Hey Neil, sorry I was slow getting back to you I missed this question! OK so the first thing with the serves that you mentioned is really trying to aim the serve back across to the left hand side, if the ball keeps going off to the right this will help keep it in play and also lower. It will actually help improve your forehand push too as you are being forced to use it more. Also try to stay relaxed when returning this type of serve, so a nice loose grip, not to hard and try to go for a soft smooth contact when you push. Not to hard or quick.
To me it sounds like if you can get very confident with your open up shots against a push you will soon have no problem beating this guy. A lot of practice on the robot against heavy backspin balls will help. You can start by playing 3 pushes and then trying to spin the 4th shot. This I’ll help simulate a pushing rally against him and picking the ball to spin up.
What’s important with these open ups is really using the kegs and body and not just the arm.if he’s getting a lot of backspin this will help your generate the spin to get the ball over. A good tactic against this type of player can be doing long fast serves into his backhand, to try to open up the rally immediately and get into the open game. As you said his backhand was weak this could work well.
Last thing against this type of player is not rushing to win the point, if his game is focused on pushing a lot you need to try to slow down and not give them easy mistakes. Concentrate on keeping the pushes on the table nice and slow and really waiting for a ball to open up with a topspin that you feel more comfortable with. This type of player smis relying on your mistakes so you have to slow down and not give him too many.
Let me know how you get on with this, Dan 🙂
