Funny to see the scorekeeper smile and nod after the early point where you hit about five consecutive backhands. Being so strong on that wing seems to really support your pips-out fh because you don't have to give up table position to play forehands from the backhand side. And you are basically using the pips to set up your bh which doesn't put a lot of pressure to win points with your forehand unless it's a high ball. Seems like a very balanced game plan.
It's great that you posted a match. I watched the first two games so initial feedback.
This opponent is a level or two better than you. That shows in the trouble you had with serve and receive, and him being able to counter many of your forehand topspins for winners. Which is good video to share, but just know that if you posted a match with a more even opponent you might get different feedback from the forum.
A simple exercise I think you would benefit a lot from is to forehand loop vs block parallel instead of diagonal. You always play into his center forehand, that's why his counters were so consistent. He didn't have to move, or even worry about being beaten on his backhand line. If you don't make your opponent move then your ball quality has to be very high. Otherwise you will get their best shots back. Which leads into ...
You are playing very safe shots, which is good, except then you tend to go on the defensive often. That may just be a result of facing a stronger player, he put you on the back foot most points. It would be interesting to see you play other people. But from this I had questions about your philosophy. If you want to play controlled attack, my personal favorite style, then you need to really improve on placement. If you want to play more defensive blocking, or a counterattack style then you need to work mainly on receives, to give your opponent attacking looks that are hard, like bait him into making weak attacks you can counter against. Obviously you don't control many of the points here so you don't really have style choices. But when you do it is always good to have a clear idea of how you want to play most points.
Your backhand hardly showed in the first two games, but was solid when it did. I'll watch the rest and hope to see more backhand topspin.
On serve you could practice serving quite low and short or half-long. He attacked a fair number of your serves. Obviously spin variation is important, but top priority is simply not taking a strong attack right off his receive. Half-long and low no spin serves are surprisingly difficult to attack well, and dead easy to learn. I recommend putting a few practice hours into them with a strong focus on low and half-long.
A drill I do for moving and watching your opponent along with the ball is this: you play all to your blockers backhand (which is good practice for playing parallel forehands too) and he blocks one to the middle, one to either side, one to the middle, one to either side. Try to play ten shots on every ball. This works on both resetting your table position to play a forehand from the middle, and watching his wrist/bat to see which side the next ball will go to. It's kind of an advanced exercise in that you aren't really working on technique. But judging from the first two games your technique is actually good, well above the level you are getting out of it in game play. Which should make your match improvement go quite fast, so that's nice.
You are playing quite close to the table so I think you can get good quality with only waist rotation and no knees really. You may need them more to open vs backspin. It would be interesting to see you do an exercise where you serve, he pushes to your fh, then you go into the loop vs block. But opening is usualyl only one time per point unless you play a chopper. And you can serve top or sidespin to avoid backspin on your serve points. Saving your knees is truly highest priority. You can't play at all if you get hurt.
Yeah. This is one of those bugs that this version of the site has. When you edit, it removes the code for the paragraphs. What I do is add the code before anything else when I edit. But it is a pain in the behind if you don't know how to set it up.
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The square with the less than, greater than signs is the button that will show you the code. But you can write it in without being in that edit mode.
Also, if you put the P and /P with the brackets and space, you will end up with a much bigger amount of space between paragraphs (like 3-5 lines of space: like this:
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Thanks for taking the time to watch the games Brs, appreciate it.
After watching back the matches and reading your comments I've realised I block far more than I thought it did. Playing against this guy makes a bit more sense because I feel he just plays at a faster pace than I'm used to, so perhaps I don't feel like I have the time to complete proper strokes. Which is also a reason why my tactics didn't seem as apparent because I felt rushed in all the points.
I will definitely take the time to learn a lower dead serve as I don't have one that I can do yet. Also your point about the serves overall goal is to not be attacked/ apply pressure rather than just to make it as spinny as possible is something I'll have to remember.
Below video is a practice match I played vs someone around my level which probably shows a bit more how I prefer to play. But again, I realised I'm blocking more than I had thought in match situations. (would prefer to learn to leverage my longer arms and get more deadly full strokes)
Any observations or advice for this match is appreciated.
In this thread there are rules about who I will allow to respond. The people who can respond in this thread are people I trust will give you good constructive feedback. In the past, when people posted footage, it was frequent that after, they would say, "I will never post footage again". And others would say "That is why I won't ever post footage."
Hi J Bus...
The umpire and my opponent are 2 of the 3 owners of quite a successful business, so it was nice that he was willing to be appreciative even as I played his business partner - the 3rd business partner made some noise that point too!
Slow-mo shows I was able to actively block - change the speed, location and largely keeping it deep, until I had the Down the line opportunity, which was why I enjoyed the point.
I actually found out the next morning I had covid, which explains on top of the pre-existing issues, why my HR averaged 175 for this match, and 185 for the second [1.5 hrs later!], even though my feet actually didn't move that point! I hope to play many more points with an active block.
Indeed, I think the BH is the lynch-pin, and that's the idea - people don't like the FH SP because they routinely make mistakes [in giving me balls that are normally neutral to advantageous to play, i.e. spinny loops, heavy pushes, fast balls] and hence a rally systematically favors me - you're going to play a ball I like quite soon, because your muscle memory and training tells you to. Its always good to hit a loop, right?
So even if they adjust and play more often to the BH, normally I have an advantage in dealing with many BH balls too..it's why combination rubber is powerful. It changes whats balls are good to play, requires the opponent to adjust, and also requires focus on ensuring you're dealing with the spin being imparted by each side.
So by posting these coaching snips you are more helping us than the other way round. I hadn't seen that tip before about an extra sort of super-closed backhand followthrough. It was specially interesting because I think your coach said "That's how you get the spin. If you stop [stops with tip of bat pointed diagonal across table] there's no spin." Or something close to that.
I switched to short pips backhand because I have no feeling on that side, so I refrain from commenting on backhand topspin technique. Others may have useful feedback for you. I can only note that you put a lot of balls on the table with apparently good quality after his talk, and that has to be a good sign.
