OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Push that $h!+ back to your opponent. If the ball is truly heavy and very deep on your bh that is never going to be a good ball to attack. If it is so predictable that you can pivot and make a quality fh loop that's great. If you are pinned on the bh just push it and let him try to open. Chances are very high you get a weaker push for the 5th ball anyway.

That wasn't my argument - my argument was that even with the best of intentions, it is hard to serve a legal quality serve by the letter. There is also the history of people who played under different serve rules and they developed habits that are hard to change. Ethical arguments are often ad hominem. There is only one person I know who complained about illegal serves and offered his serve up for scrutiny. His serve was legal but made no attempt to deceive the opponent or generate reasonable spin. So I could see why he felt that he was being cheated.

I have played with refs watching too. My issues are largely on video so I tend to ask people who complain strenuously to post their match play. I stand tall so sometimes my toss functions more like a ball drop or a backward toss. In any case, when it interfere with the quality of my enjoyment, I will deal with it.

Many people who serve quickly just don't think about what it takes to get ready to play a point and that differs from person to person. Most of these things are habits formed at a different point in one's play. In any case, I don't like my illegal serves but I don't lose any sleep over them either. I just wish more people criticizing me (as you are) would post their serves so we can see whether the pot is calling the kettle black or they have a genuine issue. Because the simplicity of a serve doesn't make it legal. And serving legally in practice doesn't mean that one does so in matches. And even when you serve legally for a time, you can always pick up a bad habit that no one alerts you to until it is too late. In my experience, with a few exceptions, people who go on and in about illegal serves tend to be bad servers or bad serve returners. Because the good players I know focus on enforcement and agree that the rules are a mess but that if they were consistently enforced, we might get somewhere. But the rules proposed would basically make the pendulum serve almost illegal. So they are not going to pass any time soon.

I don't mind your serve and I'd have no problem playing against it. You give enough time for the receiver to get ready and the ball does indeed go into the air. I think it would be a pretty minimal adjustment to open your palm just a little more.

I've posted video on here of me playing and serving. It hasn't changed. I know I am a bad serve returner and I know that I need to see the ball go up and down in order to get into my sub-optimal rhythm but again thanks for the passive aggressive insult. Twice this week. If you want to throw up some more insults you can PM me. I'll try to get back to the thread's main subject such as my issues with deep balls to my backhand.

Interesting perspective. With a ball wide to my backhand that's deep and heavy(or even not so heavy) I do this by default as I don't have the ability to loop those.

I guess I've heard if the ball is coming out of the table I need to loop it so much that I've not even considered pushing such a deep ball is acceptable.

Acceptability is really determined by your opponent. The incoming ball is deep so you will not be able to push it short. If your opponent is going to routinely crush that long push ball past you then you might as well try to loop it yourself. But you could equally look at it as an opportunity to improve the spin and placement of your long bh pushes. And look to loop the next ball, assuming you are more ready and it is less awkwardly placed.

Basically winning points is always acceptable. When you reach a point where you need to make different shot selections to win points, that's when the definition of acceptable shifts.

So I want to talk about the backhand....I've got an issue with deep balls to the backhand.

Good example is a very deep backspin ball. It's long and it's got lots of spin that I've seen be made by my opponent. I want to attack this ball but almost always make an error. I feel like the blade angle was wrong. My guess is I can get a weakish high spinny loop on the other side 3/10 times. I feel like I'm just lifting that ball, not attacking it.

It seems to me that the spin rules sort of change and with the nature of the backhand and you cannot "buy time" like one can on the forehand.

Should I be moving back? Is my stroke wrong? Do I need to alter my stroke? Alter my timing? How do I practice this correctly?

Big D (aka TT Panda) ... just gets down on himself when he misses. That eats his confidence and his game.

A good strong paddle throw would redirect the anger towards an inanimate object and release all that tension. Try it, it works!

This is good advice and I bet if I were to record all of my matches I would see that I probably do push this type of ball when I'm tired or when the match is close. Almost no one I've ever played punishes my long pushes. I'd say that all of the skills that I learned early the one that still feels really useful is my deep push/dig.

With that said I'd still like to know that after I serve X and the ball comes out of the table I'm going to give a really nice 3rd ball attack. That's really my goal for the next 5 months.

I can make the ball machine jam me just as well. Maybe I'll just do a quick video to show how crap I am at this.

I've tried it many many times and it works.

IMO, players don't pivot enough against passive opponents. The reason they don't pivot is they don't understand the footwork.