The following observations are of course my personal view and do not claim to be the “truth”!
Here comes Fabian Akerström (SWE): I make an exception to the rule here, since in principal Akerström is not a defender in the traditional sense, but an attacker or allrounder which uses long pips and twiddling to break up the game, occasionally defend and thus confuse the attacker.
Strengths:
good forehand topspin
good stopblocking topspins down his backhand thus creating short bouces with lots of backspin
good deceptive use of long pimples in all situations: pushlifting, pushing with topspin, defending with heavy backspin
very complete versatile playing style and nice twiddling of the bat
good backhand topspin
good use of long pips when returning serves into his forehand
good deceptive serves with forehand (heavy chop and no chop looking the same)
Weaknesses:
the limitation of long pips in attacking style is also the main weakness: You can’t really block fast topspins close to the table. The ball will either float back far off the table or simply slip through the bat. Already slight changes of the blocking angle have heavy impact on where the ball goes.
once the opponent has played him a couple of times it becomes more difficult since the pips will have less impact when pushing the ball back
defend generally too high when far off the table because he is standing upgright instead of bending down his knees more
Suggestions:
Should practice defending properly when forced back from the table both backhand and forehand with long pips
learn to use more wrist when chopping slow and spinny topspins
show get to the habit of going down into his legs when forced to defend from far away of the table.
The following observations are of course my personal view and do not claim to be the “truth”!
Here comes CHOI Moonyoung (Korea):
This is the only video I currently found and may not be very representative since the attacker is using short pips on the forehand which is always very awkward for 3 reasons:
you don’t get real and normal topspins as expected but just “lifted” ball which are difficult to defend and difficult to attack
very often those players are very good at smashing pushes and defence balls. Defendig fast hits is always more tricky than defending topspins
when the attacker plays a push/stop-ball the ball generally gets topspin in the other direction and the defenders tends to put the next push off the table as you can also see in this video
Strengths:
good general physical fitness
good but not very consistent backhand defending
good forehand topspin on pushes and topspins down her forehand
Weaknesses:
too vulnerable on “pseudo” or “empty” topspins=topspins with nearly no topspin. She puts them too often into the net.
too much backhand serves of same style
too inconsistent in forehand defending and pushing
too vulnerable on sidespin serves
Suggestions:
practise more consistent defending on various topspins
practise greater variety of serves
attack more often with forehand
learn to break up the game by push-lifting the ball with long pips on backhand or even learn backhand topspin on pushes
The following observations are of course my personal view and do not claim to be the “truth”!
Here comes LIU Fei (China):
This is a great one:
Strengths:
good footwork and general physical fitness
very good, low and consistent forhand defending with pips-in rubber which is very rare in female table tennis.
forehand push with pips-in is very choppy producing a lot of first topspin errors by the opponent
backhand defence also very low and choppy
Weaknesses:
generally too much defence only, nearly no attacking capabilities shown over whole match
too many backhand serves of same style and placement
Suggestions:
absolutely needs to work on attacking capabilities, especially forehand topspin on pushes down her middle or forehand
also counter topspins or aggressive blocks from behind the table with forehand need to be developed, same as most of male defenders and also female players as Wu Yang f.e
The following observations are of course my personal view and do not claim to be the “truth”!
Here comes Stanislav Kucera (Czech Republic):
Strengths:
good footwork
very good fighting spirit
nice use of long pips when forehand defending (still too high too often, but this is correctable)
very good spontaneous and surprising blocking with backhand pimples in rubber
nice backhand topspin
good forehand counter topspin
Weaknesses:
generally returning defense balls too high and often not “choppy” enough. This is due to the fact that he either takes on the topspin too high instead of letting it go down further or that he is not chopping hard enough through the ball when taking it higher
backhand defence ball often not choppy enough due to a technique issue: He is rather pushing/floating the ball with the pips rather than cutting through “underneathe” the ball to give it more rotation
not showing variety of forehand servers
pushes with long pips bounce too high (maybe wrong choice of material here, but hard to say at this stage)
forehand topspin on pushes good be more consistent or faster
tabletennisdefenders 