OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Excellent shot, nice footwork.

I remember seeing you at the NA Teams because PGPG pointed you out to me, but every time I had time to try to introduce myself you were playing. Maybe next time!

This felt like the most epic pivot I ever hit in my life. A shot like that was impossible 50 pages in this forum ago.

I do it all the time and my view is that top pros do it more often than they think they do. I recommend it strongly. It helped me a lot vs backspin and I struggled a lot with topspin until I started doing the same thing.

The key is not to hit the ball particularly on the side but to realize that every stroke has a path. Your path should not make first contact on the back of the ball to hit it but should curve slightly around the side and come over the top. If you hook too much keep playing the same shot until you can minimize the hook or fade to a satisfactory level that keeps the ball straight. I like to think of loops as sometimes doing American football spirals more than straight topspins.

For me the big thing is getting more rubber on the ball and missing far less. For the amount of practice so put In, this is valuable. The more I watch pros, the more I see them doing the same thing. And I think many people do the same things on their best shots but their brains have deceived them to the point they don't notice.

I think the main thing is the helicopter principle and to hit the ball with a turning stroke. The contact point then becomes more on the side as you can't get spin hitting the ball on the back while exposing a huge surface area of your racketwith consistency lately to the ball.

Really interesting, it would be great to have a video on the subject.

I struggle a lot with consistency lately (large amount of completely whiffed balls and hit edges) and think "getting more rubber on the ball" as you put it might be one of the keys to get more balls on the table.

The thing is I can't really wrap my mind around it yet and bounce between 2 extremes: I either try to brush extremely thinly with a closed bat and hit a lot of edges and whiff a lot, or I try to open my blade but then I often smack and hit the ball instead of brush it.

Will play a bit with ball drops and see if I can figure it out.

Well I've seen enough of NLs forehands to know he gets some side spin on the ball

I will make a real effort against top spin. I really think this tweak to my technique will help against pips players and anyone who will push a ball back to me. Thanks for the feedback NL and I will continue working with it. I think the nice thing is that it doesn't violate any technique that's been on TTedge and TTedge practice just makes it easy because the whip is already there.

Danny Seemiller said in a book that even a good regular forehand topspin will have like 15% sidespin, and I didn't know what that meant for a long time. But I think I now do.

https://butterflyonline.com/modern-topspin-strokes/

This is an article on the stroke. The Mizutani video originally linked is missing, but you can get an idea from what I am saying. The relevant part:

"An interesting thing to notice with these two players is that Boll is a bit older than Mizutani, which shows somewhat in the way they contact the ball. Whereas Mizutani is hitting the ball quite solidly before grazing up and forward to produce topspin, Boll grazes the ball much more finely right from the first moment of contact. This is another example of how the topspin stroke has evolved, especially in very recent years. Unless you are using a very hard sponge, like Chinese rubber, allowing yourself to hit the ball solidly and then starting to graze right after first contact can produce a bit more speed and power without sacrificing consistency, and with the changes in rules and equipment most players are no longer grazing the ball as finely on their loops."

I would say that you can do this even with a Chinese rubber but that is just me - most Chinese rubbers today are so boosted that they are like Euro rubbers more than they used to be. Just hit the ball with a turning motion. On the backhand, it is even more critical as people trying to brush on the backhand tend to just miss the ball outright. Then I have to teach them to hit the ball and follow through all with a turning swing and they then get an idea of how to remain consistent without missing.