Hold It! Why Hitting the Ball Earlier is Not Always Better
Wednesday September 26, 2007
| There are a number of table tennis truisms - such as always choose to serve first, new players should start with normal rubber, and long serves should be attacked. Sometimes these truisms are founded on solid reasons, and sometimes they are simply conventions from bygone eras that have outlived their usefulness.
One truism that still holds true in general is the advice to hit the ball as soon as you comfortably can. Hitting early gives you a number of benefits, including giving your opponent less time to recover, making it easier to use his pace, and increasing your ability to angle the ball wide since you are closer to the table. But even so, there are still times when deliberately hitting the ball later rather than earlier can be a good decision. Today I'm going to discuss the reasons you may want to occasionally wait a little longer to hit the ball in ping-pong. |
|
| Wait For It! Photo © 2006 Greg Letts, licensed to About.com, Inc. |