April 21, 2016

Rather Rare Shots
Yesterday in a coaching session with 14-year-old Matt, while practicing forehand counterlooping, I sidespin looped one extra wide to his forehand, drawing him out wide as it broke to the left (his right). He counterlooped, I counterlooped back to his middle forehand, and he was out of position - so he improvised and ripped (!) an inside-out backhand counterloop from the forehand side! The ball shot out to my wide forehand, curving away from me for an ace. I've seen the shot before, but only rarely - but very rarely, if ever, this fast, and with so much breaking sidespin. I dropped my racket in shock and told Matt that he had reached the pinnacle of his life, that for the rest of his life nothing he ever did would ever be at such a high level so that his life was now ruined, with nothing left to look forward to. (At the end of the session he insisted on trying the shot again, so we did a drill where he "practiced" the shot, and he pulled off two more, though not as good as the first one.)

I've played 40 years, and I've done almost the same shot - but not with speed, just a spinny but soft inside-out backhand counterloop. Now I have something to look forward to trying to do!

It got me thinking about other rarely used shots. Here are a few. 

• Inside-out backhand sidespin from wide forehand. See above!
• Switch hands shot. If you are drawn to your wide forehand and they then go to your wide backhand, every now and then a player will switch hands, either for the extra reach, or because it's sometimes easier to smash that way. Andrzej Grubba was the master of this, which was unfortunate as he may have had the best backhand in the world during his career (1980s and 1990s). 
• Seemiller backhand smash against lob. If you are caught playing backhand against a lob to the backhand, smack it in Seemiller style (i.e. rotate the racket so you use the forehand side on the backhand side). I've done this many times. 
• Fingertip reach grip shot. When you are caught off guard, holding the racket with your fingertips on the end of the handle gives you those extra few inches. I remember once playing David Zhuang, who caught me off guard with some super-short drop shots to my forehand off my serve - and not expecting that, I had to lunge in and extend the racket like this, and barely got the ball back. This happened several times! Yes, his drop shots were that tricky - he came in so fast they looked like he was pushing long or attacking. 
• Forehand pendulum serve shot from middle. When caught by a shot to the middle, I've seen players do this, and I've done it a few times. I remember the 6'4" Charles Butler used to do this sometimes, circa late 1970s.
• "The Snake," as demonstrated in this video (65 sec) by Adam Bobrow - where you sort of throw the ball up, but move racket rapidly side to side so opponent isn't sure which direction contact was made. (Sometimes you can do the contact so far below table level that the opponent doesn't even see contact.)
• Backhand sidespin chop, especially against a serve. I've seen Gal Alguetti throw this at people and they miss it over and over.

A 21^st Thing to Harp On
Yesterday I blogged about 20 things I constantly harp on with students. Dan Seemiller emailed me, and said the thing that he says about five times each night to his students is "more spin – quality spin." That's a good one, as far too many players don't understand the importance of creating great spin when serving, pushing, and looping.

Do you think Chinese athletes would still dominate table tennis if only Hard Bats were used?
Here's the poll at Pong Universe, and where you can comment.

Learn Table Tennis Backspin Serve - Part 3 - Like a Boss
Here's the new video (3:16) from Brett Clarke. (I wasn't able to find links to parts 1 and 2.)

ITTF Level 2 Course in India
Here's the video (12:51) created by one of the coaches in the ITTF coaching course ran by USA's Richard McAfee.

Ma Long - Visions of Destiny
Here's the new video (3:48) featuring the world champion and world #1.

Flash to the Past – Tibor Klampar and Gabor Gergely
Here's the video (2:55) showing these two Hungarian greats from the 1970s and 80s, and their playing techniques. I think it's in Hungarian, but it's interesting to watch, especially the slow motion parts. These two, along with Istvan Jonyer, were "The Three Musketeers" who battled with the Chinese for a decade, including beating them in the Men's Team Final at the Worlds in 1979.

Table Tennis - Nice Points Compilation 3
Here's the new video (6:44). Set to music and much of it in slow motion. Here's Compilation 1 (6:10) and Compilation 2 (5:47).

The Most Vicious Never-Ending Rally Ever
Here's the gif image!

A Little Around the Tables, Anyone?
Here's the video (35 sec).

Shovel Pong
Here's the video (29 sec) – what, you've never wanted to play with a shovel before?

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