You can punch it back. Catch the ball around the top of the bounce (need to step in or out depending on the depth of the incoming ball), lean in with your body and punch it with a fairly compact motion. I've been practicing this shot. Adjust the racket angle and timing and it's pretty effective for both topspins and high backspins that have a shallow bounce.

There are a few things I found to be important and may not be very obvious during my practices. 

1) You can't rush the shot. To me it's a bit easier when it's just falling but near the top of the bounce is all fine. 

2) There's almost no backswing. Just approach the ball with a flexed arm and an open racket face and punch hard.

3) Your footwork needs to be on point. If the ball is deep and you don't have space to lean in, or if the ball is too shallow and your arm can't be flexed when approaching the ball (i.e. you have to reach for the ball) then consistency dramatically decreases. 

4) While it's mostly a punch, there's a small component of brushing. It's not a full on BH smash. 

5) You don't accelerate until you're almost touching the ball. 

Hmm I don't usually have trouble with the shorter balls on the BH regardless of height, it's the deep high ones that kill me. I don't think you can get good consistency punching those... 

I realised something lately, is that with the BH once the ball is above your shoulder height it's almost impossible to make a good stroke (taller players thus have a really unfair advantage with high balls ). But the problem is that: 

1) if I take it off the bounce like a counter it's easy but it doesn't produce a threatening shot and the return is way too easy to attack for my opponent. And because of the incoming spin and placement it is incredibly difficult to add power when taking it early with a lot of control/consistency. Sometimes it's also hard to reach the ball to take it early.

2) if I wait for it to drop it pushes me way too far away from the table which is not where I want to be usually because my mid distance BH is not great (maybe I should really train it)

3) if I jump to take it at the peak of the bounce I can sometimes get some spectacular loopkills but that's also a really risky shot (I've seen ZJK and Ma Long do it this way tho....)

The way ZJK does it (it was a deep high backspin, but still extremely tricky - I would for sure have missed this ball imo) is just beautiful here.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Or0tZQQqQkA&t=341s

Without video of your BH it's hard to guess

hard to do it as I don't have a table at home... and these points don't occur all that frequently imo... just that I lose some random points here and there trying to BH loopkill these balls. 

If you're good enough, do this.

I know how to do this shot, but it's simply not very consistent if the incoming ball is high with pace and spin (the balls in the video are in the sweet spot below her shoulder in general) - usually those come from an opening loop.

The thing is that majority of pros just use the FH pivot against these balls but the arena I play in just reduced the playing area (thanks inflation?) so I can't really pivot on these balls anymore. 

Those who can do BH smashes are a rare breed and are usually tall af too so it's really ugh. 

blahness wrote: For some reason I have the reverse problem that most ppl have. The arena I play in has almost no place to FH pivot properly (the barriers are literally in the way of the feet!), so I am forced to use BH for these balls but it's a pain in the ass to attack these. My BH is very good against low-ish balls and I'm confident on dealing with those balls, but when it's high, deep and especially if there's topspin on it which jumps on me, it really messes up my stroke ngl - if it's underspin at least the ball slows down and I can get a good look at the ball and usually the BH loopkill goes in. I know everyone is saying to just use the FH to finish off these balls but if you had to use your BH what are the things you would look for?

It's simply backhand smash for me, but I'm tall. You gain more stability using FH-grip.

:( I'm only at FZD's height - so yeah it's a bit harder to use BH smash for me for these high balls... Even when I stand up some balls are still higher than shoulder height ugh. 

I just watched some FZD matches and his solution is not to let it bounce too high, he does a vicious counterloop before the ball gets too high. The counterloop movement ensures that he overrides the incoming spin and creates a very safe trajectory 

I actually can't do a BH counterloop lol maybe it's time to learn it...

Hmm I guess you're right, better to catch it early than to wait for it to drop (and then I'll be at mid distance which is not what I want in general). 

I guess a soft block is also possible (though I never really trained that before, could be a very useful variation!)

Thanks