Predict ball position with angles

Playing close to the table gives you more angles to play with. You have more choices in where you can place the ball. If you are away from the table your shot angle possibilities shrink.

The safest angle to play is across the court. I’ll explain. Assume you and your opponent are right handed. Say you play it cross court from the backhand corner, the greatest angles your opponent can play is to put it down the line to your forehand or back to you to your backhand corner. If it does come back down the line, to Photo by Greatmazinger your forehand, the distance between you and the ball is small and reachable.

If you played it down the line to your opponent’s forehand, your opponent now has a greater angle to play it away from you, cross court. You will have to cross step or leap across the table to return it. The distance between you and the ball is larger, dependent on how far away from the table you are. This is because the further away you are, the wider the angle will be.

If you watch pros lob, they can read where the ball is approximately going to come back, dependent on where they place the ball. Usually they place it on the opponent’s backhand. They then reposition themselves closer to their own backhand side, as the angle is greater there. If it comes down the line, the distance is reachable; as the ball won’t be further away from them the further they are away from the table.

Playing it cross court means that there is more table for the ball to land on, but will take longer to land, giving your opponent more time. When you play it down the line, there is less table to play with but the shot will be quicker. When I hurt my back and played table tennis, I learned that you don’t need any fancy stuff to win points. Although I couldn’t move much, all you need is this knowledge of angles. My strategy basically was to place it cross court constantly, so the ball comes back to me mostly. I would play it to their backhand corner, until they were out of position to the far right or they pivot and play it with their forehand, then I would place it down the line. Less effort expended, more points won.

If you do play it down the line, always keep in mind that it might come back cross court away from you. Reposition yourself.

Use this knowledge to move around less, to guess where the ball is going and to win tennis games on the xbox :D