The following observations are of course my personal view and do not claim to be the “truth”! Here comes Isabelle Siyun Li (Singapore):
Strengths:
- very good forehand topspin
- good backhand serves
- very consistent defending on both sides but generally too high
- good forehand counter loop from far behind the table
Weaknesses:
- defence on forehand and backhand often returned too high, so that she gets punished by unretrievable smashes
- not a great variety of forehand serves shown
- forehand pushes too high and not choppy enough
- backhand defense takes the ball too high (with short pimples as far as I could see)
Suggestions:
- a simple “beginners” error in my view is: She does not clean her pimples in-rubber on the forehand when it is covered by dust. You can see loads of white powder on the rubber in close-ups in the video. On any of these spaces of the bat you won’t get any spin when chopping, the ball “slips” through the racket when you attempt to block and finally you rapidly damage the rubber which is unnecessary (even if you get loads by your sponsor!)
- get more versatile serves, also with forehand
- take the ball lower when defending with short pips on backhand
- Forehand defense is rather “showeling” the ball back instead of chopping/cutting through the ball. She should practise chopping which deserves the name!
- I also the a rubber issue here: The short pips are not choppy enough and she doesn’t win a lot of points by blocking or counter hitting the ball with the backhand. So they are not very useful in my opinion. I thing she should try long pips or the short pips that Hou Yingchao is using.
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