male, Professional high level defenders

Game and skills analysis Artur Abusev (Russia)

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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

One thought on “Game and skills analysis Artur Abusev (Russia)”

  1. Markus
    I agree with you. It is a great disadvantage that Artur can’t generate more backspin with his forehand. A high, long and strong backspin ball is very dangerous becaus the offensive player is often too close to the table. Pushes of the offensiv player should be attacked much more in my opinion. He often plays over the middle because he can reach the answer of the opponent with his backhand either on the left or the right side. Finally, I think Artur should attack more with his forehand like Chen Weixing and use his backhand to defend and keep the ball in play.
    Cheers, Martin

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