Hi Steve, firstly it sounds like you are doing all the right things to help you improve quickly. So with the footwork I think just making sure you do spend time on this and doing regular drills like the Falkenberg like you are here will help. Th best way to improve this is to really try to be on the balls of your feet and focus on not stopping between shots, really try to stay active and bouncing as much as you can. This will really help you make the small adjustments need to get ready for each shot. Then the next step is training this footwork with irregular drills so you don’t know where the ball is going.
For the converting backspin to topspin and your match play I would say yes it’s probably that you haven’t quite got used to doing the shots in random positions and under pressure and getting the movements the same as they would be in practice. So lots of drills doing your open ups from different positions and then the follow up shot will help this.
I do agree with the last one as well in the tactics and trying to stay close to the table, this gives the opponents less time and also means you don’t have as many big movements, I think with your technique this could be a great style of you, you have nice smooth controlled shots which is great, so you can use this for sure to control the table and stay up! hope this helps and let me know if you have any other questions on this.
Dan 🙂
