Playing to Win vs Playing Your Own Game – Mental Crisis!?
Danttgeek asked 1 month ago
OK, I got humbled, wrestled with my ego and ultimately lost…..by choice!?
So I filled in during fixtures and played with a very savvy player who tends to win a lot and he coached me in a match.
My game is topspin attack and do pretty well, even against ‘much better’ players much to their dismay.
However, I was playing against a teenager who is very consistent and seems to be able to return my attacks, and when he got a weaker ball was able to put the ball away very strongly – in other words, he was beating me at my own game.
The advice was, keep pushing, push short to the forehand, vary it. Sure enough, when I did this I ended up winning fairly easily.
But everytime I opened up or engaged in topspin open rally, I lost.
Thing is, I kept trying it and sure enough lost the next game. Then I played push push until I get a weak ball to kill, or a way to play a strange push like a no-spin or side-spin to force an error and I started to win again.
But I really felt uncomfortable playing this – like I’m winning but hating myself – hehehe.
Of course I want to win, but it was such a different and weak way of playing, I felt a lot of resistance. In the end, I played ‘wrong’ and lost in the 5th.
I walked away feeling discombobulated because I was humbled to have to realise that more and more people are simply stronger than me in the topspin game now in the higher division, but also that I struggled to do ‘whatever it takes to win’
Perhaps you haven’t faced this as you’re a lot younger and of course much better.
Sorry if this seems like a weird question. I do know that the aim of table tennis is to make the other guy lose, not to beat them with your game, but still, it feels so wrong. Not sure why I struggled to follow through with what I knew was working.
Welcome your thoughts.
Tom Academy Coach answered 1 month ago
Hey Dan! I do understand what you mean and it’s not a strange question at all I totally understand, I think I’m lucky in the sense that I’ve always naturally had the mentality of finding a way to win by whatever means possible and don’t mind even if it feels a bit rubbish or comes across as a negative style of play, I’d still rather win the match haha. But I do think this is important because no matter what your style of play and what your strengths you will always need to adapt to your opponents and how they play and there will always be players better at you even at your strengths.
I my advice would be just try to get comfortable in adapting your game and even if that means pushing or “playing negatively” if that allows you to win games it makes you a stronger player because you are able to adapt and beat players you might not if you stick to one style of play.
The more you do this you will get more used to mixing in your best way of playing with the winning tactics for a specific game and that’s what it will start to feel more comfortable. Where as at the moment if feels probably like a totally alien game style. I think there is aways a balance of course because you can’t totally switch your style depending on your opponent but more like you just adapt and make tweaks to your game based on them. But even if it feels strange it’s a great skill to be able to change the way you play to win, many players struggle with this. Hope that all makes sense. Tom 🙂
DanttgeekThat makes a lot of sense Tom – thanks.
It was interesting to note that when I played the ‘rubbish’ way, even my topspin game started to give him trouble and I won points with that as I mixed it up a little, but only after he made a lot of mistakes. I will explore this in more detail – clearly pushing in certain ways gives different players trouble.
Speaking of which – I know some players give me higher bouncing pushes that are quite slow. I struggle to open up on these higher slow pushes and usually push back, but inevitably my push ends up bouncing too high and they then follow up with a killshot.
Whilst of course I am working to be able to open up more consistently on these type of shots, how can I keep my pushes lower – these balls are usually half long or longer. I feel like I should be able to topspin attack them with a drive or loop, but they give me trouble when they bounce so high and so slow.
