Butterfly Table Tennis Question and Answer
Question:
I want to ask the most important question for me! It is: after the forehand topspin stroke, should you close the racket angle in front of your face??? My couch says that there are two steps of doing a forehand topspin stroke: first-you accelerate into the ball to spin it; second-you close the racket angle of your racket in front of your face which will help you to control the ball and to guide it. Is this true?! I am asking because when watching the professional players training, I don’t see that in their stroke. They don’t close the racket angle as my couch tells me to do. Is this different for different rubbers? Is it the same for backhand topspin stroke? Please give me advice!
Answer:
This the Experts question was answered by Coach Jun Gao. She is the head coach at California Table Tennis in Rosemead, CA. Coach Gao’s response is as follows:
Alexander,
First you need to learn how to loop.
Start by looping against a backspin ball because it is easier. To loop backspin, you need to wait a little bit for the ball drop, and put your paddle lower than the ball, and spin up. If you cannot spin up or cannot make an arc you need to adjust your paddle angle more vertical and try to let ball contact in the top half of or center of your paddle. If you have good angle but contact on half bottom of your paddle you may not able to make a good arc.
For topspin loop, based on already knowing how to loop backspin, the difference for looping against topspin is you need to find on top of the timing and close your paddle a little bit more and make sure your paddle still needs to be below than the ball a little bit and spin forward.
I hope this is helpful.
Coach Gao
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