Go for the Flat hit or Spinny forehand?

It's always much better to go with a controlled drive with good placement instead. Placement of the ball is much more important than speed in my opinion.

It depends.
The standard guidance is to spin and loop. But many of us are more drivers/smashers and not very good at looping.
You really have to look at your own overall game to see the best path to follow in a particular situation.
Now having said that, the smash drive is usually an attempt at a point finishing stroke. So it really depends on how you set up the rally to get into that position to have the opportunity to wallop the ball.
Example;Fast low spin topspin/float serves deep. Use heavy backspin pushes as little as possible, try half-long pushes. All this is to inveigle your opponent to 'lift' the ball with slow topspin for you to whack.

Shiro said:

Sometimes when doing that, they return the ball that is maybe an 1 or 2 inches high above the net. Often, i will go for a flat hit but for some stupid reason, the ball sometimes goes out, even when my racket is closed.

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I think if the ball is low trying to flat hit the ball and make a fast shot is probably not advisable. Heavy topspin will arc the ball onto the table. So that is a much higher percentage shot.


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Also every point is unique, so we cant say do this or that it all depends. However if you say that many hits go out I would definitely just try to play more on control and placement in general. But of course if you keep training on hard low hits you will eventually get better on them too.

Guys I've been working the same issue Shiro has.

The advise I have received is that to flat hit you are to open the racket angle; not close it.

I've been putting this into practice and it has increased greatly my ability to smash with a lot of power; very rarely my balls go long.

At the beginning I thought this advise was wrong, as you normally are told to close the racket angle, however as I mentioned before this advise is working wonders.

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts.

Ps: this is my very first time posting in the forum. Cheers from Guatemala.


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mquevedof said:

Ps: this is my very first time posting in the forum. Cheers from Guatemala.

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Welcome to posting on the forum buddy. Good to hear your experience.


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Everybody above raises good points. But the simple-minded answer is most of the time you will hit it if it's high and spin it if it's low. Speed is good. Always playing at the same speed, not good.

The more complex issue is how to know which to do when it is in between? Only experience can teach you. A good coach can design all sorts of drills to help you with that.

UpSideDownCarl said:

Welcome to posting on the forum buddy. Good to hear your experience.


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Thanks for your welcome message!!!


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Baal makes a basic distinction between high and low balls. On my previous post I failed to provide the context; I was referring to high balls.

With that context in mind I should add one important element that works me to avoid off shooting the table, that is: flat hit (open angle again) almost exclusively using the waist; arm just follows.


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mquevedof said:

Baal makes a basic distinction between high and low balls. On my previous post I failed to provide the context; I was referring to high balls.

With that context in mind I should add one important element that works me to avoid off shooting the table, that is: flat hit (open angle again) almost exclusively using the waist; arm just follows.


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My coach was just working with me on this the other day. He was saying that if you get a ball that's bouncing well above the net but below your head, you can do an aggressive drive/hit, using only your torso to put pace on the ball, not your arm. (Where as if the ball is bouncing above your head (from a high lob), you smash it by coming down on the ball, using more arm).

Today playing some matches I definitely found that I was much more consistent attacking those "easy" balls when reminding myself to just my torso to hit flat through the ball.

Shiro said:

Sometimes when doing that, they return the ball that is maybe an 1 or 2 inches high above the net. Often, i will go for a flat hit but for some stupid reason, the ball sometimes goes out, even when my racket is closed.

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This is the same exact part of the OP that I quoted in my first post.

If you read it, Shiro is being pretty specific:

"....they return the ball that is maybe an 1 or 2 inches high above the net."

That is pretty low. And the question is, should he hit flat or spin.

If the ball is low and you are trying to hit hard, you should spin the heck out of the ball to give the necessary arc for it to land on the table.

Flat hitting a ball that is about net height and trying to hit it as fast as you can is a pretty high risk and low accuracy shot. Heavy spin would make the shot more likely to be accurate.

High balls are a different story. But unless by some trick of language 1-2 inches above the net is somehow supposed to refer to a high ball, then 1-2 inches above the net is 1-2 inches above the net which is actually a pretty low shot.

So, on a low shot, putting a lot of spin and arcing the ball onto the table is much safer than flat hitting with a lot of pace.


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Shiro said:

Alright, thanks for the tips guys. Like before, i used to be able to loop and flat hit and now i seem to be missing a lot. I will probably have my forehand mainly make spinny shots and only flat hit when they lob.

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Just a thought, did your problems roughly coincide with the change to poly ball?