how-best-to-play-against-short-pips-on-backhand
Jai Mahajan asked 6 months ago
I have MXP on both FH,BH and have a hard time playing against short pips players (short pips on the BH) they block and place really fast and its hard to reach so fast. any video references in this site or anywhere else would be helpful.
I follow Vladimir Samsonov a lot and find that even he had a tough time against Tang peng who I believe has short pips too. Video reference-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5CSeVCnkyk
Tom Academy Coach answered 6 months ago
Hey, yeah these type of players can be really tricky and I can definitely understand finding it hard. It’s also tough because you don’t come up against these types of players that often. So the best ways to try to deal with it is to make sure you don’t play the ball into the pimples with a slower spin that they can punch or block easily, if you have to slow down and control the ball try to play into their forehand side where the normal rubber is. Also forcing them to open up with the pimples against backspin is sometimes effective, but you do need to make sure your pushes are deep and low of course.
I would also really try to mix up your serves and vary your placement in games a lot, playing your strong topspin shots into the body/ crossover can be really effective against these types of players as the tend to get stuck in the backhand side wanting to punch and use the pimples.
Lastly it’s something we can look to add on the Academy in the future, a video on dealing with this specific type of player. Of you have any other questions on this just let me know.
Jai MahajanThanks a lot Tom for the response yes that makes sense giving a slow ball against these players is really dangerous. Will try aiming my topspins to the FH/crossover. Yes a video on dealing with such players in future would help for sure. Lastly what do short pips and long pips do to sidespin do they just return the same sidespin with less spin in same direction? I feel long pips reverse the spin and short pips just lessen the sidespin and return it. Like suppose I do a reverse sidespin serve does it come back as normal spin with long pips and slightly less reverse sidespin with short pips?
Yeah we will look at doing something on this in the future. You’re more or less right with the spin on both long and short pimples long tend to have the feeling of reversing the spin but with short they just reduce the spin, it of course depends what the opponent is doing with thier shot as well a bit but this is the general rule. The other important thing to remember with all pimples is they they work off the spin you give them and can’t actually generate much spin at all on their own. So if you give them nothing you will get more or less nothing back. This can be a fantastic weapon against pimples to give yourself chances to attack strongly
Thanks so much for the detailed response clears most of my doubts on pips now :p
No problem at all! 🙂
