Today I discovered a bonus of succesfully looping half-long serves: when people are not used to serve short and low and see their serves looped over and over, it puts them under quite a pressure. Which results in more serve faults on their sides.

Apart from that, I believe that this message ("You can loop the majority of serves even if they appear to be short") is one of the most valuables lessons of TTEdge, at least for me. It makes life so much easier. I used to get overhwelmed when I imagined all the skills that seems to be necessary for serve return: pushes, flicks, on both sides and against all kind of spins. But it turns that forehand loop + footwork + experience is the most valuable asset for returning serves.

All the skills required to return serve are mostly useless at club level. Just loop the serves. It's actually quite easy to return a real short serve, if you ever come across one. When you are trying to flick or short push a half-long serve, you'll be in a world of pain.

This should be a good way to spend a Sunday afternoon

Congratulations to BRS for breaking 2000 for the first time Ben has been a major contributor to the LTT Series, so many thanks to him.

Amazing! Congratulations Ben!

A little far for me...any chance at some video highlights?

I'll see what I can do. William looks a bit like Grizzly Adams these days, so you may not recognize him.

What do you do when an opponent serves you a mix of side-under and side-top long to your backhand or elbow, and you can't read the top/under variation? There isn't time to learn to read it during the match, so that's not an option. Assume receiver has double-inverted spinny rubber.

a) Guess at the spin and take the normal stroke to return that kind
b) Split the difference and do a half-assed stroke that might work for either spin
c) Take an extra-aggressive loop swing in hopes of overpowering the incoming spin no matter what it is
d) Make a fraidy-cat push or bump return and pray it lands on the table someway
e) Something else?

Take the ball as late as possible if you want to get it on the table and do a slow but relatively flat carry the ball stroke or a soft spinny return. This will not get it done against an aggressive thirdballer but can keep you in the point.