How to play against players with a weird style
darion888 asked 2 years ago
Hello,
I won matches in my life with players who are quite good in my league and are playing technically proper table-tennis. But recently I’ve been playing with some self-taught person with a weird playing style but effective and I struggle to beat him. So generally he is playing with normal rubbers. He is flat hitting almost everything my rotation etc. with a lot of tension in muscles. Also he sometimes warps a bat and produces weird spin which is diffuclt for me to handle. When I try to give him more difficult balls with a backspin he makes weird movements like jumping in the air and lifting the ball. When I try to block it then he goes harder and usually wins a point. So any tactic against guys with an irregular style? Maybe I should counter his irregular opener since it doesn’t produce much spin?
Tom Academy Coach answered 2 years ago
Hey Darion, first of its good to hear you are managing to beat some good solid players! It can be tricky against strange styles like the guy you have mentioned here. The first thing I would say is yes definitely try to counter his open up shots if they don’t have much spin, often players like this don’t recover well and if you can be solid and keep putting the ball on the table they get under pressure and break down into mistakes.
Also because his shots will be quite odd sometimes, it really helps to keep your serves tight and short and try to play the first attack in the rally, if you can play with a lot of spin this will make it more difficult for him to hit his flat shots. Also try to vary the placement and speed of your shots to break up his rhythm and timing. It’s not easy against these types of player but in the long term if you are solid and consistent you will start to beat him more often than not! 🙂
