Just curious how many Penholders are on TTD?

[suds79]

Looking for lefty penhold players to reference.


This might not matter to most of you here but I find the dynamics of a TT matchup vary so much from a lefty vs a righty compared to a righty vs righty.


For that reason, while I like watching players like Xue Fei play (amazing BH), I feel it's hard to take away much of his game. His setup points simply vary so much because he's right handed. One could disagree with me a lot or not here but that's not really my point.


Are there any dual inverted penholders outside of Xu Xin that I don't know about? Honestly outside of him and Xu Wenliang, I don't know of any.


They don't have to be super top 100 pros. Just some good players who i can find on youtube to reference. Preferably more modern style of players. ie - ones who use RPB. Thanks to anybody who has some ideas or names.

 

[yoass]

Looking for lefty penhold players to reference.


This might not matter to most of you here but I find the dynamics of a TT matchup vary so much from a lefty vs a righty compared to a righty vs righty.


For that reason, while I like watching players like Xue Fei play (amazing BH), I feel it's hard to take away much of his game. His setup points simply vary so much because he's right handed. One could disagree with me a lot or not here but that's not really my point.


Are there any dual inverted penholders outside of Xu Xin that I don't know about? Honestly outside of him and Xu Wenliang, I don't know of any.


They don't have to be super top 100 pros. Just some good players who i can find on youtube to reference. Preferably more modern style of players. ie - ones who use RPB. Thanks to anybody who has some ideas or names.

Zoran Kalinic?

 

[suds79]

Zoran Kalinic?

lol Holy Green Giant that guy is freaking tall.

He's a good example of how I think taller penholders might have the TPB feel more natural as the RPB is easier to contact around mid section to chest height. That guy couldn't get low enough if he tried.

Thanks for lookin out. Keep the suggestions coming.

 

[suds79]

Again this topic probably only applies to the few who are penholders and actually left handed but i'll take thoughts from righties also. I know songdavid is a lefty. Maybe he'll see this.

One part of my game that i'm trying to work on is service receive. Being a lefty, I'm wanting to use RPB more and do in off the table power shots but I'm having a hard time shaking how natural the TPB block feels to me when close to the table. Last week in service receive (something I'm working on) I played very far to the right of the table making it easy to return all long serves with my FH. Even down the line serves I was stepping around an looping if they were long. This was nice and worked pretty well but I feel it's risky. I am able to get wide serves but if I'm facing a really good server with a wide curing righty pendulum serve? probably not. (basically pucture what He Zhi Wen does to people but that being done to me).

I'll have to play more middle. (basically where Xu Xin is standing in the gif below. Last sunday I was standing even further to the right. More so where the kid in the video likes to stand posted below) I don't particularly like down the line serves. I want to RPB flip them but it's just not my strength at this time.

Maybe it's in my head. Maybe it's something about the angle (I don't see Xu Xin flip many down the line serves). He usually saves his RPB when he cheats over a whole bunch to go for one. ex: see gif.

But in my quest to find more lefty inverted penholders to mimic, I found this kid. He looks pretty good. His name is 張彥陶 if you want to do a youtube search on him.

I particularly like how he receives this short backspin serve with a nice direction TPB push. This is a pretty easy shot so maybe I just shouldn't be afraid to use it more. He gets the advantage here with placement.

Check this kids return at 0:33 seconds in the video.

There is an oldschool penholder at our club who is pretty good and uses TPB only. If you serve backspin to his BH, he will simply lift/punch that ball with a solid TPB and he's into the rally which he likes. I don't know. Maybe that's an option on attacking balls..... Or it could just be I need to get use to RPB down the line serves from righties. They're usually some form of pendulum serve so with my lefty RPB stroke, I will be biting into the spin (ie - going against it. not going with it like a righting would be returning the same serve with his BH flip) and just have to develop that soft feel. if you hit it too thick, it's easy to kick that ball long.

 

[songdavid98]

Again this topic probably only applies to the few who are penholders and actually left handed but i'll take thoughts from righties also. I know songdavid is a lefty. Maybe he'll see this.

One part of my game that i'm trying to work on is service receive. Being a lefty, I'm wanting to use RPB more and do in off the table power shots but I'm having a hard time shaking how natural the TPB block feels to me when close to the table. Last week in service receive (something I'm working on) I played very far to the right of the table making it easy to return all long serves with my FH. Even down the line serves I was stepping around an looping if they were long. This was nice and worked pretty well but I feel it's risky. I am able to get wide serves but if I'm facing a really good server with a wide curing righty pendulum serve? probably not. (basically pucture what He Zhi Wen does to people but that being done to me).

I'll have to play more middle. (basically where Xu Xin is standing in the gif below. Last sunday I was standing even further to the right. More so where the kid in the video likes to stand posted below) I don't particularly like down the line serves. I want to RPB flip them but it's just not my strength at this time.

Maybe it's in my head. Maybe it's something about the angle (I don't see Xu Xin flip many down the line serves). He usually saves his RPB when he cheats over a whole bunch to go for one. ex: see gif.

But in my quest to find more lefty inverted penholders to mimic, I found this kid. He looks pretty good. His name is 張彥陶 if you want to do a youtube search on him.

I particularly like how he receives this short backspin serve with a nice direction TPB push. This is a pretty easy shot so maybe I just shouldn't be afraid to use it more. He gets the advantage here with placement.

Check this kids return at 0:33 seconds in the video.

There is an oldschool penholder at our club who is pretty good and uses TPB only. If you serve backspin to his BH, he will simply lift/punch that ball with a solid TPB and he's into the rally which he likes. I don't know. Maybe that's an option on attacking balls..... Or it could just be I need to get use to RPB down the line serves from righties. They're usually some form of pendulum serve so with my lefty RPB stroke, I will be biting into the spin (ie - going against it. not going with it like a righting would be returning the same serve with his BH flip) and just have to develop that soft feel. if you hit it too thick, it's easy to kick that ball long.

It will really depend on your opponent. If you are playing at high levels, you will find yourself forced to use backhand flips more to receive serves, since your forehand is much more restricted when it comes to short balls.

It's not that looping down the line serves with your forehand is bad, it's just that handling serves with your backhand is something players need to work on.

Forehand looping long serves is a great punish. Use it when you can.

I start more towards the middle if my opponent is serving mostly short. I am not afraid of long serves to my backhand, because I made sure my backhand was able to handle those BEFORE I moved towards the middle.

I used to start near the backhand corner, but I would be indirectly punished with tough short serves to my forehand.


**************8

By the way, if rpb backhand block doesn't feel natural, try to post of video of how you are doing it. I used to be horrible at it, but then I realized I was simply just too close to the table

 

[yoass]

lol Holy Green Giant that guy is freaking tall.

He's a good example of how I think taller penholders might have the TPB feel more natural as the RPB is easier to contact around mid section to chest height. That guy couldn't get low enough if he tried.

Thanks for lookin out. Keep the suggestions coming.

I ran into the following, Kalinic vs. Stojan: a struggle between two giants. Between two European penholders. Between a leftie and a rightie. It's not a match of equals (repeat after me: there is no such thing as a backhand. no such thing.), but yet I find this game suprisingly hard to read:

 

[suds79]

Heck yeah. Doing my Jordan fist pump right now. It's going to be a good Friday.

Found the ever rare new modern lefty penholder to watch/pick up tips.

Zheng Pu - USATT 2612

As an interesting point, (5:16) The next couple of serves from Bob Chen go to Zheng's BH and he returns them how what feels comfortable to me. Clearly in these two points, Zheng is worried about some wide FH serve as he's cheating over. Bob must have that in his bag and Zheng knows that so he's playing it right.

Previously I had generally always tried the RPB loop those balls. But the angle coming in is weird for me. It's just something I need to practice to get better at so I am at times.

Yesterday during my practice session with a guy from work here, I had several nice, simple TPB chop block like returns deep to my backhand. A lot of them I was able to soft touch and keep at two bouncers back to him so he couldn't FH loop. Now if I was playing a really high level player who had a good FH flip or over the table BH flip, I might have be more cautious but yesterday it was working for me.

IDK. I guess you can simply never return the same serve or placement of serve the same way every time. Too predictable. Yesterday I was playing that serve 70% TPB. probably 20% step around FH loop, 10% RPB attack.

It's a work in progress.

 

[OldschoolPenholder]

It's a work in progress.

yep... "Progress not perfection." keep at it suds!

 

[Suga D]

I ran into the following, Kalinic vs. Stojan: a struggle between two giants. Between two European penholders. Between a leftie and a rightie. It's not a match of equals (repeat after me: there is no such thing as a backhand. no such thing.), but yet I find this game suprisingly hard to read:

Wow. Amazing catch, yoass.
What a monster. Zoran's still got it. Those wrist shots are totally crazy. Very hard to control. He still has an amazing touch.

I had the blessing of witnessing from very close thirty years ago. Great guy.

Thanks for posting.

 

[mky]

Short pips vs inverted

 

[SFF_lib]

Short pips vs inverted

And PH vs PH. Very rare these days.

A joy to watch such an unusual match.

Passionate about TT

 

[SFF_lib]

Yan Sheng a 20yo played many solid shots against FZD.

I hope he can excel like Ma Lin or Liu Guoliang. At least his style would make TT more interesting to watch.

Passionate about TT

 

[Simas]

A small side question: what is in your opinion the percentage of penholders compared to all TT players in western countries and what is the percentage of penholders in Asia? Maybe there are some statistics?

 

[parkash.imangry]

hi guys, just to let you know all that I have moved from India to Jinan, Shandong, China.

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk

 

[ttmonster]

permanently or temporarily ?

hi guys, just to let you know all that I have moved from India to Jinan, Shandong, China.

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk

 

[parkash.imangry]

permanently or temporarily ?

atleast for 4 years.

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk

 

[ttmonster]

wow ! I am assuming its because of work , now that you are in the home province of Zhang Jike , looking forward to a lot of info. and video from China on table tennis in general ... have fun !

atleast for 4 years.

Sent from my Redmi Note 3 using Tapatalk

 

[suds79]

Going to experiment this Sunday at club. Over the last few months, I've been playing dual inverted opting for a more aggressive play style.

But dang it I cannot change the face that TPB blocking, directional blocking, no crossover point. No awkward hand angle just feels more natural to me. If I was 12 and learning TT for the first time? I'd fully subscribe to the Wang Hao style of doing things. RPB all the time. But I'm not and grew up playing TPB. While I will admittedly have nice RPB shots from time to time, it's not often enough and I don't like the indecision at times I face. TPB or RPB on this block? And I also don't like having a crossover point with RPB... Welcome to a shakehander's dilemma.

Well last Sunday in one of my tough matches I thought afterwards that I must have hit the RPB not more than 3-4 times in that match. Instead opting for playing largely to my FH (as a penholder should) and TPB. To me that sounds like I'm basically not even the RPB enough to justify that over other options.

"Other options Suds? What are you talking about" Yes. other options. Ie - putting a pips (namely Long Pips which i have a long history with) on that back side and twiddling for the occasional change up.

We will see. i will try it this Sunday and see how it goes. I know that I could play a match fully with inverted only if I wanted to utilizing the TPB. So it's an added weapon.

Will report back if it was a success for a massive waste of time.

 

[suds79]

The Long Pip play from yesterday was okay but only hitting for a 1/2 hour reminded me why i went away from it. For me personally, as long as that's on my blade somewhere, I think it overall encourages a more passive, slower style of play. When I play dual inverted, there's no thought in my head that I could twiddle to the LP for a short play.

Thankfully I had my rubber on me and just glued on the inverted on the backhand.

Started to treat my doubles matches like practice sessions (figured why not) and told myself that I will pretty much over the table RPB flip any short serve or a short push in a rally. Something in pervious weeks I had gone to using TPB pushing because in my mind it feels safer. Turns out I was hitting at a pretty good clip and making some nice opening attacking shots. It's a weird psychological thing. I know i have the shot. Now I just need to have the nerve & confidence to use it more often.

That translated into some better singles play. We had a ton of people at club so unfortunately had to mostly play doubles. But went 1-1 in singles last night. Even in the one i lost, the RPB over the table play had them going away from down the line short serves to my BH. instead they were opting for serves wide to my forehand (remember I'm a lefty). So I need better consistency there. But it's getting there.

Oh before I forget. One thing I liked was say you get that short serve, you're doing your best FZD imitation and getting in the BH flip position but determine the serve is actually too low to realistically pick up. You need to push. I found RPB pushing in that situation easier than to flip over my paddle and do the traditional way of pushing. I feel by the time i do all that, I'm too late to the ball and there's an error. So in those instances, the RPB push worked.

 

[genrel001]

RPB needs an almost total rewire of your system if you're used to TPB. I too is currently having problem with such causing indecision on my crossover and sometime even on my wide BH side where I used to smash it with my TPB. But it gives me more wins though.

I nearly gave up penhold and tried to play SH dual inverted chopper when I lost miserably in our last tournament where I had zero win. After the tournament I bought a Def blade and tried playing and practicing with SH, to my amaze I'm winning games even though I can't even hit a winner shot because of my awkward FH when playing SH. So I tried to figure out what's going on, then it just clicked. My BH on my SH grip allows me to return balls consistently because of I can vary the angle with ease, unlike to my TPB where I only have a very limited angle to work with. So I decided to go back to PH and slap a rubber on my RPB side. I am now practicing with it, but not like Wang Hao attacking every ball with RPB. I still use it defensively most of the time, blocking spinny shot, only attacking high balls. My TPB still plays majority of my BH, returning serves, blocking normal shots and lifting chopped balls. I still use my feet a lot to give way to my FH shots if possible.

My recent style is winning me games lately because of my more consistent BH and my opponents can't exploit it like they used to. Though I still need to work a lot for my RPB strokes in order to attack consistently. I still find my self sometime forcing wide BH shots with my TPB and worse even having second thought in between shots on whether to use TPB or RPB.