Well, had my first session with Mr. Chetan Baboor today. It was interesting, to say the least. Try to imagine Ashu with the consistency of Lupy, cuz that's what this guy is. HUGE shots on both wings, that don't miss and get placed wherever he wants.
He started out by stretching and jogging in place a bit. Nothing unusual. Then we did FH to FH counters until my eyes were getting dizzy. We got close to 50 without missing many times. This went on for about 15 minutes. We then did BH to BH counters, same thing. Here we started going faster, he was challenging me to see how fast I can go. As I've said to Ashu many times, there is no one that can go FH to FH or BH to BH faster than me. I not only kept up with him but in fact he missed before I did most of the times. Too bad this "skill" of mine has absolutely nothing to do with actually winning games.
He then went on to looping, FH's cross court. He started off slow. I noticed that his swing is actually quite large and very smooth and flowing. He had good spin on each loop. He takes the ball actually quite wide as compared to Ashu. He accelerates forward with his body into every stroke. Again, his consistency is a marvel, because again we were approaching 50 strokes before someone missed. Usually it was me. He started going a little harder, but not full out.
We then switched to backhand. His backhand reminds me a lot of cheng's. The blade is in line with his forearm and it almost looks like he takes the stroke too much sideways and comes around. It is a very euro stroke. It has wicked sidespin on it. It seems to have more kick than his forehand. Again, I'm almost getting dizzy because this guy just loops and loops without missing.
Then he turned and started doing FH from the BH side into my BH block, and now he started turning on the power. I was able to stay with him though, even on the big rips. He was impressed. Hey Larry, remember when you said I wouldn't be able to block 10 of Eric Owen's loops? This guy loops harder, and I blocked much more than 10 many, many times. How hard does this guy loop? Have you seen Ashu's best rips? That's what it looks like.
Baboor wanted me to loop his slower loops off the bounce, and punch block only the rips. I told him I didn't know this shot, so he showed it to me. It's surprisingly not as hard as one might think. This is the shot that Ashu did against Tuan Le in California. It looks so very spectacular when you pull it off. I was able to do it just a little cross court, like 50%. It's a pretty cool shot when it lands.
Now he wanted me to block one cross court and one down the line. He wanted me to try and get as much angle as possible, or stay into the center of each half of the table. He wanted me to either reloop his loop off the bounce, or punch it. He wanted me to block soft, or punch very hard. Despite all of this variation, I could almost never make him miss.
Here we switched and I looped at him to his forehand and backhand. Then we did some counterlooping. It was all quite standard, the same as I've done with Ashu except that this guy never misses.
Finally, we did the multi ball. This was the most amazing thing in the practice session, and I promise this forum that I'm going to video tape this and post it. You have to see this to believe it. Basically, I grab 4 balls at a time, I'm standing right at the net and I bounce the ball and chop as much underspin as possible. As soon as that ball leaves my paddle I drop the next ball and that one I hit quite hard and flat and as soon as I hit that one I drop the next one and hit that one too and so on. I am allowed to hit all shots to wherever I please. He is coaxing me to make it harder on him. My brain doesn't allow me to because anyone else in the state would miss all of these wouldn't they? It doesn't make sense to my brain. How can I stand at the net and hit a ball at 40mph cross court and then hit the next one at 40mph down the line and not tell him where I'm going and he loop kills both of them???
We pick up the balls after that box and he wants to do another box the same way. He is sweating. I've found that if I slap balls really hard into his middle I can actually make him miss. So he's human, after all. But just barely. These balls would frustrate anyone. I'm hitting so fast and so dead, standing right at the net and not telling him where I'm going!