Info: SongDavid has given some great advice on tactical info. I will piggyback one tactical piece on what he said. When an opponent is having as much trouble receiving serves with his FH as your opponent was, you sort of need to use that to your advantage. You could have even started serving from the FH corner so that, if he cheated towards the FH side to receive serve with BH on FH side, you could have served down the line to BH and had him wide open and off balance. If you watch the points where you do go to his FH whether with serve or in rally, he struggles greatly on the FH side. So exploiting that would be worth it from a tactical standpoint.
The rest is technique. Most of it is hard to fix but easy to work on. So there is a real positive side to this.
1) You miss too many serves. You have to work on that. Your opponent missed 1 serve the whole match. You missed at least 4 serves in the first game.
Particularly if there is a serve that you sometimes miss, like your reverse pendulum, you need to not use it until you really almost never miss it. That simply means working on it. Without the reverse pendulum serve you probably would have only missed 2-3 serves in the match instead of 6+. So, work on the serves.
Your BH serve gives you similar sidespin to the reverse pendulum but is much safer. Learning a hook or a tomahawk would also help you to have that sidespin with an easier serve.
2) You need to work on your reset. After your serve or after any shot, you need to get ready as soon after as you can.
A general rule for serves, you should be set and in a ready position for the return of serve BEFORE your serve bounces on the opponent's side. That is correct. You should be ready for the next ball before your serve lands on the other side so you can see where your opponent is going with his shot and move to the next ball as your opponent is making the shot. Not after.
This is actually the case in a rally too. After you hit any shot, ideally, you should be reset and in a ready position before your ball lands on your opponent's side. The reason is still the same. You can't really expect yourself to be able to adjust to the ball, if you don't seen where it is going until it passes the net. When the ball is over the net, it is already too late to adjust to the placement. If you are reset early you have plenty of time to adjust to the next ball.
It takes work to get the technique for that into muscle memory. But it is something you can practice.
3) You need to practice pushing the ball. It may be the most boring thing in the world to practice. But you need to work on it. Your skill level in everything else is way above your skill level at pushing. And improving your push would almost instantly increase your level 100 points.
That being said, I agree with David that you should loop everything you can. But you should still work on improving the level of your push from BOTH sides.
4) You have to be focused and paying attention when your opponent is getting ready to serve. When he tosses the ball, you should be moving with the toss of the ball so your head and eyes follow the ball up and then down into the racket.
Right now, part of your problem receiving serve is that you are not fully paying attention until after the opponent hits the ball. Watch what the pros do receiving serve. Notice how they get super low before the opponent tosses the ball and as the opponent tosses the ball they come up a little with the toss and then they start moving to where the serve is going a split second after the ball is contacted. That really helps you see where the serve is going and move to it much much earlier.
5) To me, this is the biggest issue. All your strokes need fundamental work from the ground up. Most of the time your strokes are all arm. It happens, but only rarely, that you use your body too. This is perhaps the hardest thing to change. But in my opinion there is good news here too. YOU CAN change this. Some of your problem with your strokes is muscle memory. Some of your problem is tracking and intercepting skills.
Tracking and intercepting skills will improve as you improve your reset and as you practice more. They will. It just takes time and practice but those skills will improve.
What you do when you are not comfortable with the ball placement is you move your racket from behind the ball straight forward towards the ball. It's hard to describe so I made a quick video comparing what I am talking about to an actual stroke:
Again, that will change when your tracking and intercepting skills and your reset improve.
Here is a way to improve your strokes even without coaching and when not on the table:
Forgive the bad film quality but, I did not have access to a better scenario where I am.
These are shadow strokes.
Find yourself a mirror and practice 1000+ BHs and 1000+ FHs shadow strokes in front of that mirror so you can see what you are doing.
1000 should not actually take very long. That is about 15 min on each side if each stroke takes 1 second.
If you do this, 3-4 days a week, for a month, this will actually fix a lot of your problems including stroke mechanics, muscle memory and resetting on topspin strokes.
It won't correct resetting on serves or tracking and intercepting the ball, and it won't improve your push. But you will be amazed how much better you play from before you start to after you do this the first 3-4 times. Your stroke and your contact will be better and your reset will be a decent amount faster without you even thinking about the reset.
If you do these shadow strokes for 15 min on each side 3-4 days a week for a month and don't do anything else to change what you are doing you will thrash that guy. Hahahahaha.
Once you have solid fundamental shadow strokes you can make it more fun by adding footwork to it:
Hope this info helps you.
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