Tip of The Week: Shot Awareness in Practice
by Larry Hodges

What you do in practice you will do in matches. Therefore, you should be aware of the placement of your shots in practice drills, both direction and depth. This gives you feedback on your accuracy so you can make adjustments. Without this feedback you can’t really improve your ball control and improve your accuracy.

When you play a match, your attacks and blocks should normally go deep to the wide corners or the opponent’s middle (roughly playing elbow). Long pushes should also go very deep, mostly to the corners. When I tell players to do this, they often say that they are just trying to get the ball on the table, and that they can’t control it well enough to really aim for these spots. Exactly!!! But if you do this in practice, your shots will become more accurate, you will be able to go to these three spots, and it will become a habit. But only if you become aware of your shots in practice so that you can make constant adjustments as you strive for better accuracy.