Table tennis grips and playing styles
is unique among racket sports in that it supports a wide variety of playing styles and methods of gripping the racket, at even the highest levels of play. This article describes some of the most common table tennis grips and playing styles seen in competitive play. The playing styles listed in this article are broad categories with fuzzy boundaries, and most players will possess some combination of these styles while leaning towards a "favorite". Many advanced players will also add some spin and speciial shoot on there own
, shakehand grips and attack-oriented playing styles are the most popular styles in high-level play. While many argue that this is because shakehand grips and attacking styles have a competitive advantage, it is also true that the shakehand grip is easier to learn as a beginner, and attack-oriented playing styles have broader aesthetic appeal than defensive playing styles. Regardless, players with a variety of playing styles and grip techniques still manage to play and win tournaments at the highest level.
In the 1970s, most European teams focused on training all of their players with the same equipment and playing style: shakehand grip with inverted rubber on the racket, playing a loop-focused attacking style, using the forehand to cover 2/3 of the table and backhand to cover 1/3 of the table. In contrast, the Chinese team maintained a wide variety of playing styles, equipment, and grip variations among their players. The diversity maintained by the Chinese team is no doubt a factor in their dominance of the sport over the past several decades, and European teams have recently figured this out and followed suit.
Racket grips
Competitive table tennis players grip their rackets in a variety of ways. Almost all competitive players grip their rackets with either the shakehand grip or a penhold grip. Numerous variations on gripping styles exist. The rules of the International Table Tennis Federation do not prescribe the manner in which one must grip the racket.Shakehand (aka "Handshake") grip
Shakehand is possibly the oldest surviving grip since the table tennis racket took its current shape. It is named because one holds the racket as if they are shaking hands with it: thumb on one side of the racket, index finger on the other side, and the remaining three fingers wrapped around the handle. This grip allows nearly even power distribution over forehand and backhand shots, but suffers from an awkward crossover point in the middle of the body, where the player must switch from forehand to backhand. This crossover point between the forehand and backhand is an area of weakness for shakehand players, but penhold players do not have such a crossover point because they can cover the middle of their body by simply swinging their forehand down like a pendulum. The main advantages of a shakehand grip are the ability to make fast topspin attacks on both the forehand and backhand sides, and the ability to create extremely spinny balls, particularly those with pure topspin and pure backspin.Virtually all European players and roughly two thirds of Asian players use the shakehand grip.
Penhold grips
The penhold grips are named because of the similarity to the way that pens are held: with the thumb and index finger wrapped around the front side of the handle, and the remaining three fingers on the back of the blade. This is especially reflective of how traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean calligraphy pens were held, where the grip is said to have originated. Penhold styles have one notable advantage over shakehand in that they do not have an awkward crossover point in the middle of the body. Penhold styles also allow around 270° of wrist mobility around the axis of the plane of the blade, making it much easier for penhold players to create both directions of sidespin as well as hybrid sidespin-topspin or sidespin-backspin shots. It is also easier for penhold players to disguise what kind of spin they are putting on the ball, as well as in which direction they are going to hit the ball. It is typically hard for penhold players to create pure topspin or pure backspin, as both their forehand and backhand strokes tend to hit the ball at a side-angle, so most of their shots will have some sidespin.Penhold grip styles have become less popular in recent years, since it is hard and awkward to perform backhand topspins and backhand attacks, and the game has become much more attack-oriented as of late. The backhand weakness makes it much harder for penhold beginners to perform well against their shakehand counterparts, and so few stick with it to develop better technique. However, this has not stopped top penhold players from winning the World Championships, the World Cup and the Olympic Games regularly, as the backhand weakness can be covered adequately by putting in the effort to learn good backhand technique, with excellent footwork allowing forehand coverage of most of the table, or by supplementing with the more modern Reverse Penhold Backhand innovation.
Seemiller grip
This is a grip that was developed and popularized by Dan Seemiller, an American table tennis champion. This grip makes it awkward to hit shots using a standard handshake backhand using the opposite side of the racket. So, instead, Seemiller grip players hit their backhands with the same side of the racket as they use to hit their forehands, turning their wrists over the way a baseball player would to make a backhand catch, and typically blocking or counter-hitting the ball. Since they use only one side of their racket at a time, Seemiller grip players often put a rubber with very different playing characteristics on the other side of their bat, commonly a low-friction "anti-spin" rubber that they use to return spinny serves or to abruptly change the pace of the ball during a rally. Seemiller, in fact, is credited with inventing the combo bat, a racket with different types of rubber on each side. Also similar to the penhold, the Seemiller grip does not have a crossover point. Furthermore, the Seemiller grip allows for excellent feeling on blocks, as the fingers are much closer to the ball's point of contact than they are in the shakehand grip, and the wrist is in a much better position to angle downwards than it is in either of the penhold styles.V-Grip
An experimental style being developed in China, it is held by forming a "V for victory" sign and gripping the blade between the forefinger and middle finger while having the other fingers rest under and on top of the handle. This grip produces a noticeable spin benefit due to the longer lever and mechanics utilized in the forehand and backhand. The grip has not been successful at a high level of play.Unusual grips
Although the vast majority of table tennis players grip the racket in one of the four styles above, there are some outlier grips which are very rare.Forehand looper
Penhold loopers utilize the forehand topspin loop as their primary shot. A loop is a topspin stroke in table tennis, usually performed with the forehand, where the player starts the stroke below the ball and brushes the ball upwards. A looper usually exhibits excellent footwork, trying to use the forehand to cover most or all of the table. Because of this, penhold loopers have a shorter reach than shakehand loopers and generally try to stay close to the table even during powerful loop exchanges.Notable penhold loopers include 1981-83 World Champion Guo Yuehua, 1988 Olympic Gold Medalist Yoo Nam-kyu, 1992 Olympics Men's Doubles Gold Medalist Lü Lin, 1992 Olympics Bronze medalist Kim Taek-soo, 2001-03 World Men's Doubles Champion Yan Sen, 2004 Olympic Gold Medalist Ryu Seung-min, 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist Ma Lin, and 2015 Men's and Mixed Doubles Champion Xu Xin.
Two-sided looper
Two-sided penhold loopers almost exclusively play with the modern Chinese penhold style, where they use the Reverse Penhold Backhand to make powerful hybrid sidespin-topspin loops. RPB shots are often difficult to return because of the sidespin, and difficult to predict the direction of until the ball is already hit.Traditional penhold players can be two-sided loopers, but the backhand loop is a very difficult shot, requiring lots of training and extreme shoulder flexibility. Ryu Seung-Min has a good backhand loop for a traditional penholder, but still very much favors his powerful forehand.
The most notable two-sided looper is Wang Hao, who uses the Reverse Penhold Backhand for almost all of his backhand shots. Other prominent two-sided penhold loopers are Félix Lebrun, Dang Qiu and Xue Fei.
Counter driver
The penholder's advantage of a small crossover is fully utilized in this style. Staying close to the table, counter drivers block and drive the opponent's topspins back across the table at speed, trying to force them out of position, abruptly change the pace of the game, or look for the opportunistic forehand kill. Counter drivers usually have a safe forehand loop as well, in case the opponent is a chopper and doesn't give topspins or easy kills readily. This style works well for short pips hitters.Notable penhold counter drivers ''include 2000 Asian Champion Chiang Peng-lung and South Korean player Moon Hyun-jung.'' Ma Lin, an incredibly well-rounded player, is also known to utilize this strategy when the opponent is lobbing the ball far from the table.
Short pips hitter
This penhold style utilizes a short pips out rubber, usually on only one side of the racket with no backside rubber. Short pips hitters play over the table, hitting the ball very flatly as soon as it bounces off the table with the pips being largely unaffected by the majority of the opponent's spin. The advantage of hitting the ball flatly is that all of the player's power is transferred into the linear velocity of the ball, without expending any energy on creating spin. This means that the shots are very fast, and typically hard to block for the inexperienced player. However, the lack of a topspin Magnus effect means that the shots are harder to place on the table since they don't follow a downward arc trajectory, and the lack of angular momentum on the ball means that shots are less consistent and more sensitive to small amounts of wind or air pressure, often giving a knuckle ball effect.Notable penhold short pips hitters ''include 1996 Olympic Champion Liu Guoliang, 1985 and 1987 World Champion Jiang Jialiang, three-time Olympian Toshio Tasaki, Yang Ying, Kwak Bang-bang, Seok Eun-mi, He Zhi Wen, Lee Eun-hee, Wang Zeng Yi and Rory Cargill.''