Ma Long serve analysis vs Tomokazu Harimoto

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Hey guys,

For those of you who haven't seen the new technology via the ITTF we are now able to see the serving ball placement of players, similar to that you find in tennis. In the image you can see Ma Long's service placement during the 5th set against Tomokazu Harimoto at the recent China Open. 100% of Ma Long's serves went short into Harimoto's forehand.

serveplacementmalong.jpg


It looks like Ma Long has found the tactic or placement that works against Harimoto's style. Thoughts?
 
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Not only his serves. ML played most of his returns to same place and usually got back a short push to his forehand. Mostly avoided backhand to backhand exchanges and made it a question of who had the better forehand. Not sure many other players could get away with this tactic because it may depend on HT being hesitant to banana flick aggressively against ML. On the other hand Samsonov (the first players I recall using this against HT) made it work pretty well although he didn't win the match.
 
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It's an arms race, you have to wait and see what Harimoto develops as the response. That said, Fan Zhendong has a gap in that area of the table as well and it hasn't really gone. So does Dima.

Yes agree totally. Ma Long's placement is extreme. He alters his power to put the ball shorter or longer. He often aims for the white lines on the side. Fan Zhengdong still lacks the skills in this area.
 
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I think he wants to remove Harimotos Backhand flick. But can 100 % really be correct?
 
says Shoo...nothing to see here. - zeio
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Not something the stats didn't already show. Anyone wants to insist players serve long to suppress the chiquita now?
 
says Shoo...nothing to see here. - zeio
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Serving to short FH is nothing new, going back to at least the 2000s.

There's even a name for that zone in Chinese.
 
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Serving to short FH is nothing new, going back to at least the 2000s.

There's even a name for that zone in Chinese.

Yes, it is the preferred serving point in high level men's table tennis, more so since the backhand over the table was developed and made it easy to attack anything to the backhand. The forehand flick and forehand short push are difficult technical strokes and even when mastered are usually easier to deal with than over the table backhand loops at the lower levels though the plastic ball has complicated things a little.
 
says Shoo...nothing to see here. - zeio
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The forehand flick and forehand short push are difficult technical strokes and even when mastered are usually easier to deal with than over the table backhand loops at the lower levels though the plastic ball has complicated things a little.

Xu Xin and Ovtcharov raising their hands.

The former didn't know how to flick. WJP noticed that when he started coaching him. As for the latter...

ovtcharov-600.jpg
 
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