How to Beat a Long Pips Player: Tips from a Former National Team Coach
This is a brand-new, technique-focused column in a Q&A format. The mysterious expert answering questions is a former national team member (now a senior coach) who prefers to remain anonymous. They just want a quiet life and a good night’s sleep — no fame needed.
Sharing these technical insights feels genuinely valuable, and it’s a nice complement to the usual equipment talk. That’s how this “Reaching the Peak” column came to be.
Q: Can you briefly explain what kind of spin comes back when a long pips player attacks with different amounts of force? I can handle defensive long pips okay, but when someone attacks with long pips, the rhythm and spin throw me off pretty quickly.
Long pips themselves don’t generate much spin — they just reverse it. If you send over a no-spin ball (a flat ball), it doesn’t matter how hard the opponent drives it, the return will also have basically no spin. But when a long pips player drives the ball with force, the return will feel a bit heavy as it comes at you. That’s not spin — it’s more of a sinking quality, similar to short pips.
If your opponent fires a fast drive with long pips, don’t bother reading their paddle angle. The ball coming at you is flat, but it has some weight to it. If you try to push it or just block it without looping, it’ll tend to go into the net.
How do you play against a long pips opponent? You cannot have sidespin in your strokes. Otherwise their return will sail wide or float unpredictably. Also avoid short balls near the net — that gives them an easy chance to drive aggressively. Try to play longer arcs.
On your serve, use less power. Don’t serve heavy backspin, because they can easily redirect and redirect that spin back at you. The best approach is a slow, long, no-spin serve. That forces them to just push it back softly, and you can attack directly.
(Note: The above covers most long pips situations, but some highly irregular or non-standard long pips may behave differently. The above is the main framework.)
If you send a no-spin ball and the opponent returns it, but you keep going out, that’s not because their return has topspin. Most likely you’re using a topspin-against-backspin loop motion on a ball that doesn’t have backspin, so you’re overshooting. It could also be that your body isn’t staying over the ball and you’re leaning back when reaching for it.
In general, long pips only produce reverse spin — they can’t easily create spin on their own. Whether a long pips player chops, blocks, or loops the ball, if the previous ball coming to them was backspin, their return will be topspin or no-spin.