Our lesson today is about how to deal with that slow spinny topspin. I'm Alois Rosario
from PingSkills and with Jeff Plumb we are going to show you how.
We are going to cover three techniques The first one is to use soft hands and block the ball.
Our second technique is to punch the ball.
And our third technique is to counter topspin the ball.
The slow spinny topspin often comes after you give your opponent a push or a chop and force
them to really lift that ball with a lot of topspin.
So to get the ball back down on the table we need to counteract that topspin. The topspin
is going to make that ball fly high up in the air. We need to just turn the bat over
and keep your hand and wrist nice and soft.
So my bat is just angled over the ball so that it's directing the ball down on to the table rather than up into the air.
The softness in your hand acts like a cushion. If your hand is really hard all the spin is
going to be absorbed into the rubber and fly out. So the softness just cushions the spin
a little bit and makes the return a little bit softer.
When the ball is shorter on the table you need to make sure that you get a little bit
closer to the net. So that you are getting to the bounce of the ball, otherwise the ball
is coming up here and becomes very awkward.
The principle on the forehand is very similar to the backhand so keeping your hand nice and soft and counteracting the amount of spin
by turning you bat over the ball slightly. Remember if you're moving in for the short
ball on both the backhand and the forehand for left handers we move our left foot in.
For a right hander you move your right foot in for both backhand and forehand.
If the ball is coming at a reasonable depth you just need to be nice and stable with your legs.
Our second option is to punch the ball. With the punch you're generating a little bit more speed.
To make the punch you need to start with your bat up quite high, because from
here you are going to come through in a straight line. With the punch your contact is very
flat, you don't want to bush the ball at all,because that just slows down the contact. So we start
up high, we come through nice and flat and we want to keep the ball on the bat a very
short amount of time so that it's just a real fast contact on the ball.
We want to also try and contact the ball at a high point. From a high point we have a
direct line onto the table. If you contact the ball low it's very difficult
to get that direct line without going into the net.
So from up here we have a direct line to punch the ball straight down onto the table.
The principles of the forehand punch are very
similar. Start with your bat up high and punch straight through the ball.
Our third option in dealing with that slow spinny loop is to counter topspin the ball.
To counter topspin the ball our starting position is up at a similar height to our block and
our punch. Now though we are going to contact the ball with topspin by brushing over the
top of the ball. So our angle needs to be turned forward,
so we are spinning over the ball. And the same with the forehand spinning over the ball.
Because our opponent has given us a lot of topspin we don't need to lift our stroke at
all. Off a block or a back spin ball we might need to lift our stroke to lift the ball over
the net. When our opponent has already put that topspin
on for us we just need to come straight forward.
So now we have three options, soft block, punch and counter top spin. The counter topspin is the most difficult for you to make
because you're coming through with a fine angle on your bat. So the contact becomes
quite difficult. The other two, the soft block and the punch are fairly similar in difficulty level.
So out of your three options the soft block,
the punch and the counterspin you need to decide firstly what is comfortable for you
and secondly what is going to be difficult for me as your opponent. If I'm top spinning
the ball and my opponent blocks it softly it might be difficult for me because I've
got to move forward to get to that ball. Similarly if I'm top spinning from quite close to the
table and they punch the ball it might be too fast for me and I might not be able to
get to it. And the third option, if I topspin and they counter spin it, well that is going
to be difficult for anyone because the balls going to come fast and the topspin is going
to kick up and that is going to make it really tough.