Strategy against a forehand player

hi alois and jeff,

recently i have been playing with a player whose forehand loop probably goes a 1000 miles an hour!!

he has a brilliant offense (fh) and he smashes (a brutal forward and horizontal swing) almost anything above net height even if half long with heavy backspin. playing it long is almost suicide as his loop as i mentioned is very very fast and spinny.

in contrast to his forehand , his backhand and service is very weak. he uses pimples (long) (bh)and doesnt chop and surprisingly enough, almost never pivots! as you had told before alois, i use sidespin backspin and no spin serves against him and get a very easy 3rd ball.  i use a similar method for geting winners in a rally too. But despite all of this, i am just not able to get a good number of wins against him!

Am i using the right tactic and is there any other tactic i should use besides 2nd and 3rd atttack and the push and topspin routine?

Really looking forward to your reply and much appreciated!

HI Shripathi,

It sounds like you are on the right track.  See if you can keep the ball on his backhand side until you get the right ball to attack.  You can be patient if he is not pivoting and using that deadly forehand.

The other thing you need to do sometimes is push the ball wide on his forehand and make him move out there so he doesn't get too settled on his backhand side.

If he is winning sometimes it must mean he is doing something to win the points.  Try to analyse more closely each point he wins and then see if you can find a way to stop that happening.