Article 1 - the short summary:
So, to cut a long story short, always be aggressive against the passive and easy ball. Your ability to make more and more returns from your opponent attackable is what determines your level as an attacker. It takes practice but if you train that way and don't play that way, especially on serve, return and third ball, you are wasting your time.
Aggressive TT Strategy – Earlier Shots Matter More
Since the style I play is controlled offensive with some blocking/counterhitting on defense, most of this post will discuss the game strategy of an offensive player. Some of the points will apply to other styles, some will not.
No matter what your style is, ball control and shot quality come into play. The reason why we train in TT is primarily to become better and better at making quality shots on balls that we find difficult to make quality shots against. Shot quality can be measured by spin, speed, their combination (power), placement and over many points, consistency.
You win a point when your opponent fails to make a return either because he missed your shot completely or he returned your shot long or into the net. As a player gets better, most of his important shots are a result of being posed a tricky question by the opponent’s shots and not just a careless error. Since opponents will not often want to give us easy opportunities to win points, we need plays/patterns in our arsenal to make them give us what we want.
The most important principle of offensive play is to introduce your weapons early in the point in the hope of getting the advantage early. An advantage is generally the ability to play a first good topspin attack or to play a point winning stroke. The reason we try to do this is that we assume that our opponent is also an attacker and if we do not introduce our weapons, he will. However, since we don’t always control the point from the outset (we do not serve first), we need some weapons to prevent our opponent from attacking first. Finally we need some defensive/counterattacking weapons so that our opponent will not win easily with (soft) attacks
Recently, I have coached matches and noticed that some things that I assumed were general knowledge were not. I would watch a player loop the ball and get a blocked return that sat up in the middle of the table. The player would then reloop that ball and get another block return. And eventually the player would loop a ball long. Even worse, a player would serve, get a long push to his forehand, and then push the ball back because of a fear of missing the loop vs. backspin. This would happen on many points. While this general approach might work against players who are not aggressive or players who struggle with consistent play, this approach usually guarantees that a player will remain at the 1600-1800 levels for a very long time especially if they learned to play seriously as an adult. The reason why these players play that way is that consistency tends to win at the U1500 levels. That said, the U1500 level players who transition best into higher level play are the aggressive attackers (usually coached juniors) who play the proper way but improve their shot quality.
An aggressive player needs to be looking for opportunities to play aggressive shots. When a block comes, an aggressive player is trying to either end the point or play a shot that the opponent will struggle even more to return. An aggressive player is not playing for a rally – he is playing shots to pose problems to his opponents in a variety of ways. He is playing loop drives or smashes on predictable balls. He is looping for the corners and not the center of the table. He pushes short or pushes wide in order to make his opponents struggle to attack him.
An aggressive power player who attacks almost every ball will often have a few misses when playing players of his level. But such a player will accept that as being part of his game style.
He accepts the misses as part of being the proper way of playing. Do note that he is usually missing because his opponents are generating balls that pose him problems. When playing opponents below his level, the shots are less problematic so his accuracy rate goes up. Moreover, if the aggressive player has played this way for a while, he actually had to practice against those lower level shots to get to his current level and therefore developed weapons for attacking them.
Moreover, an aggressive player may be missing as he figures out what the quality of his opponent’s ball is – once he gets tuned to the ball quality and reads the opponent better, or finds ways to adjust those opportunities to his strike zone, those misses become makes if the opponent continues to present the attacker with the same opportunities.
Since the earlier a stroke is, the more important the stroke is for your TT success, let’s look at some of the goals that an aggressive player should have when playing his first 5 TT strokes in a point. The most important thing to note here is that these are mostly INSTINCTS, not strokes. If you lack the strokes to implement this, you should still be implementing a form of these instincts and be developing your strokes to support them. If you develop the right instincts, a coach only has to fix your strokes. If you develop the wrong instincts, then you have to fix your instincts and your strokes. To be fair, instincts and strokes are not completely independent – it is clear that people take weaker shots to keep the ball on the table rather than good shots and risk missing. However, this is the easiest way to keep your level low if you are seriously improving your shots in practice, as the weaker strokes will stay in your game even if you have developed good offensive strokes. If you are missing a shot that your instincts tell you that you should be making, speak to your coach or look at the footwork and stroke and the sequence of shots that leads up to it and see what is missing. Then rebuild the shot so that it works in matches. Not taking the right shot will only make your weaker stroke better and keep you from playing table tennis at a higher level. In general, playing a lesser or more controlled version of the right stroke is better than playing a consistent version of the wrong stroke as the former is easier to build upon than the latter.
Serve
An aggressive player is looking to get a weak return to attack or a predictable ball to use to set up his point. An aggressive looper will usually serve variations of short backspin and short no spin in other to get relatively slow returns that he can attack or get his opponent to push into the net. He may disguise the backspin with a little sidespin. He serves short because a long serves gives the opponent the opportunity to attack with a full stroke. Therefore, serving long is mostly a surprise and should be deep and fast to prevent the opponent from attacking aggressively.
He will serve topspins as a variation in order to keep opponents honest, to restrict the options of good pushers and to get easy pop-ups when he can as it is easier to powerfully attack high weak balls than low weak balls. While it might seem like he is trying to win points on his serve, his main priority is that his serve does not get attacked – he is okay with a passive return from his opponent or a predictable return. What he truly dislikes is an aggressive return that leaves him unable to attack or continue the rally with a stroke in his play book.
Return
The aggressive player is looking to return the ball in a way that is either an attack or a control stroke that prevents the opponent from attacking. Therefore, short serves are returned with well placed deep pushes, well placed flicks or short pushes. Long serves are always looped. An aggressive player will avoid playing shots that facilitate his opponent’s attacks unless he believes that the attacks are not strong enough to get through him and that he can counterattack them confidently. An aggressive opponent will continue to look for the locations on the table relative to his opponent’s current position where he can cause trouble for his opponent by putting the ball there. An aggressive player will note what kinds of returns are causing the opponent problems and what kinds are not.
Aggressive returning puts pressure on your opponent’s serve game, so it is valuable to be able to attack serves offensively if they drift long or are not disguised enough to slow you down. Causing an opponent to think consciously about the quality of his serves will make him miss more of them as most people serve unconsciously and make mistakes when forced to make conscious changes.
Third ball
Third ball attacks are the hall mark of a true offensive player. An offensive player’s energy levels are at the highest immediately after the serve and in anticipation of the third ball. This is the first and earliest chance to end the point if the opponent makes a passive or weak return, and the probabilities the opponent will do this off a decent serve he is unfamiliar with are fairly high. Moreover, an opponent might play a good return but this return might still be controllable given the right level of alertness so the third ball attacker realizes this this is the stroke that may make or break his serve. Finally, if the opponent plays an extremely poor but tricky receive, the attacker must position himself to handle it. This is one of the common mistakes made by lower level attackers – they often assume the weakness of the return relieves them of the responsibility to approach it properly with good movement. The other common mistake here is to not begin moving the instant the ball begins to pop off the opponent’s racket – allowing the ball to bounce on your side before moving loses time and makes handling the ball harder.
Many third ball attackers get free points off their serves not because of the serve itself, but because of what the attacker does to passive returns. A barrage of aggressive third ball attacks forces the receiver to improve the quality of his return or lose the point.
For most third ball attackers, the most important strokes are the loop drive and the slow-controlled loop. These are utilized when the opponent can’t return the ball short or with sufficient aggression to restrain the attack. Most third ball attackers will loop drive their easy or practiced opportunities and will slow loop trickier balls, the slow loops having more spin and margin in order to remain consistent. Some will loop with sidespin to drive their opponent wide to either the forehand or the backhand to make the return weaker and set up an easy next shot. The slow topspin on third ball followed by a strong 5th ball shot vs a block or passive return is sometimes called the 5th ball strategy.
What if the receiver plays the ball short? Then the stroke is usually a flick, a short push, or a long push to either the wide forehand or wide backhand or fast to the elbow. Of course, other than the long push, such options are usually the hallmark of an advanced player. But the point of this article is to say what the instincts a player should be building are if they want to play the offensive style.
What a player should not be doing is simply pushing back slow long receives to the middle of the table or floating the ball across the net. While this may work against a player who cannot attack such balls, it can be habit forming and instinct ruining.
Third ball attackers have many shot options because any offensive shot has many placement opportunities.
A final and often underestimated aspect of third ball is that it is often directly linked to the serve even beyond such obvious statements as serve backspin to get a backspin return and then loop it. Serves may also be used to get returns to where you like them, or to move the opponent or challenge his footwork. Serving to the forehand will usually produce returns back to the fore forehand and serving to the backhand will usually produce returns back to the backhand. If you draw an opponent over to the forehand side, he may be slow to recover to the backhand and vice versa. An attacker can even serve short to the forehand and push(!) wide to the backhand against many players with positive results.
Fourth Ball
Fourth ball play is another key to higher level table tennis. The importance of the third ball attack has made the ability to return the third ball a big aspect of table tennis. Let’s assume that the opponent has made a quality third ball topspin (loop or loop drive). Then the main options here for an attack are to block, punch-block/smash or countertopspin (defenders can chop here as well).
Against a slow third ball loop, the attack is actually waiting for a block so that he can attack an easier 5th ball. So against a slow loop, the usual options are to block low and short/wide if possible (very difficult vs. heavy topspin) or to punch block/countertopspin with authority. Some players block deep and step back to give themselves room to countertopspin/defend the next ball which may work depending on the quality of the 5th attack. The ideal instinct here is an aggressive countertopspin of some sort or a tricky block to slow the opponent down.
Against hard third ball topspins, the block is the usual weapon as it uses the pace of the opponent. Opponents with good anticipation and mobility may also step back and fish/lob early.
Fifth Ball
The fifth ball depends on the 3rd and 4th ball. The biggest mistake I see amongst players below 1800 I coach in matches is the inability to quickly anticipate and play a strong shot vs. slow or high 4th ball blocks on the 5th ball. Some of them do not do it because they want to remain consistent. The key way to think about this is to realize that people usually play better when you don’t put pressure on them and that your shots should always be trying to put pressure of some form on your opponent. Just as importantly for those with long term goals, the inability to think about positively posing problems on the 5th ball will cap your game. Remember, if the instinct is right, all that has to be fixed are the strokes and shot selection options.
Strong shots include well placed heavy slow topspins, loop drives, smashes or even sidespins to difficult places (wide or into the body, all depending on the context).
The Rally
Okay, so you and your opponent had defied the odds and gone beyond the first 5 shots of the point. You are now in the rally. The rally is the one place where you can decide to win with consistency or with superior shot making (usually a combination of both). Given the way TT works, it is important to have good rally skills, but it is far more important to realize and focus on the shots that come before this as the earlier will usually define the match. Most rallies begin with a player having the advantage coming out of the first 5 shots, though that advantage may shift depending on who the better rally player is. You could argue that a defensive player is really a player who plays for the rally so he can win with consistency, though that is not the common definition. To summarize,
an offensive player needs rallying skills, but those skills should not be treated as replacements for trying to get an advantage in the first 5 shots of the point if the player wants to get better.
Conclusion
This is a high level view of what kind of shot selection an aggressive player should be doing. The reason modern offensive players loop is that it the loop/topspin is the most controllable and versatile shot in the playbook. Most/all of your returns of long shots should be topspins.
Each player is unique and some players may have special shots or plays that they can use. Do remember that to continue to get better, these special shots or plays must be able to put pressure on better players. As long as your instincts are correct, continue to work on your plays and strokes. As those get better, your level will rise automatically. If your primary concern is putting the ball on the table, even if you can run down and block/retrieve every ball, your progress will be limited by the difficulty of playing that way - it is always easier to win by doing things that create problems for the opponent,
