Side swipe with Long pips

There's a wonderful documentary called The Knuckleball. It's about the baseball player named R.A. Dickey who' was specializing in throwing knuckleballs. The wobble effect of the knuckleball is very similar to the wobble effect in table tennis. Same principal. And yes, the wobble is real and not imaginary. Obviously, the sport of baseball has a lot more money to throw around so they brought in people from NASA to analyze it. As I said, phenomenal documentary, highly recommend it for LP players.

Had a go with practicing my side swipe last night vs short backspin balls.

tt4me wrote: mercuur wrote: Wiping makes sure that the pips bend. The difference it makes depends on how easy the pips bend, stiffness, length etc.  The elasticity (working on the ball) of long pips for bending is less compared with a frontal compression on the top so therefor it makes the rebound slower, more controlled. But then any tangential motion will do.  I prefer to make chopping strokes to increase back spin.  However, I don't see any significant slow down. This needs to be tested.

another place where a knuckleball is very noticeable - besides when throwing a baseball or a softball:  a serve in volleyball

jrscatman wrote: tt4me wrote: mercuur wrote: Wiping makes sure that the pips bend. The difference it makes depends on how easy the pips bend, stiffness, length etc.  The elasticity (working on the ball) of long pips for bending is less compared with a frontal compression on the top so therefor it makes the rebound slower, more controlled. But then any tangential motion will do.  I prefer to make chopping strokes to increase back spin.  However, I don't see any significant slow down. This needs to be tested. Why not contact Dr. Neubauer, they used to be pips specialists. I'm sure they've probably tested and documented this behaviour.

Egghead wrote:

I used and therefor referred to grippy lp (meteor lp etc) with a higher throw then Talon (I guess).
When the racket is slightly angled left seen from above and I do a sideswipe to the right more firm as if applying sidespin, the placement can be the same as with a frontal return and no sideswipe. The tangential throw of the rubber compensates for the bladeangle. The resistance of the ball to adapt sidespin is much higher when a ball allready has topspin.
From that the tangential throw increases while it hardly changes the spin.
the contact on the blade is softer from a less frontal collision with the blade. The result is similar from drawing back for speed and with less susceptivity for topspin as a bonus.

Most important advantahe is that I can abrubtly change the blade angle more or less tangential and the contactpoint on the ball to vary placement. 
Because the topspin grips less with a more "skidding" contact I sometimes have to swipe the ball with a more upward stroke to decrease the topspin more for control. When possible I can swipe more downward  for more  spin continuation.

In essence I use the tangential throw of the rubber, contactpoint with the ball and swiping to steer the ball likewise as with back and topspin. Steering the ball on itself is an important part of control.
The most important result is that the opponent at least has more difficulty, less time to react on placement and more difficulty to read spin from my strokes because I have more stroke variation and more sudden change of placement. 

I,m not doing these things all the time or always in extreme offcourse (or always succesfull). That may seem so from explaining but would simply be ridiculous.
Control would suffer too much and often a more basic stroke is simply a better choice or opponents can force me to it more often.
But "troubling the opponent" is also part of controlling the ralley and opponent. So what good is it to have a safe servereturn that is killed immediately after. Particularly with servereturn I can use these variations more extreme with relatively good control.

With servereturn I consider a ball to have a spin perimeter and therefor also two points (or poles) at largest distance from the spin perimeter.  A sidespin ball has the poles at bottom and top. Corkscrew has them at front and back and topspin and backspin at left and right side.
So both backspin/topspin and sidespin have the perimeter at the back of the ball but more corkscrew combined with topspin, backspin or sidespin, angles the perimeter. One pole can be  approached more then from the side as the other.
Sideswiping left or right and contacting one side or the other makes a difference then otherwise it doesn,t.  Each pole can be anywhere on the ball but always at opposite sides. 



Edited by mercuur - 06/04/2014 at 7:12am

I this thread

I side swipe sometimes but it's not to do anything specific to the ball. What it does is to help me stabilize my racket angle against dead balls. I tend to keep my angle consistent if I side swipe against dead balls. It has no effect on the spin on the ball.

Pushblocker wrote: I side swipe sometimes but it's not to do anything specific to the ball. What it does is to help me stabilize my racket angle against dead balls. I tend to keep my angle consistent if I side swipe against dead balls. It has no effect on the spin on the ball.

I interpret this as bending the pips before the ball really contacts the blade.
Otherwise the supple pips Talon has will "nodd" more unpredictable in any possible direktion and different pips in different direktions which is less predictable for how the ball contacts the blade and the angle it bounces off.
A less stable bounce from less predictable surface can feel as a more unstable bladeangle offcourse.

When the pips are supple it needs a lesser frictional coefficient with the ball and/or less agressive wiping to bend them and then it does nothing significant to a no spin ball.
Even when the frictional coefficient is high and the pips are supple the friction will be minimal because the pips bend easier then that friction can possibly occur.

An amount of undeliberate sidewiping is in almost any stroke where the racket has to come from the side in a quick reaction.  Every lp player is probably sidewiping the ball a lot because of that.
Long pips don,t punish this as bad technicque the same as inverted and therefor doesn,t count as bad technique and lp players tend to do this much more. It helps to create more wobble even when it is maybe not intended for this. 
This affects the ball enough from instabalizing the spinplane of a topspin ball to some extend without stopping the spin.
With grippy and stiffer lp the imbalancing side effect is even stronger but the spin is also decreased to a minimum.. With a chop that continues the spin some wobble is still possible though (even wth inverted).
No spin in the ball means there is no longer a spinplane and - axis that can be more or less stable ;
A no - spin serve won,t wobble.



Edited by mercuur - 06/11/2014 at 5:59am

tt4me wrote: Pushblocker wrote: I side swipe sometimes but it's not to do anything specific to the ball. That is what I have been trying to tell people. GD Talon 0X has little grip and can't do much to the ball's spin.

You can win by the ball placement as well. Anyway, I believe side swipe gives LP players more than 1 weapon. I find that I can use various side-swipe to attack an light underspin, light topspin or no-spin ball. I had had a training session with an ex-China National team hitting partner. He can return all my pushes with all my push's effects back to me (no idea how he did it) . With that, I need to return his underspin serve with side-swipe.