Old rubbers and a lesson learned....

So I played a match tonight against an ostensibly weak team. 2 of my games were no problem but I lost the third.

I normally win a good few points off my serve - I'm a left hander and usually serve with heavy spin to the opponent's forehand. Against this guy he was getting most of my serves back but I could tell he wasn't reading them - he was just doing a tentative push back and they were returning with crazy and unpredictable spin. On top of that he just kept relentlessly pushing yet I found it hard to loop the returns - I kept misjudging them - they went long or in the net. When I did connect with one he was nowhere near returning it!

So...the  lesson learned was - check his bat before the game - turns out the forehand rubber was shinier than a polished table and the backhand was fairly dead too, but had a tiny amount of friction.

My question though - although I'd have abandoned my heavy spin serves if I'd checked the bat first - I was still struggling with loops - felt like I didn't have anything to work against when trying to generate spin - any tactics for playing someone with a wrecked bat??!!

Thanks in anticipation!

Phil

Hi Phil,

I guess the first and good lesson that you have realised is to check the players bat first.  This is a good one for other readers to learn.

I think the best thing to do when a player has that type of bat is to keep the spin simple because if you put a lot of sidespin you will get something weird back.

Backspin and no spin serves are often good because the ball doesn't deviate sideways when they return it.  You can control the amount of backspin on the ball.  You will get the amount of spin back that you put on yourself.  If you put a lot of backspin then you will get a lot of topspin back.  If you put less spin you will get less spin back.

Since he had different rubbers with different friction on both sides, it may be a matter during the match of experimenting a little as to which side gives you the more comfortable return.