Who says you can't attack with long pips?

For probably at least a couple of years now, I have developed a penhold twiddling game where I've gone from inverted/long pip to short pip/long pip seeing the benefits of both. Generally when I play these styles, I play with the attacking rubber on my forehand occasionally twiddling to the long pips for say a chop-block vs topspin or an attacking stroke vs backspin.... Then it happened.

I asked myself "Is it possible to play an attacking forehand long pip game full time?"

And what I mean by full time is to say playing the long pips on my forehand 95% of the time. Furthermore, not just chop-blocking which has it's purpose. But to counter drive back most shots. Can it be done?

That question was answered thanks in large part to my training partner Ben coming over to my place to find out. You see I had been hitting well vs the robot over the last few days. However I've been down this road enough times to know just because it works vs a robot, doesn't mean it'll work vs a real person. 

The short answer to a tricky question is simply "Yes. It is possible." Truth of the matter is if you dig deep enough, some players do it. Take my current idol Wang Qiu Yi  (王秋伊) for example. She plays this very exact same style.... Just 100 times better. ;)

She's in the red here. Her black is inverted. Her red is LPs.

My setup was the popular Palio ck531a on a 1.0 sponge. I find the sponge very important as on slow balls are easy to counter-drive into the net. You have to supply all the power yourself. So having a sponge there helps propel that ball over the net. Faster balls are actually easier to counter-drive as you feed off the speed of your opponents shot. 

Honestly the stroke on a counter-drive vs topspin with a sponged long pips isn't that far off from a very thin sponged, or even hardbat short pip rubber. If you can drive with a low friction rubber, you can attack with long pips. You have to guide the ball a little and pick your shots. But anybody familiar with short pips will be quite familiar with that concept. As long as you think "swing forward with almost every counter-drive stroke you have, you should have confidence that good things will happen." As you might imagine, it's a nightmare for the opponent to handle.

There is perhaps nobody better, I'd argue in the state of Nebraska, to handle long pips play than my training partner. He has routinely seen it for the last two plus years. He doesn't struggle with them on the same level as virtually every other player I've encountered. The great thing is that I could tell the added aggression & pace of driving through topspin vs always chop-blocking offered him a challenge as he has to constantly adjust to the pace and/or spin variation. If it can challenge him, I've got to imagine virtually everyone else will hate playing against it. As we move forward he will be a great training partner as it will be important to train with someone who can keep the ball coming back on the table. This way I get good practice in. 

On the backhand I have Globe 999. I tend to prefer Chinese tacky on my backhand for RPB. This style simply does not work if you do not have a weapon to put away the easy balls. Inevitability, players will either purposely or mistakenly, because they're confused, will fish up a high bouncing, relatively spin-less ball, almost saying "okay see if you can put it away with those pips". That's where the inverted comes in.

I'm finding that perhaps twiddling too often can mess up your feeling and muscle memory. If I am hitting with a 1.0 long pip sponge on the forehand and then twiddle to hit a kill shot with inverted, that inverted will feel like a trampoline and I'm guessing it would be easy to hit that ball long. Furthermore, then I have to adjust back to the feel of my regular long pips. For now I think it's best if I can play more middle of the table and simply play those attack balls with the RPB, which is a very natural shot for me, I'm better served doing that.

I will wrap up this blog post for now and I am looking to post club video match play soon here with this new style to track my progress. The next time club plays is on November 6th so it will be at some point shortly after that. 

I think this has a ton of potential. Now I just have to be willing to put in the time to master this unique style.