Check Out Your Opponent
Study your future opponent carefully if you get the chance before the match, or even during your match if you have to, looking for such points as:- Is he good at noticing when his opponent twiddles?
- Does he know how it works? Does he make a lot of mistakes or hesitate when playing against the antispin?
- Is he aggressive or safe when playing against the antispin? Does it work well?
- Does he return the antispin balls with little spin, heavy spin, or varied?
- Does he play better against the antispin when you chop with it, or hit? Or is he equally good/bad at both?
Dealing With Floated Balls
Many opponents try to nullify the antispin by hitting no-spin balls to it, so that there is no spin to reverse, thus helping them have less problem in reading the spin. Others use a no-spin return in the hopes that the antispin user will pop the ball up high when attempting a normal chop with the antispin side (sound familiar?).Here are some tips for dealing with floated balls to your antispin.
- The bread and butter shot that you use should be a stroke that is mainly from up to down and with just a little bit of forward motion. The angle of the bat is slightly open, so the ball is lifted only a little. This results in a return from the antispin that will stay low over the net, and will be difficult to attack. Using more forward motion whilst keeping the amount of up to down movement the same will result in a return that is low and fast.
Be aware that there is a limit to how fast you can perform this shot, since there is a minimal amount of topspin on the ball. You are basically relying on gravity to pull the ball on to the table, so to much forward motion will push the ball too far off the end before gravity can do its thing.
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A second shot that can be made occasionally (don't overdo it) is a chop return with the antispin. There are two important things to note here: firstly, the swing must be reasonably fast, and secondly, the ball must be brushed, with the bat sliding under the ball.
- Forgetting to swing fast enough will result in a ball that doesn't reach the net.
- Forgetting to brush the ball will cause the ball to go high in the air, off the end of the table.
- A reasonably fast swing with a good brush of the ball will result in a return that is low, fast, and that looks like it has a fair amount of backspin but actually has none. The opponent will probably misread the spin and return the ball too high, and this return should be attacked with your normal rubber.
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A third shot that can also be used every so often is to hit the ball with a stroke that looks like topspin. The bat should be slightly open, since you will need to lift the ball a little in order for it to clear the net. Remember that there will be very little or no topspin on the ball, so you will be depending on gravity to bring the ball down on the table. This means that this attacking stroke cannot be performed at high speed, unless the ball is above the level of the net, in which case the ball can be hit directly onto the table. The higher the ball, the harder it can be hit.
Don't worry that you can't hit the ball very hard - against all but the best opponents the sheer change of pace and spin will be enough to prevent them from making a strong attack.
