Hey Slicepong,
I feel what you’ve mentioned is very important and a problem for many players. Bringing the arm back in a linear movement and quickly enough to comfortably play a shot with enough time.
It’s definitely one of the keys and with nore practice you’ll see the impact of it, perhaps try to practice this movement using multi-ball where your recovery needs to be even quicker.
Another thing I find really helps in this area is keeping relatively short and compact strokes but with a relaxed arm and good acceleration, this allows you recover faster and keep the shots more linear and not circular as you mentioned 🙂
