Hitting the Ball Low

***  Make sure you get down to the last couple of paragraphs! ***

 You can do a lot of bad things and get away with them as long as you keep the ball low.  The key concept is that a low ball is not easily attacked by the opponents and frequently has to be hit up to clear the net.  

I've been playing around with low ball trajectory technique (LBTT) and I'm starting to think that hitting a cut shot with an open paddle faced is the answer.  And it seems that a very open face is often needed.

Some terms: open face means the paddle is pointing to a spot above the net; facing the sky a bit, would be another way of thinking of this.

Like most things, a cut or backspin shot is a delicate thing.  Most of the shots you need to keep low are hit around the kitchen line.  We are not talking about a ball struck with a lot of force.  (If you do it hit hard with that paddle and some cut, it can float long.)

How to impart some cut spin: you need to swing from above the ball to below it.  This is not a very vertical swing as you need to drive the ball over the net.  What the open paddle face gives you is a bit of a hop to get the ball on a trajectory to clear the net.  There is a range of good swing paths here from very high to low to almost horizontal.  

Try these when you are warming up.  Usually everyone starts with dinking, so there is a chance to play with it.  Don't be surprised if you pop up a few at first as you figure out how open the paddle must be and how much of stroke you want.  The "above to below ball" stroke doesn't have to be a long one.  We are not interested in a lot of spin, but enough to bunt the ball over the net.  The stroke may be quite close to horizontal and it might even have a bit of lift to it if you are doing this from well below the net.  The stroke and the face angle will influence the trajectory and the amount of spin.  We seek a ball that is pretty close to the top of the net -- and we are less concerned with how much spin it has.

The ball will not dip much after it crosses the net and this is fine.  We are not aiming for feet, we just want a ball that can't be hit down at our feet.

There are two alternative shots to this shot, one being no spin, id est, a flat shot, and then there is a topspin shot.  The flat shot will work well too, but it is harder to get over the net, it requires an open faced paddle too and then a swing that is horizontal to the ball or parallel to the ground.  Maybe a post on that down the road.  

A topspin shot has a problem in that you have to lift the ball further above the net than the others, and if everyone is at the kitchen line, you are likely to pop it up.  The shot has more of an arc to it and usually presents higher to the opponents.  

The three shots have their different uses and you want to understand all of them even if you have a go to shot.

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Ok, if you got this far, thanks for reading... However this is maybe a "truth" that isn't.  I tried to verify the slice shot being the stroke of choice for keeping the ball low.  But the data didn't show up to prove that it was better than other shots.  

I think my fall back position that the slice shot is a good idea for a number of reasons the big one being that a slice shot is harder to return, but the shot does not seem to be a better way to keep the ball low as a general rule.  It will do the job, so it's one more of those things that are worth learning and using..