Things to work on are being able to serve long and fast under pressure and find a serve that lets me get more 3rd ball attacks, got hardly any this match. I think a short serve even wider in forehand would have given me some returns to forehand and middle that could have been looped.

The other way to do this is to encourage a return to your backhand, and be prepared to step around the corner with your forehand.

E.g. serve pendulum topspin, which encourages the ball to come back to your backhand. Or serve long, fast, "straight" topspin into your opponent's backhand. Both of these serves will usually come straight back to your backhand... so serve, and start to move around the corner. When the ball comes long into your backhand corner, you'll already have the space to play a strong loop.

If you do this though, where you aim your loop is vital. If you put the ball on your opponent's bat, chances are they'll just block it down your forehand which can result in a direct point for them. Instead, aim it right into their body or at their playing elbow.

Hi,

I watched your match, what a close match, it is quite exasperating when you lose those ones, you do so many things right and well and then just get tight and drop your level a little and away it goes.

Regarding your own comments about serve, I think yes nearly everyone can improve their serve, add new types of serve, serve with more quality or deception and certainly something we should all work on a lot. You did use that same backhand serve a lot and he seemed quite comfortable with returning that one, although you mostly served nice and tight and didn't allow him hardly any strong first attack returns.

I think in this match it was not so much your serving but the placement and quality of your push/chop at times. Typical pattern was when you served, was your backhand serve, he pushed to your forehand mid long, you then chopped/pushed generally 3/4 long, he would go for a forehand topspin if at all possible, and then he had a 60% chance of winning the point. So I think if you were able to do that first chop (taking the ball early) and putting it within 8cm of the end of the table with good backspin and at the body, this would make if very difficult for that big guy to get in position to loop and lift that successfully, if he missed a lot and started to push that then you have an attack opening. Pushing, chopping occassionaly wide is good too, but depth and body placement i think would have worked well in this match.

So i suggest doing a practise drill where you do a fast heavy push very deep at opponents elbow position. Very useful against attackers that stand too close to the table or are not good super quick movers, especially when they have just received a short serve and are a bit lazy to go back out enough from the table.

Your curly forehand has crazy side spin, so nice.

Anyways good fortune with your matches.

For now I have uploaded this one https://youtu.be/qt1T4YKFOus.

Hi Magnus,

What a nice match that was, some great rallies, very entertaining to watch.
Really some great determination to keep the ball in play in some of those.

I thought your pushing/chopping in this match was very good, bat twiddle was excellent and produced a lot of errors from your opponent.

Something that did cost you some points in the early sets was your forehand attack against a soft highish push, many times you were not able to land this ball on the other side, so definitely something you could work on. Interestingly in the 5th set you did manage to land most of these. Otherwise congrats on an excellent win.

Something that did cost you some points in the early sets was your forehand attack against a soft highish push, many times you were not able to land this ball on the other side, so definitely something you could work on.

Arrrggghhh I do this soooo often Against similar level opponents I'll regularly get pop-ups from my serves then miss the return because it's almost too high, or short, or because I'm just not well positioned to make an attack.

My advice here Magnus, something I'm working on this week, is to move BACK a bit (give yourself space) and keep your head/chest DOWN. You and I both "stand up" to play this shot, which is probably why we miss when we're so close to the table. Also try to think of looping the ball "downwards".

I saw a great video from that female German Pro (forget her name) where her colleague showed the correct way to play a forehand from your backhand corner. She showed that amateur players get too close to the table when doing this, and I believe you and I both suffer from that. Leave more space between your feet and the table, to give your forehand more space. She used a small waste bin at the corner of the table to demonstrate moving around the bin instead of getting too close to the table.

I've uploaded another shorter edit of my game vs the no 1 player on the same team. I probably would have needed a more active forehand in this match: https://youtu.be/-6vKiRLVoAs

Found it: https://youtu.be/1WgdB7yUrlE

Your FH alone is entertaining, but also the modern defence game is just so so nice to watch and you look really good doing it. Well played my man! Your opponent looked so darn good as well, super consistent and with high quality too