If you want to attack a short ball you'll need to build great skill in either a banana flick on the BH or a short sharp loop on the FH (assuming the balls are not high short balls). Other than this, most people will defend them with a push that tries to keep the ball low and well positioned so its harder for the opponent to attack. Try to vary the spin on the pushes so that sometimes its heavy underspin and other times almost dialed back to no spin. These sorts of varied pushes can result in either a net ball or a long ball from the opponent if they are not expecting it.

I don't have a link to anything specific. Use the search function above to search the forum using google on a term like "pushing".