Country specific play style: Real or Myth?

Interesting take.

we all know that china has a very agressive style, and the current meta of 2 wing looping has made the Chinese even more of a threat.

however it’s difficult to make such a broad generalization on a whole region.

I feel like Japan has perhaps more block style players. That’s the only thing I can think of.

you could argue technical differences like Chinese forehand vs European forehand, but there are also outliers (dang qiu, kou lei, etc…) European players with a relatively Chinese way of looping.

You could then argue, equipment differences which influences the style of play (LYJ plays t05h on fh but I couldn’t have guessed that since his fh looks like someone who would play dig09c). But I think this is a broad assumption, and you wouldn’t be able to get regional differences through here.

I think TT playstyles are very vast, and a player’s personal playstyle might over rule the country’s typical playstyle. The only exception being perhaps, China.

The whole world is of Chinese coaches and practice partners.

India isn't close to top 5 in Asia, you missed out Taiwan/Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore. Europe you missed out Sweden, Romania

It is mostly the away from the table looping game - which is more european style - got to do with the general physical attributes (taller) and closer towards the table play of the Asians. I think these 2 are the biggest group of playing styles,

Gozo said:

OK OK, let's for the sake of argument, is there something like this:

Yes! That is French style for you! Or perhaps OMG! That is so so German. Or will we ever hear a commentator says something like this, " This is typical Indian style at its finest "

I mean is there such distinction?

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Chinese commenters will use European style of play - for away from table looping game.
Or individual attributes like Michael Maze, who has been lobbing since world juniors stages (a mate of mine, didn't know how to win points off Maze when he started to lob - the roof was too low in his training ground, so they never trained lobbing, ever)

Gozo said:

OK OK, let's for the sake of argument, is there something like this:

Yes! That is French style for you! Or perhaps OMG! That is so so German. Or will we ever hear a commentator says something like this, " This is typical Indian style at its finest "

I mean is there such distinction?

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I would say no.

there’s a video from a recent wtt event, where the title was X player annoys Y player with Indian style blocking.

It was essentially a boomer style of play, move the opponent around type of deal, and win the point because of it.

I don’t think that this style is exclusive to India to make it Indian, as I can guarantee you there is at least one person at a club who plays like this. There are multiple at my club. Hell, you could say Koki plays like this or waldner to a degree.

Interestingly enough, I have watched a couple subbed tt matches from Chinese commentators and they have a more insightful input as opposed to English commentators (no shade being thrown to them as they are also good).

More true for a specific coach and training group i believe.

Lula said:

More true for a specific coach and training group i believe.

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Agreed! I think quite few top European players went through Ochsenhausen and Dusseldorf (a lot of most Polish talented players end up in Ochsenhausen, so did Kanak Jha If I remember correctly).

But generally I would say that this is specific to Coaches, but Coaches have been trained by different coaches and that makes it a bit region specific. A lot of information will be shared on national competitions and provincial competitions. Everyone learning from another. Currently there is little interaction internationally on sub national playing level, and there is not so much international training interaction.

Real to a certain extent... nothing is absolute, but certain stats and selection criteria will be higher than average for some lands.

There was a lot of disparity in playing styles 10-20 years ago according to your country and it is still the case today but to a way lesser extent.
Nowadays I'd say that there are trends that are almost worldwide, like the introduction of the banana flick and the shift to a more counter based style of play brought at first by the younger generation (Mima Ito, Harimoto, Truls Moregard) and the plastic ball and followed by the older generation that moved from Tenergy to Dignics to accommodate for that style.
I'd say that China still has its own style but even among chinese top players there's a a variety of styles : Ma long's, Fan zhendong's and Xu Xin play differently.

I agree on the training group argument, Calderano and Gauzy played in the same team for several years and and they are both adept at the 2 handed backhand