Grips - Both of them

 When we teach beginners, we suggest that the continental grip is the way to go.  Frequently I've seen players who come from tennis and have a stronger grip.

The continental grip (it used to be call "English" back in my tennis days, when rackets were wood and Jack Purcell shoes ruled.) -- think of shaking hands with the paddle.  Your first knuckle should be pretty much on the first flat area "down" from the top of the paddle.  When you hold the paddle out in front of you, its face will be perpendicular to the ground.

When you take the paddle back to hit a forehand, you will see that the face is now pointing skyward a bit, or open.  When you hit a ball, you'll need that openness to get the ball back at a good height to clear the net.

When you swivel around to hit a backhand, you'll find that the backhand paddle position is also open a bit.  Welcome and required for almost all shots.

And that is the magic of the continental grip, you don't have to adjust your grip as you go from forehand to backhand shots.  Where this is very evident and important is at the net when you get into a volley battle or speed up.  You don't have time to shift your grip.

Now, there is an advantage to having a western grip.  You can produce top spin more easily with it.  Top spin is a wonderful thing and I can understand the lust for more of it.  But let's talk about net play with this grip.

There are  a couple of good players with this grip who play at the Downs.

They hit a lot of net shots with a forehand because of the grip.  In fact they will attempt to hit all of the shots with the forehand.  You will see the forehand move from their right, to their shoulder, to above their head and then down to the left shoulder.  

If you use the "Normal" grip you would have changed over to a backhand when the ball gets to your backhand side.

But the strong gripper can't do it.  So there a point where they must switch, and it's low on the backhand side.  And they then have a paddle attitude problem, usually the paddle very open and if they don't hit the ball well, they will pop it up.

If you use a strong grip, you need to spend some time hitting backhands with it to avoid disasters.

Tip!  If you are playing in a tournament, you are of course looking for left handed players, but it's also useful to look at the grips they use.  If it's strong, expect a heavy top spin serve and ground strokes.  You'll want to play to their backhands and evaluate from there. 

Dinking Paddle Attitude

 I've gotten to practice dinking with Robo the last couple of weeks.  He has some back issues that preclude play, but dinking and such is fine.

Robo has a very nice dinking motion and he has a very open paddle face at impact.  Being of open mind and always willing to experiment a bit, I've adopted this style.

When I say "open face" that means the paddle face faces the sky.  A neutral face would be parallel to the net and closed would face the court surface.  Obviously if you are hitting a high shot towards someone's feet, the paddle is closed.  Most other shots require that the face be open.  This is due to having to lift the ball over the net.  A lot of shots are hit from below the net level, and this is when the open face is required.

Getting back to dinking...  Of course it is easy to get the ball over the net and hit it up to do that, but the big fear is hitting a pop up.  Surprisingly,  a face that is opened 45 degrees or more will produce less pop ups than expected.  I tend to put some cut on these shots, which reduces the efficiency of the strike, and out comes a soft, arcing shot, that doesn't carry very far.  Since it arcs quite high, it's very easy to get over the net.

Give this a try, it's made a large difference in my dinking game.