Don’t have time to properly comment as I’m just about to go to a tournament.
But..... I can see one clear advantage for Sergey.......
He blends in so well with the walls, that I imagine it’s like playing a floating head and arms
Scoobie often wears a white shirt as he comes to the club directly from work. His shirt wasn't really an issue for me in this or other matches so much.
As NL said, he gets my serves back with quality. If I serve long, 80% of the time he successfully lands an attack. I win maybe 10-20% of that, so he has 60-70% winning percentage on my long serves. No good for me except for that occasional long serve to keep the other serves having a chance of effectiveness. If my serve is high or sloppy, he will punish it like players his class can.
Since I serve mostly short, he either bumps short (70%), puts into net (10%), or flips (20%). That forces me to strategically develop how to continue without giving away the point.
On the short bump, he doesn't pop it up, unless I give him a dead serve to his FH. I never really had a step in FH hit over the table. I do now, it is improving, and it needs to improve more in quality and consistency.
If he bumps it to my BH short, it is usually very low and close to net, not so high percentage for me to flip kill. So I try to bump short to his BH, if I can do that without misreading a dead ball and pop it up, I manage to keep it low enough where he steps in an pushes deep and extreme heavy under. I love that ball a lot and can initiate offense well.
If he flips, it is usually to my wide FH. If I am surprised, it is by me. If I am not surprised, I can get to it and make a loop... not a killer loop, but a light to medium spin loop low to his middle or BH. He doesn't BH punch those well, so I get another crack at offense. However, he is such a great rally player and covers so much ground, I need to make several attacks to get a better crack at a better chance... and often I do not read the depth of his ball on those, so I lose more of my chances than I convert, except on a real good day.
He serves mostly light (sometimes medium spin), but has every variation you can think of from BH and FH. You can still mis-read and get punished. Most of his serves are short, but he serves half long 10-15%, I have to be ready to punish those, and I do on good days, don't on other days. My BH flip vs his short serve has improved the most of any aspect. Sometimes he gives me enough angle to get it by him, 90% of the time he cross-over steps and gets it back. His touch is so good and difficult to read, one is right to be reluctant to attack that return strongly... it is an invitation to lose the point right away. I make another BH loop to his FH or FH/Middle area and look to step around for a FH chance. He gets those down the line fast BH too... I have to be ready to go back quick to his FH.
Rallying with Sergey is tough. His touch is real good and he gets most everything back in a way that is difficult to high percentage power away.
Despite the usual losing result, playing matches vs Sergey is helping me develop a LOT of my fundamental flaws I need to grow for strategic goals. What I need to grow is not developed enough to apply successfully vs all my opponents at my current level, but it is going to crack even or above very soon (like within a year) and that part will fuel improvement in my playing level for some time.
I look like a sorry bag of doo-doo vs Sergey and a player 2 or 2.5 levels better will often do that. Heck, I make some players just one level below mine look like they are in diapers. That is what better players do in TT.