Is this blade too fast for me?

Hey MOG,

One simple and easy to implement thing you can do RIGHT NOW is to loosen up your grip (and maybe go for a tiny less force) when returning those under spin ball that are lower than net at impact...

When you got a side or topspin at net height, your natural firm grip hit is a good shot... but not vs underspin balls below the net.

Loosen up grip, let the shot go, and don't go for quite as much and you will land a lot more aggressive shots with your BH - meaning your consistency will go up and errors go down. All that will greatly contribute to a favorable score line.

Your opponent did at most a couple short chop serves, the rest were long, fast, with little spin. You on the other hand did a fair number of chop serves but there wasn't enough spin on them so he flipped them.

MOG said:

Any tips VVK1?

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He is actually not bad for a junior. Played you very freely, not worrying about making mistakes, hence the messing about with BH chop blocks, etc.

You really need to be able to shut down his flicks from your serve to prevent him from getting into a rally and dominating. He's not doing banana flicks (yet), so serving shorter, lower and with more underspin ought to result in a push. Also, try emulating Rory's pre-serve routines, switching at the last moment to pips or changing serve direction at the last moment. At our level, that is bound to result in weaker returns which you will find easier to punish.

Which leads to this - a shot he really struggled with is a flat bh punch/drive. Try finding ways to play flatter with your short pips as soon as possible. Just rolling the ball gently with BH is not enough against this kind of player. Your FH loop is better now, btw.

Watch videos of Tang Peng on YT every evening before going to sleep

He does a long chop serve, you end up pushing long it into his fh attack zone, your push with SP has little spin, so he loops strongly, etc. That's what I'll do next time we play

If you're not going to attack these long chop serves, your options are a bit limited. Try taking the ball earlier and either push into his BH or wide to his FH. He did not seem to loop on BH much or at all and if your push to his wide FH is quick enough he'd have to move right and expose his BH corner.

Yes long serves "should" always be attacked. Otherwise the server gets a too easy ball to attack.

As I see it, in this video you just posted, after the first several points of the first game, you play decently. When you loop with your BH for most of the match, there are many places where your loop has too much spin for him to return.

When you have trouble with your BH, there seem to me to be a few categories:

1) You are tentative so you push.
2) You don't move your feet but you move your racket to the ball and are taking a bad shot from out of position.
3) You rush the shot.

Often there is a combination of 2 and 3 where you are out of position and rush the shot as well.

Those shots where you are trying to hit a BH on a ball that was hit to your elbow, those are just going to be weak shots even if they go on. On those, you sort of need to commit to the BH and move to the ball. Or you need to turn to your FH on those shots at your switching point. And that is a good habit to get into.

There are also a few shots where the ball is hit to your FH and you respond to move over and take the ball with your BH while aiming down the line towards the opponent's FH. On a few of those, you move part of the way to the ball, but need one more half step and that is why you miss it.

The ones where you are reaching to the wide BH without moving your feet (there are not as many of those) you can't get your power into those either. The step would not be a big movement. But you would be helped by training the habit of moving to each ball.

Your BH has almost as much trouble handling the long pushes to the BH as the serves. It seems like you are not as prepared for that outcome as maybe you should be.

But, still, when you are in position and hit your BH, it has very nice spin.

Multiball 2 point drill where you take the BH wide and middle and go back and forth so you one-step wide and then you one-step to the middle over and over would help. Doing the same drill with the FH on the FH side would also help. Shadow drills of that would also help.

With the receive of serve, part of what is happening is that you are not moving before the serve so you are not moving when the serve comes to you. So you are caught with your feet sort of glued to the ground. There was one point where he caught you with a serve wide to your FH. I think it was a gettable serve. You just didn't move your feet till way too late.

So, when your opponent is tossing the ball for the serve, your feet should actually already be moving, not going anywhere, but not glued to the ground. I think that may be part of why you do not move to the serves.

But it does also happen sometimes in the rallies. But you can move. You just are not in the habit of moving if the ball is close enough to reach. So I have a feeling, training the moving of the feet would really help.

And doing a lot of serve return practice. Over time, those things can go away if you are trying to train the habit of moving. If you just play matches, you won't be able to work on those things the same way while trying to win points. So, it just means a certain amount of training would be really helpful to your game.

Dude, not cool, haha.

Any thoughts on trying short pips on the forehand? Just flip it over and play for a week. Nothing like a few hundred bat-cracking forehand smashes to help you reconnect with passion in the game.

I'm trying to convince myself it is not the case, but shakehand grip has a better forehand slap than penhold.

Wait. I want to just fact check. Haven't people been saying smooth would be better for you based on how you play with Short Pips? If that is the case, why would they have a different opinion when you play with smooth and play fine?

When you play with SP you play as if you are using smooth. So, here, you are using smooth the way smooth are meant to be used. And funnily enough, it seems to work out on this given day. It could be that ELS works for you to return serves. But it might be that he was not serving with heavy backspin.

What this video shows is, you didn't have too much trouble receiving this guys serves. Once you are in the rallies, you always play better with smooth rubber. But it seems, if you play with ELS for a while you will know if it is the rubber allowing you to do more of what you want in receive of serve. Keep playing with it.

Something you could do without improving all the other stuff that would up your game is serve practice and practicing different serves, varying serves, changing depth, making them lower, short, more spin, less spin. It wouldn't be bad for you to learn pendulum and hook or punch serves. Practicing serving from different parts of the table might be really good for you as well. Your serves are pretty predictable.