideal to execute an all or nothing, rather than blocking with SP?

 

[blahness]

In an event that the opponent gets an upper hand in the point, is it ideal to execute an all or nothing, rather than blocking with SP?

It should be by default a FH counter with a forward bend to get the eyes quite near the ball. You can see a lot of SP penholders like to do that for eg He Zhiwen, Liu Guoliang, etc...