Damaging my rubbers due to carelessness

Zhihao Toh Asked 14 years ago

Hey PingSkills, I feel so fortunate to have an online Ask The Coach Section for help and advice. Your videos are extremely useful for the new players.

The issue I'm having is sometimes I tend to scrub my rubber at the edges of the table when doing trying to do a loop or forehand topspin when I realised the ball wasn't long enough to loop at THE LAST MOMENT, so due to my natural reaction, I moved my bat nearer during the looping process and accidentally scrubbed my forehand rubber. There's a small scratch mark on the rubber, but fortunately it's not very big, just a small scratch.

First question is, how do I prevent this? Is it because I didn't read my opponent's return well and thought it was a long enough ball to loop but it's not? Secondly, this is not the first time, this also happened when I'm using my old rubbers. But, few days ago I just replaced my rubbers with new ones, my forehand is now DHS Hurricane Neo II. Do you think I should replace the forehand rubber again or not because it's just a small scratch? I hope not because they are just bought a few days ago and it's still quite new..

Thank you for helping, and I really appreciate it.

Alois Rosario Answered 14 years ago

Hi,

This is a common problem and with rubbe rprices now it can be a costly mistake.

You are correct it is caused by not reading the flight of the ball well.  You need to practice this ball a lot.  The easiest way I have found is to get someone to feed balls regularly to you, some just long and some just short.  You then need to make a decision whether you can topspin it or whether it is too short and you need to push.

To start with you could even just watch the ball without playing it.  See if you can judge which balls are going long and which are short.

You do not have to get another rubber.  The small scratch will not effect the performance of the bat.

It is just the experience of seeing whether the ball is short or long.  The more times you do it the better.