Game and skills analysis Aleksandr Lushin (Estonia)

The following observations are of course my personal view and do not claim to be the “truth”!

Here comes Aleksandr Lushin (Estonia):

Strengths:

• Good forehand and backhand serves
• Good forehand topspin
• Very choppy pushes and chops with forehand presumingly due to a very sticky forehand rubber. This has the advantage of being able to generate a lot of backspin when pushing and chopping form a wellplaced position. The disadvantage is a higher vulnerability if confronted with slow and very spinny topspins (ball goes up too high or off the table)
• unusual and interesting habit of taking serves into his backhand with the forehand being able to generate a lot of backspin
• sometimer he realizes forehand sidespin chops à la CHTCHETININE  which are heavily loaded and win him direct points
• good twiddling of the bat thus using rubber in when pushing with backhand (preventing fast topspins on his pimples out)

Weaknesses:

• forehand chop often goes too high or off the table. Still too inconsistant
• footwork could still improve, often not ideally placed for defending even though he has time enough to move to a better positon
• Backhand defense also not consistent enough and goes up too high too often
• sometimes overusing pushes with pimples-in on both sides thus getting the opponent too much used to always spin the ball up
• in his match against Cassin (France) he doesn’t seem to believe in his defending qualities and played to many half-hearted attack strokes.

Suggestions:

• Should not take too often serves into his backhand with forehand. Too often punishes by fast topspin down the line into his forehand
• Should work a bit on the power of his first topspin. It’s quite consistent but could have a bit more pace.
• Should absolutely learn to use long pips when defending slow and spinny topspins down his forehand (I can not stress often enough that this is a really good weapon against good attackers widely underused by many defenders) or at least to let the ball come down much lower when using pips in.
• generally he should let topspins go down lower before chopping them back.
• also he should try to chop back the ball when confronted with smashes down his backhand instead of lifting the ball up with pips in, loosing the rally most of the time in this case

Game and skills analysis Artur Abusev (Russia)

The following observations are of course my personal view and do not claim to be the “truth”!

Here comes Artur Abusev (Russia):

I have to correct a bit the following. I think his attacking, physical fitness and versatility improved a lot. One main weekness to me is wrong material. He seems to be using short pips, which are not choppy enough when defending, often go long and high and have problems returning smashes. The few blocking abilities of short pips do not make up for the lack of backspin in defending in my view.

 

Strengths:

• very good footwork and physical fitness
• powerful forehand topspin
• consistent defending with long pips on backhand
• consistent pushing with backhand with pips-in
• good fighting spirit and ambition

Weaknesses:

• generally too much defending and too much pushing with backhand even from extrem forehand side thus preventing himself from opportunities to attack with forehand
• almost pushing with pips-in all the time when pushing with backhand thus making it too easy for the opponent to know what backspin he gets
• forehand defending often too high because he rather uses a “shoveling” technique instead of chopping technique (going round the ball too much instead of cutting “through” it)
• underuse of longpips on backhand when pushing
• underuse of longpips on his forehand when confronted with heavy slow topspins down his forehand
• underuse of his very good and spinny forehand topspin, mainly because of pushing with backhand all over the table
• not showing a great variety of serves. The forehand serve and backhand serve look very much the same all the time

Suggestions:

• should practise more versatile serves especially the ones that occasionally will enable him to attack right after the serve with his forehand
• should practice chopping with forehand instead of “shoveling”
• should try to use long pips when pushing with backhand or defending with forehand
• should practise aggressively pushing with longpips into corners or take the pushball occasionally very early to give opponent less time to move for his topspin
• practise lifting the ball with longpips on pushes and heavy spin backhand topspin