Is there light at end of the Darkside tunnel?

My rating gain was slightly deceptive.  The two 2000 level players I beat were over 70 years old (maybe over 75).   One of them was overrated for this tournament as he lost to several players under 1800.  The other one probably was playing close to his rating, but his game was based a lot on placement rather than power.  I actually played a defensive style against both of them.  I did not open most of the time and I blocked and chopped from both sides.  This was later in the tournament after I had a couple of  bad losses and some very narrow wins against 1300-1400 players while using my normal style.  In my next event I tried using this same defensive style, but it did not work as well against younger more power oriented players.  I feel this was mainly due to the quickness of the points.  Since they attacked hard and my blocks were quick their next attack came too quick to handle. 

I think the more defensive style is the way to go as it actually suits me psychologically.  But I think I need the LP to help slow the play down and help me get ready for the next shot.  In my play so far I have seen this work for me many times.  For instance a wide loop to my forehand followed by drive to my backhand usually ended with me blocking the backhand but being unable to recover for even slow shots to my Fh.  With the LP the block is much slower and I have time to recover and be ready for the next ball.  With the LP I even feel comfortable chop blocking the backhand which tends to further limit the strength of the following attack.  With the short pips I blocked well, but never really got control of the chop block.

I am going to be 69 yrs old this year and do not see myself getting any quicker.  So I figured this might be the time for a change since it will take 2 to 4 yrs to get proficient with the LP.  I am not sure I will be able to play that long so I thought I should give it a try now.  I am going to stick with it until I leave Tx in April.  If it looks like I am stuck playing around the 1400 - 1500 level I will most likely go back.  But if I can improve to the 1600-1700 level I think it is worth staying with.

Lastly, I am finding I really enjoy playing with the LP.  I like learning new things and solving new problems.  Playing with the LP's is like having a bunch of new jigsaw puzzles to put together.

Mark -- Preparing for the 2024 U1400 National Championship

So the cool thing about penhold LP/inverted is that from the BH side they can do RPB inverted looping or LP chopblocks/sideswipe attacks without twiddling. With twiddling the variations is doubled which presents a huge problem for the attacker. 

For shakehand the variations are much less, the usual way to play is to serve very short to the FH to force you to receive using FH rubber where you'll be vulnerable to all the spin variations and the main tactic which is the fast long serve to the middle or BH followed by powerlooping the return. On looping, you can simply loop very spinny to the FH, unless you adopt a weird right foot forward stance to use the chicken wing LP to pushblock this, you'll have to defend this shot using the FH inverted rubber which again is a nightmare. So a typical tactic is just to soft loop/flick to the BH to get a mild underspin return off the LP and then loop to your deep wide FH (if you try changing your stance then the deep BH becomes a hole instead). 

The only real way to get out of these tactics is to be able to both attack and chopblock with the LPs and also defend/receive very well with the inverted FH - which is not easy at all, but I've played someone who does exactly that...

At one point I tried something like that.  Maybe it was more Seemiller than L grip.  It just seemed unnatural and I thought it would take many years relearning to get back to my level.  A lot of the stuff I do naturally is actually bad with inverted or short pips, but works well with LP.  It mostly has to do with not closing the blade any or enough on Bh against topspin.  I have to fight it even with short pips, but backswing with neutral blade angle works very well with LP.

Mark

Yes, that's the LP attack and it can be quite feared (see He Zhuojia which is probably the highest level LP user in the women's game imo), especially with the amount of variations. I believe the Stiga channel actually has some tutorials by her if I'm not mistaken...