Do you think left-handers gain any sort of advantage, if the majority of players in a club are right handed?
Good subject. Thanks.
It's not about forehand reliance but more about the ball and spins coming from places that you are not used to on a regular basis. If you play the TTEDGE app, you will see that you will score differently for the left and right handed modes in the app. I score slower on the left handed modes.
In my opinion, what NextLevel has said in the quoted text is the biggest issue.
I have two training partners who are lefty. I have another two friends I play games and matches with who are also lefty.
One of the guys I train with who is lefty was a tennis pro. He has been playing table tennis since the 1990s and has done a lot of lessons and training with Lily Yip and her daugher Judy Hue. He doesn't really play games and matches because he is just interested in rallying and having fun. When he does mid-distance rallying with someone 2300, the 2300 player is better than him at that but not much. Yet an 1800 level player can sometimes beat him because he just does not practice serve and receive.
Anyway, his lefty hook is awesome. I remember a point when I could not handle it. I could not see or figure out quite where the ball was in space. I should qualify that statement: squaring to it with my BH I was fine, but turning open to my FH, I was lost. It really was sort of like an alternate reality thing where I saw the ball, I thought I saw where it was in space, but I could not judge where it was in space and put my racket on it while taking an actual stroke. So I would swing where I thought the ball was and I would frequently miss. Or I would put my racket out to block and not take a stroke for fear of missing.
My brain actually could not put all the pieces together. Now a right handled BH that has some sidespin is nothing compared to a lefty hook. Back then, I could deal with the righty BH with sidespin much better than the lefty hook.
But I have played with this guy soooooo much. I remember when this thing I am talking about started to go away and I started seeing where the ball actually was. I actually remember starting to be able to see the whole trajectory of the ball off his racket: the ones that would hook more and the ones that would hook less; and being able to turn open to the hook and go FH to FH, righty hook to lefty hook, my FH from my BH corner to his FH from his FH corner. It really was a brain processing issue.
Then I remember hitting with this guy De Tran after my brain had pieced my friend's lefty hook together. De Tran is a lefty. He is 2400+. He has been over 2500 a few times. Anyway, his lefty hook is super nasty. And he was looping at me and he was totally amazed that someone my level was able to counerloop his lefty hook. So I explained that it was probably that I had a training partner whose rallying skills are pretty good who has a nice lefty hook himself.
De Tran's hook has a lot more arc and spin than my tennis friend. But my tennis training partner's shot definitely has more pace. Tennis: he can really blast the ball.
One of my other training partners who is "lefty" is Mark Croitoroo. With a shoulder injury to his right arm he has been teaching himself to play lefty. His serves lefty are nasty. I get to receive serves from him a lot and work on constructing points against him. I also see how he constructs his points lefty. Before Mark was forced to stop playing righty, he was about the same level as De Tran. And he has told me he always had trouble with De Tran's lefty hook. But with Mark playing lefty, he and I are close enough to the same level, even though there are things he does that are a crazy amount better than anything I could dream of doing.
Now getting to train against these two guys a lot, makes it pretty easy for me to play the other two guys I know who are lefty. Both of them beat a lot of guys who are considerably better than me on a consistent basis. But I own both of them. And they seem completely not ready for a lot of the things I do to return their serves because I have been shown how to drop that lefty pendulum topspin short to the wide FH. And I can loop the same serve around the net when it goes off the side. They are standing waiting for a the ball to come back to the BH side to take me down the line with their FH, and I am painting their FH line.
So, I would say it is more than likely an issue of practice and familiarity.
