Benyamin Faraji 14 years old.

[Cadoia]

Question:
This kid at 14 years old called Benyamin Faraji has played really well up against the chinese top players. Is he able to compete in the future regular tournaments we all follow where our regular top 30 pro male single players compete? Or is there a age limit to this?
I mean I would love to see him up against all the European top players. If he can cause so much trouble for China I wonder what he can do in Europe.

 

[ShoutGuy]

I don't think there is an age limit. If I remember correctly, Harimoto competed in big tournaments when he was 14 too

 

[rpb23]

This kid is for real. He is just gifted in table tennis. Didn't you guys see him expertly spin the ball into the air and let it land on the top of the fist to test the ball roundness? Only a few seasoned pros like Xu Xin showed this magic trick. For a boy of his age to master the trick, he has the magic touch.

The boy is fast, smooth, with good anticipation, good power and consistent. Short game can be further improved which will come as he adds more millage to his career.

Notice how many points he scored directly by his opening forehand loops on all opponents? His opening is deep with high arc loaded with more topspin than it looks resulting opponents block or counter out of the table.

 

[NextLevel]

WJTTC is in the last week of November, let's see what happens there first before we start asking him to play adults almost exclusively.

 

[rpb23]

I don't think there is an age limit. If I remember correctly, Harimoto competed in big tournaments when he was 14 too

After his performance in Asian game, we probably will see him play against pros regularly.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

There is no age limit / requirement for WTT senior, but it is more costly to play WTT senior.
so it may also come down to budget available.

 

[blahness]

The real killer is his hook serve. It is a high toss hook serve which is one of the deadliest serves if one can master it, a bit like Par Gerell's. He is also able to switch at the last minute to a standard pendulum serve with the hook serve preparation movement. And if you dont control his serve, the FH is just waiting to unleash a super spinny loop. If opponent chiquitas or does an opening loop his BH is generally there and doesnt make much mistakes.


This is doing major damage in all his matches.

 

[SlowPower]

I see him always spinning the ball with FH. Even very high returns he wont attack with fast balls, but always spinning by hitting the ball on top.
I don't know if this is good or bad, but Lin Shidong didn't have problems with these balls...

 

[Creek]

LSD had so much problems with him that he was 3-9 down in the decider…

 

[SlowPower]

Ive seen the match, he had many problems, but not with these balls I mentioned...

 

[turbozed]

The real killer is his hook serve. It is a high toss hook serve which is one of the deadliest serves if one can master it, a bit like Par Gerell's. He is also able to switch at the last minute to a standard pendulum serve with the hook serve preparation movement. And if you dont control his serve, the FH is just waiting to unleash a super spinny loop. If opponent chiquitas or does an opening loop his BH is generally there and doesnt make much mistakes.


This is doing major damage in all his matches.

This is the serve variation path I've decided to go with so it's great to see someone do it so well. There's a ton of sideways movement on the fast hook which makes it pretty hard to square up a flick, or get in the right position. This is more disruptive when a similar setup is used for pendulum and the ball is hooking in the opposite direction.

Aside from being a wonderkid at 14 beating WR1 and nearly beating a potential future WR1, I'm watching this kid closely for his service game.

Edit: Just to add to this. He does a few interesting things with serve besides varying it between pendulum and hook. I'm watching a game versus a Kazak player where he'll show the BH racket side for pendulum serves during setup and then FH side when he's serving hook. Does this for two games consistently.

Then in 3rd game he shows the BH side which would indicate a pendulum seve is coming and then he instead serves it hook. He does this twice in the game and one at 10-9 to win the game, so he's breaking it out at crucial moments.

It's pretty clear this is a tactic and he's using it sparingly so that he can get a good effect from an opponent maybe relying on getting used to the setup instead of the contact. Anyway, pretty cool detail I missed watching his other matches.

 

[dingyibvs]

The real killer is his hook serve. It is a high toss hook serve which is one of the deadliest serves if one can master it, a bit like Par Gerell's. He is also able to switch at the last minute to a standard pendulum serve with the hook serve preparation movement. And if you dont control his serve, the FH is just waiting to unleash a super spinny loop. If opponent chiquitas or does an opening loop his BH is generally there and doesnt make much mistakes.


This is doing major damage in all his matches.

Yes, yes, yes. His high toss hook serve is by far his biggest weapon. He usually serves it long and if you're not committed early on attacking it then it's very hard to control the direction of the return, opening it up to his FH attack.

That leads to his second biggest weapon, which is his exclusively spin-based loop. For some reason (I think it's the ball) advanced shots that require you to commit before you can assess the trajectory after the bounce simply doesn't work in this tournament. Specifically, that would be the forward-leaning type of loop drive/kill or the off the bounce BH loop drive/kill. It always misses long, always. Those are shot that many top pros use to win points, and with all their training they can't help but use it on many occasions. Luckily for Faraji, these shots don't appear to be in his arsenal. He can play 100% his game while his opponent often doubts himself.

 

[blahness]

Yes, yes, yes. His high toss hook serve is by far his biggest weapon. He usually serves it long and if you're not committed early on attacking it then it's very hard to control the direction of the return, opening it up to his FH attack.

That leads to his second biggest weapon, which is his exclusively spin-based loop. For some reason (I think it's the ball) advanced shots that require you to commit before you can assess the trajectory after the bounce simply doesn't work in this tournament. Specifically, that would be the forward-leaning type of loop drive/kill or the off the bounce BH loop drive/kill. It always misses long, always. Those are shot that many top pros use to win points, and with all their training they can't help but use it on many occasions. Luckily for Faraji, these shots don't appear to be in his arsenal. He can play 100% his game while his opponent often doubts himself.

The potential weakness of that hook serve is that it often drifts long (the high toss hook serve). He needs to tighten it a lot more if he wants additional success beyond this tournament.

Against someone who is reading the spin accurately and pivoting to use FH to loop those serves with high quality, he will be in big trouble.

The FH loop is the natural counter against these tomahawk or hook serves because the natural tendency of the FH loop is to go with the sidespin of these serves. Even if it drifts long, they can't get too big of a angle to the wide BH and it is generally super safe to pivot against them. Whereas with players who don't pivot and use too much BH, this serve will do a lot of damage as the spin variation is immense and the BH natural angle is not so good at looping it. This is part of the reason why Ma Long receives Ovtcharov's serve like a boss whereas a lot of other players struggle a lot.

Currently a lot of ppl are having trouble with this long serve so they often push it or loop it passively which gives him way too many attack opportunities.

After this tournament, ppl will be really analyzing his hook serve and he won't have such good of a time going forward.

Agree on the spin-based loop - a bit reminiscent of Zhang Jike's approach to the game and imo is highly underrated in today's environment which prioritises power, speed and continuity over everything else.

 

[blahness]

This is the serve variation path I've decided to go with so it's great to see someone do it so well. There's a ton of sideways movement on the fast hook which makes it pretty hard to square up a flick, or get in the right position. This is more disruptive when a similar setup is used for pendulum and the ball is hooking in the opposite direction.

Aside from being a wonderkid at 14 beating WR1 and nearly beating a potential future WR1, I'm watching this kid closely for his service game.

Edit: Just to add to this. He does a few interesting things with serve besides varying it between pendulum and hook. I'm watching a game versus a Kazak player where he'll show the BH racket side for pendulum serves during setup and then FH side when he's serving hook. Does this for two games consistently.

Then in 3rd game he shows the BH side which would indicate a pendulum seve is coming and then he instead serves it hook. He does this twice in the game and one at 10-9 to win the game, so he's breaking it out at crucial moments.

It's pretty clear this is a tactic and he's using it sparingly so that he can get a good effect from an opponent maybe relying on getting used to the setup instead of the contact. Anyway, pretty cool detail I missed watching his other matches.

yep, i do the same thing as well and am happy to see some pros actually adopting it (all pros currently have significantly different preparation movements between hook and pendulum serve). I pretty much show the hook serve preparation stance at the start, but after my bat is hidden behind my body, I change grip to the Waldner pendulum service grip and serve FH pendulum. It can do a lot of damage because they're preparing for the hook serve system and are suddenly faced with the pendulum serve system, and then they have to suddenly adapt mentally.

 

[turbozed]

yep, i do the same thing as well and am happy to see some pros actually adopting it (all pros currently have significantly different preparation movements between hook and pendulum serve). I pretty much show the hook serve preparation stance at the start, but after my bat is hidden behind my body, I change grip to the Waldner pendulum service grip and serve FH pendulum. It can do a lot of damage because they're preparing for the hook serve system and are suddenly faced with the pendulum serve system, and then they have to suddenly adapt mentally.

Another pro that is switching a lot between pendulum and hook with the exact same setup is Miwa.

She has a hook serve that is side/top but looks a lot like her underspin pendulum. She actually won matchpoint against Batra just now with it.

Her serve motions are really compact using her body and not too much arm motion. She doesn't generate as much sidespin as Faraji but there's a lot less tell with her overall motion.

 

[Cadoia]

Does anyone know his track record against similar aged players? Some youth tournaments? He must have won some stuff already.
I started martial arts at age 9. at 14 I was still shit at things. Took until aged 17-18 before starting to win stuff.
Being this good at 14 is just not normal by any measure.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Does anyone know his track record against similar aged players? Some youth tournaments? He must have won some stuff already.
I started martial arts at age 9. at 14 I was still shit at things. Took until aged 17-18 before starting to win stuff.
Being this good at 14 is just not normal by any measure.

good player
but not top
30 something in U19 ranking
U15 he is top 3 (but not many asians play U15)

he looses to cnt b team players, but give a team a hard time

 

[rpb23]

good player
but not top
30 something in U19 ranking
U15 he is top 3 (but not many asians play U15)

he looses to cnt b team players, but give a team a hard time

That was then and this is now. Maybe the boy's game just has gone through a growth spurt recently like the puberty spurt for boys at this age.
No way you can find a boy U18 anywhere plays this good giving top 5 pros that much trouble. He might just be a table tennis genius born in Iran.

 

[piligrim]

Does anyone know his track record against similar aged players? Some youth tournaments? He must have won some stuff already.
I started martial arts at age 9. at 14 I was still shit at things. Took until aged 17-18 before starting to win stuff.
Being this good at 14 is just not normal by any measure.

Player Profile

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results.ittf.link

 

[dingyibvs]

That was then and this is now. Maybe the boy's game just has gone through a growth spurt recently like the puberty spurt for boys at this age.
No way you can find a boy U18 anywhere plays this good giving top 5 pros that much trouble. He might just be a table tennis genius born in Iran.

Maybe, but let's see what he does after this tournament first.