Short pimple eligible

Greetings Team,

this time reinterpreting a question asked to me by my friend, who does not speak English too well.
He asked me if he is eligible to be a short pimple player.

I told him that in the first place I am not competent to direct him what rubbers should he use but in my opinion he has nothing to lose if he tries it.

I would like to ask for your opinion on this. I know you haven't seen him play so I will try to describe as he is one of my most frequent tournament opponents.

He is a backhand oriented player. By style,he belongs to the archaic type of one-wing attacker (uses active blocking on backhand and topspin on forehand). He has quite stiff arm,but has good reactions. Is slow on his feet when in mid range. His major play is backhand punching, not unlike the elderly technique used by former Chinese players to attack with traditional backhand resembling a technique of direct boxing punch. With this stroke he has great consistency. He does not use almost any other stroke on backhand except for a long push and occasionally smash (again with the box punch-like technique which limits his power but he is great at aiming with it. On forehand,he uses also a long push and mostly stiff-armed topspin with low level of spin. Overally,he has very limited stroke set.

As I know that style is also affected by psychological side I will describe him from this view as well.
He is quite humble and unsure man,who finds it difficult to decide,including in the rally.
Tends to use the same action again and again.
Does not believe in his own abilities: he is much more experienced than I am,though he frequently lowers his head before me,claiming I am the more experienced one,and very humbly asks me for guidance (like in this case,despite that he has 88% of victories against me).
Reaches his top performance when there is a dominant figure checking on him during training. So,if a really strict coach gives full attention to him at training,correcting him,simply giving him a "sharp eye",he gets better results. (Several times,he even told me that I am also an authority strong enough to invoke this type of motivation on him,which I do not agree with.)

What do you think? Is such a player from both physical and psychological view eligible to change to shortpips?

Thanks
Dan

Hi Dan,

I think you summed it up early.  It is worth a trial to see what he feels when he actually uses it.

Make sure that he uses it for a few weeks to get a proper feel for what it is like.