This is a video of me and one of my club friends playing last night, I wonder if you could give me some tips on how to improve my game.

Also I'd like to know which do you guys think would be my USA ratings!

Im the one with the Red Boll shirt, this is the first time we record a game the nerves are shown on many mistakes hahahahahahaa

Thanks guys!

Funny you appear to be higher level player than I am - yet I am giving you advice - actually I am just telling you the stuff I don't do!

Players usually have a higher lever than their coach, knowledge and game play are two different aspects of the game! 

Thank you very much for your comment I'll appreciate it jrscatman !

We've already proven from those guess the rating threads how hard it is to guess.  Still, I'd say 1700 is way low.  His serves, strokes, service return and footwork are a heck of a lot better than any 1700 players I've seen, including Nationals and the Baltimore Teams.  1900? 2000? Hard to guess without seeing other videos.

Any 1900+ I know would have a field day with those soft blocks and counters...

Solid 1800 player means average club player who knows all strokes, read all spins but does not play enough to be super consistent and so will do many mistakes that he will avoid with more training (playing at least 3 times a week). Often such a player will have easy to return serves (no surprise effect), unsafe return of serves (90% of pushes are too long), 3rd ball attack that can be really good or missed (50/50), ok blocks, nice smashes, poor defense away from the table and mad at himself when missing lol.

HEY I described by own game pretty well here . Do you recognize yourself in the description?

 

You have more respect for the 1900 players than I do.  I think you need to look at 2050+ to see more reliable technique.  So I'll go with 1850-1900 for these guys.

fatt wrote: I wanted to say solid 1800 because a 1900/2000 player will attack those quite high serves, be better at the short game and block those loops consistently so if you get a win against a player your style who is 1900-2000 it will be 1 out of 5 or 6 matches, if that; more rarely in a rated tourney for sure. Solid 1800 player means average club player who knows all strokes, read all spins but does not play enough to be super consistent and so will do many mistakes that he will avoid with more training (playing at least 3 times a week). Often such a player will have easy to return serves (no surprise effect), unsafe return of serves (90% of pushes are too long), 3rd ball attack that can be really good or missed (50/50), ok blocks, nice smashes, poor defense away from the table and mad at himself when missing lol. HEY I described by own game pretty well here . Do you recognize yourself in the description?

Yeah, actually I think we are the country who exports the biggest number of major league baseball, hopefully it will be shown in the upcoming baseball classic! (not like the last 2 tournaments hahaha)

 

I can say two things that will immensly improve your playing and forum level if you execute them.

 

1. Do not hit so far in front of your body. It is out of your effective strike zone and you lose a lot of control doing that.

 

2. Continue to wear cool-looking proper TT clothing and make moar vids for the forum.

Awesome advice, specially number 2 hahahahahahahahah

 

What I would suggest is to try and convert more of those balls into winners. Maybe do some third ball drills where you both take turns serving as best as you can, and trying to convert them into winners.

Also try and hit the ball closer to your bodies. I've been told by a lot of people at my local club that I need to wait longer before hitting the ball to avoid reaching.

Good luck!

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't realise this thread was 2 years old. Hopefully my advice will still help others who may have a similar game to the OP.

When hitting in front of the body - is there grip modification from the standard grips taught in TT?

Yes you always want to catch the ball in front of your body especially on fh. If you contact the ball to the side of the body you are losing so much quality in your shot because you are likely getting the ball on its decline, not getting a full swing and giving your opponent much more time. You are also losing a lot of control by contacting to the side of the body.  This is just proper technique so of course there is no grip modification necessary. 

 Yes, exactly right.

Then wrist needs to be cocked back on the FH. In the video OP, has traditional grip with straight wrist. In this case, he can only hit comfortably on his side. To make contact in front of him, I think he would have to lay his wrist back or use a different forehand specific grip. Unless there is another way to do this I'm missing.

Grip can limit/expand the versatility in a stroke, but does not affect the striking point of the ball in relation to the body to such a degree that a player can't use his wrist. 

The wrist flexes through 360 degrees and this allows a smooth action through the plain of many variations in the f/hand stroke. You don't always have to follow the top Chinese to get the best out of what you are capable of.

BHman was telling the OP to not hit in front of the body. Not exactly sure what you mean. I don't see a problem with his grip.

I am suggesting in order to hit in front of his body - grip and wrist position needs to be changed. If you keep a straight wrist on FH, you can only hit the ball comfortably on the side of the body. 

Here's Ma Long playing a 1 FH, 1 BH transition into his opponent's BH.  Is he striking the ball in front of his body?  No, because he's playing the ball down the line. You can see this pretty clearly from the side-on view.

http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=ddVkXRh1UeY&p=n#/1162;1168" rel="nofollow - http://www.infinitelooper.com/?v=ddVkXRh1UeY&p=n#/1162;1168

Yah ma long is contacting in front of the body because his trunk is rotating. Think of your two shoulders as creating a triangle. When your playing arm goes back your left shoulder rotates as well because you should be turning your trunk. Contact is always in the front tip of the triangle, doesn't matter cross court or down the line.. You ask any top player or any competent coach they will tell you the same. What is silly is that this is even being debated; I mean this is fh looping 101. Also, unless you are holding the racket really unorthodoxly, grip has nothing to do with not being able to contact the ball in front of the body.

Wow shots fired. If you are contacting the ball to the side of the body and close to the table that means you are standing too far from the ball. In that case you are not getting the ball on its decline. If you have a normal body position and are waiting for the ball to get to the side of your body most likely you are getting the ball after the top of its bounce which of course means you are contacting late thus giving your opponent more time.

So what is your rating FATT? Why single me out? I guess APW doesn't understand the game either since he said "yes exactly right".

But, whatever... this argument is more about perspective and semantics than anything. And you can obviously manipulate the wrist slightly in order to change the direction of your shot, regardless of your contact point.

Exactly. Look at his shoulders, the ball is in between them.  If he was contacting to the side that would mean the ball would be parallel to his right shoulder.

Right, I gotcha.  You are looking at the player as a rotating unit and describing the point of contact as "side" or "back" depending on where in the rotation the player hits the ball.  But this is not what BH- Man was saying.  Imagine Ma Long stretching his arm forward and reaching for the ball and contacting it very close to the table's endline - this is what BH-Man is saying NOT to do and what he means by hitting the ball too far in front of the body.

Regardless of how you view it, the takeaway here is to not be impatient and  reach forward at the ball and sap your power.

Well if he is trying to say not to contact his fh off the bounce than that is correct. If the ball doesn't have much pace then it will be a shorter ball which means you have to extend more forward. 

That may be true.  It's difficult to get a perfectly timed screenshot on a video that's only in 480p.  It's pretty close to his true contact point, though.

Na you don't suck ringer. I have seen your videos and your results at the MDTTC tournaments. You are an up and coming player. Keep fighting!

That split second is important though. In the picture he hasn't brought his trunk forward. His contact will be while he is going forward with his trunk.

 I don't know enough about Ma Long's situation to make a judgement, but i learned long ago that hitting the ball in front of you keeps the ball, the table and the player all in view, it makes you quicker, covers the crossover point more easily and enables you to track your opponent.

It might be different at top world level,  (Its not) but I guess not many of us are gonna get there.

Don't get obsessed with technique perfection guys, as long as it is solid and falls within the boundaries of what constitutes an acceptable level of power and consistency, it can be part of a quality players game. Have a look at world class players who don't have what is currently perceived to be a 'perfect technique' ( most of them) and ask yourself how they ever managed to get so good.

 Kreanga Anyone ? or how about Schlager I wish I had their technique flaws.

APW46,

I know that you are a much higher level player than I am (just like Tk), so I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you're wrong.  But let me ask you a few questions, if you don't mind:

1) Have you ever videotaped your FH down the line from the side camera angle, similar to the Ma Long picture I posted above?  The reason I ask is because I used to think I was contacting the ball in front of my body  when I viewed my loop from the front and back camera angles, but when I looked at it from dead side on I realized that my contact point was later than I thought it was.

2) If you really are hitting down the line shots in front of your body, can you explain how you manipulate your wrist in order to achieve this?  How is your swing different from Simon Gerada, who also contacts the ball late and to the side of his body (side using my definition, not tks) to go down the line?

Although it might sound like I'm disagreeing with you, I often find that I need to think about hitting the ball out in front when playing forehands.  It's just when I look at myself on tape I find that's not what is actually happening.

Yah good point. Technique is not the subject it is more about having the right approach to the shot. By crossover point do you mean the cross-step movement from playing a step around fh to a fh in the fh side or corner. If so, yes it makes that shot more effective because when you turn and play a quality fh to the opponents bh or middle you are almost always going to get a ball back to the bh side of the table, so then you know you can sit on the bh corner and play another strong fh. However, if your opponent is really strong and plays your quality fh turn down the line you will have less time because by taking the ball earlier you are also getting a return from opponent back quicker, making covering the wide fh more difficult. However, if it is a strong fh step around you hit, not only is the likelihood of the opponent changing directions lower, the likelihood of the opponent changing directions and playing a quality block or counterspin is even lower.