Chen Meng vs Sun Yingsha Forehand Loop: Whose Technique Produces Higher Quality?
Chen Meng vs Sun Yingsha Forehand Loop: Whose Technique Produces Higher Quality?
This is a brand-new, technique-focused Q&A column. The mystery advisor is a former national team player and veteran coach who prefers to remain anonymous.
How should I play against an old-school hard pimples attacker — someone who can loop, smash, and has a good serve?
With this style of play — left-side push, right-side attack — their scoring comes mainly from the forehand. That means their forehand has been trained far longer than yours.
In other words: your push quality, short game, deep-angle push, side-cut, and block techniques must all be decisively better than theirs. That’s the only way you might win, because their forehand is usually stronger.
If your backhand can’t outgrind their block, the match will be tough — they’re fast. Your best approach is to keep looping until they’re purely defending: if they’re just blocking everything back, they’ll be far more nervous than you. That’s your only real option.
At the same time, you need at least one ball that threatens their forehand side to prevent them from easily stepping around to use their forehand.
Try serving a short ball to their forehand, force a push, then loop to their backhand repeatedly — stay steady, don’t miss — so they can’t find time to step around.
My upper arm never relaxes when looping. How do I fix it?
Put your attention on your body’s core. Let your bodyweight and rhythm meet the rhythm of the incoming ball — don’t always use your arm to reach for it.
The spin and force on the ball come from that last snap of the wrist and fingers. When first learning to loop, there’s no need to consciously accelerate the forearm. If you do, the forearm pulls the wrist tight. Then you lose wrist snap on return of serve.
For advanced players who can separate forearm and wrist activation, yes, deliberately use the forearm. But if you have only a vague sense of how those two parts feel when powering up, it’s better at first not to try to accelerate with the forearm.
Can you explain the differences in Chen Meng’s and Sun Yingsha’s forehand loop mechanics? It feels like Chen Meng uses her body and legs more.
Chen Meng produces more upward friction; Sun Yingsha produces more forward drive. There’s no real difference in quality — they just involve slightly different muscle groups. Both players are hitting in their most relaxed natural state. Chen Meng drives harder off the ground with her legs; Sun Yingsha (Sha Sha) thrusts her hip more forward.
Don’t deliberately imitate any one person’s mechanics — that’s already going down the wrong road. Everyone’s muscle structure is different. As long as you stay within a reasonable technical framework, you should let your own body find its way.
If you want to improve your stroke quality, focus on feeling your finger activation. The amount of finger pressure should keep changing — imagine a scale from 1 to 10. For club players, getting to a 6 is excellent. Start from 1 and test each level for at least a week. Eventually you’ll find the pressure that fits your fingers. When you hit that level, you’ll feel a oneness with the ball — strokes that are both powerful and consistent.
On half-off-table balls for the forehand loop, should I support with my legs, lean slightly forward, and use the forearm to actively drive arc?
Note: for half-off-table balls you mainly rely on your body. Watch Timo Boll loop half-off-table balls — it’s very obvious. If you focus on using your arm, you’ll misjudge the contact point and be afraid to accelerate, worried about clipping the table edge. Use your body to find the ball.
Of course, when today’s national team players loop these half-off-table underspin balls, they often don’t brute-force smash it — that gives poor quality, and when the opponent blocks it back you can’t follow up. Instead they mostly do a light-touch low-arc mini-loop, then chain from there.