Ma Long's Weakness?
This is a brand-new, technique-focused column in a question-and-answer format. The mystery figures answering are two former national team members, both now veteran coaches. So the “Reaching the Summit” column was born.
Where is the core of the penhold hook serve? Some stress wrist power when slicing down, some stress the back-toss and body turn, some say the playing arm should lift up.
These mainly stress serving it spinny. But the hook serve’s meaning lies mainly in deception, not in serving very spinny. More arm and wrist motion means less deception; less arm and wrist motion with more waist-and-abdomen motion makes the deception relatively stronger. A hook serve that does not use the body loses its meaning. It is relatively non-spinny to begin with, with small wrist motion — you barely need to make a motion. In spin terms, it is worse than a normal serve. What matters is deception.
Is Tomokazu Harimoto hiding his weak forehand killing power because he does not back off the table and is fast? Why does he also easily lose to some European players?
Harimoto’s forehand was not bad before — that is a misunderstanding. Harimoto, like Zhang Jike and Wang Hao, has a backhand fiercer, deadlier and faster than the average pro, with a higher scoring rate than most. His forehand is about average among players, giving the illusion that the forehand is a weakness. Actually no. When you play his forehand, he uses the forehand to suppress your backhand, and you despair more; better to play backhand to backhand, where you still have a chance to pivot and counter. After all, his backhand power cannot drive through you, but his forehand might pierce you in one shot. Relatively, his power was small before, so he could not back off, or his killing power — power and speed — would drop a lot. His table coverage is insufficient. Once he backs off, he immediately drops out of the top-tier ranks. Against Europeans, who mostly back off, Harimoto’s speed and power seem less threatening — his strengths are not so obvious. And he lacks Ma Long’s or Ma Lin’s short control, so relatively, against European backing-off players, the difficulty is greater. But it is not without chance, because when the opponent backs off more, you can open the angles wider.
Ma Long is called the hexagonal warrior, very all-around — does he still have holes now?
Ma Long’s weakness now is like a penhold player’s: press the backhand, move to the forehand. But when going fast against the backhand, your move to the forehand must also be fast, so he cannot recover the forehand in time. Otherwise, with no quality, slightly slow to Ma Long’s forehand, he will rip it. Everyone knows Ma Long’s weakness, but limited by personal ability, they cannot seize it. Fan Zhendong and Harimoto once seized it, so they occasionally won. When you go after others’ weaknesses, if you cannot seize them, it may conversely become their scoring strength.