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There is a penhold player at my club (Swan TT in sunnyvale, CA), Tao Wenzhang, who also coaches. He's the real deal (2700), and regularly wins opens. There are 3 other shakehand 2700 coaches as well at the same club. I am sure none of them would tell you to switch from penhold to shakehand--that's just stupid.
at there's a coach named Tao Wenzhang. Man you're lucky... Yes I'm quite familiar with him. Your coach is basically the best penholder in the US as far as I know. Either him or Yujin. That's like saying "we have this coach named Ma Long who coaches at our club" (just kidding) maybe not to that level but yeah I know who he is. Sounds like you go to a really good club. Congrats.
Training Update
(even though I jump subjects a lot, going to try to cut down on multiple posts in a row)
So the last few weeks have been kinda a bummer for me. While I felt I was playing at an okay level, match after match I feel like the book is out to pick on my weak service return game... Namely, my BH side.
You can see my match here with USATT 2071 Daniel where that's the main takeaway from the match. Poor service return.
Furthermore, there are at least 5 times in that match where I try to over the table RPB flick unsuccessfully. Now I can do this vs what I call poor servers or easy balls. But vs quality servers? Not really. And to add on top of that, no matter how much I try, I still feel more comfortable TPB.
So in an attempt to simply cut out a weakness, I pulled my inverted form my BH side and went back to Long Pips. I use to twiddle. But then I would play too passively. So today I told myself to NOT twiddle. If it comes to my FH, I loop like I always do. But if it comes to my BH, I have options. I can either still punch or attack the serve with the TPB or if I feel uneasy with it at all, I RPB chop with the LPs. Boy did that do wonders for my game today. Suddenly my training partner, who has a good BH serve, was struggling to get as many points off errors or easy 3rd ball attacks. On top of that, with removing the indecisiveness on attacking balls "TPB or RPB?", the solution was clear. If I'm attacking, I'm TPB.
If someone serves to my BH and I decide to chop with the LPs and they 3rd ball attack? Fine. Sure that could happen. (even though I don't have to receive that ball with the LPs. I could inverted TPB) But I want to at least make someone work for it. No more giving away the point directly off of service receive.
Had some success here & there with that TPB flick more powerful shot from time to time also I posted above about earlier.
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