OOAK Table Tennis Forum

That's certainly true. The LP forehand, inverted backhand RPB (in case they ever try to give me a deadish serve anywhere towards the middle of the table or towards my backhand) is my default grip in service return.

Twiddling with penhold can seem slow & award at first but just like anything else, it takes practice. While there are aspects of my game I'd like to work on, twiddling for me, I can confidently say, is as fast as I need it to be.

Here's a video of a game I was in where I twiddled a fair amount. I'm the penholder in this video obviously.



Twiddles at...

1:05 - A Twiddle but it was before the point so I wasn't trying to be fast with it.
1:10
2:06
2:08
2:12
2:21
2:23
3:44

Ah I stop keeping counter after that.

What I like about penhold twiddle vs shakehand is that I could play an entire game and not twiddle if I didn't want to yet still hit inverted both sides due to the traditional penhold backhand. Shake handers can't say that. IMO there's more versatility in the penhold twiddle game.

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Stiga Clipper Classic
FH - TSP Spectol Red 2.0
BH - Dawei 388D-a 1.5

Define "fast". Fast enough to twiddle as a reaction to a shot? It's possible to rotate the blade, but very hard to stabilize the racket w/ fingers on the back in fraction of a sec like shakehand.

edit:

To expand on this a bit, it's basically impossible to do fast twiddle with the back fingers down low in tradition Cpen attack placement. So as mentioned before you need grip w/ more of a fist shape (as WJJ on previous page does). Then you also need a thin rounder handle, like a SH blade instead of the squarer fat grip better for RPB, so you can retain some of the "ring" formed by thumb+index to stabilize. Finally there's still the fundamental difference that you have to move all the fingers on the back out of the way, just like the index finger for SH twiddle; but the SH index finger isn't necessary for a good grip, whereas the fingers on the back are for PH. This last one is the main blocker for twiddle while moving the bat at the same time (necessary for reacting to a shot instead of anticipating it). In sum, there are just greater hurdles for one vs the other.