Against Weaker Players, How to Play for Your Own Improvement
This is a brand-new, technique-focused column in a question-and-answer format. The mystery figures answering are two former national team members, both now veteran coaches, who would rather keep a quiet, peaceful life and a good night’s sleep than become famous. So the “Reaching the Summit” column was born.
In matches now I am fierce, desperately pivoting to attack, but in practice — especially against weaker opponents — I play slowly, looping spin and variation, playing control. Will this disconnect practice from matches? Or is it actually a good thing?
There is good and bad. The upside is that in matches your mindset is positive, with attacking awareness and a desire to score. The downside is that you do not practice that way, so playing that way in matches is almost all one-shot kills, with no continuity.
The better approach is to tighten up in practice too. You can play around occasionally, but over the long run, you will struggle to truly tighten up in matches. Do not slack just because some opponents are much weaker — that state is closer to loose than relaxed. Long-term slacking makes it hard to instantly adjust to your best state in a match, because muscles easily go stiff. Going easy is going easy, but over the long run it becomes your true level.
You can give points to weaker opponents. Or, from the start, have a serious attitude, but do not rush the contact point. For example, if you usually loop on the early descending phase, now switch to the late descending phase or the late rising phase after the high point, to raise your adjustment ability. Because when you meet a true expert in a match, it is hard to always seize the contact point, so practice now. Against weaker opponents, you can also practice the wobble-push, wobble-loop, fake loop, or short touches, rhythm changes and sideline play. But all of this is built on first taking it seriously, not showing a lazy state.
How do you play short-pips (raw rubber) players? What are short pips’ characteristics?
Short pips’ traits are urgent, fast, heavy. If your own level is high, then against short pips you should move forward into the ball. There are two receiving phases: one is before the ball drops, when you move forward enough and treat the ball as no-spin. The other is after the ball starts dropping, when you treat the incoming ball as heavy underspin. If you cannot seize the contact point and the ball sinks, then simply wait until after the descent and loop a small high hang.
Letting short pips load up and flick is the most uncomfortable. So the balls we play to short pips generally have to be fairly spinny, because short pips struggle to control spin and easily slip and err.
For the same opponent serving a left-side long ball and a right-side long ball to my forehand, with enough space for me to fire, do I need to deliberately adjust the bat angle?
When your speed, meaning swing speed, and power are great enough to suppress the incoming ball’s speed and spin, you do not need to consider these things about the incoming ball at all. Like when someone who just learned to play pushes a ball over and you want to loop-drive it — do you need to consider whether to keep the bat a touch more upright? But if the opponent is a chopper, when you rip the chopped ball, you do have to consider keeping the bat a touch more upright, because your speed and power may not suppress its spin.
(Heima’s aside: when young, my dad told me to break spin with power.)
If you are confident and feel fine, then use power and acceleration to cancel the opponent’s spin and rip directly. Because you said there is space to fire. On technique, go straight into the ball, wedge once with the hip joint, and thrust forward and up. Keep the arm relaxed, and you can feel the ball pause at your hip joint; then just accelerate and snap the forearm in. This needs lots of feeling-out. Whether an extremely long topspin or a bump ball, it is the same — the body braces hard, the arm relaxes, reverse friction, and there is no problem. If your ability is not enough, first cradle the ball, then rip it out; if your ability is enough, rip directly.