One of the most difficult and often frustrating players to play is the one who seems able to attack all of your serves at will, even short backspin serves. In your attempt to get the attack, you might serve short backspin serves, but he just reaches in and backhand flips them.

You could just accept this, and play rallies with him, where each rally on your serve starts with you having to counter-attack off his backhand flip. But that means giving up your serve advantage – and since you still have to face your opponent's serves, is likely a losing tactic. However, there's a better way of looking at this. You can't stop him from attacking your serves, but you can make him miss a good percentage of them. How to do this? There are three main ways.

First, you challenge him with extremely low and heavy backspin serves, with a few no-spin serves thrown in to mess him up. Many players think they are serving low, but their serves actually cross the net too high and bounce too high. (Here's a Tip of the Week on Serving Low.)  Or they think they are serving heavy backspin but aren't getting enough spin. (Here's a Tip of the Week on How to Create a Truly Heavy Backspin Serve.) Or they don't vary their backspin serves with no-spin serves. (Here's a Tip of the Week on Those Dizzying No-Spin Serves.)

Second, you challenge him by varying the spin and placement, and mixing in long serves. Here are some Tips of the Week on these: Serving Short with Spin; Where to Serve Short; and Turn Opponents Into Puppets with Long Serves.

Third, you can serve from the middle or forehand side of the table so you have an angle into the short forehand, and then vary between serving short to the forehand and long to the backhand, using the same motion. (It's most effective if you can serve short to the forehand with a backhand sidespin type serve.) Here's a Tip of the week on Serving Short to Forehand and Long to Backhand.

Ultimately, you cannot stop a receiver from trying to attack your serves, but you can maximize the number of mistakes he'll make in doing so. If he makes too many, either you win from that, or he'll have to reconsider his aggressive receives. 

Many players have only a few receives off any given serve. This means they may be comfortable against those serves, but they aren't really doing anything to "mess up the server." How do you mess up the server? There are three ways.

• You can attack the serve. But that means going for relatively high-risk shots, and the advantage of the attack is often offset by the misses. Plus, if you attack every serve, you become predictable, and so the server is ready for it. 
• You can neutralize the serve and get into a neutral rally. There are many ways of doing this, such as a short push, a well-executed deep push, or a well-placed medium attack. These are great options, but also become predictable. 
• You can vary your receive so the server has no idea what you are going to do next. 

This last one is the hardest for most players to execute as it means having numerous ways of returning any given serve. In many cases you only need a few options. But there are many times where having more options will pay off - plus, if you have many options, you are more likely to have the specific options that the server will have trouble with. 

I'm going to go over an exercise I often demonstrate in clinics. I get a volunteer to serve short backspin to my forehand. I have him do this over and over, and each time I give a different receive. Here's a short list of some of the possibilities - and yet many players rely almost exclusively on one or two of these. You don't need to do all of these, but you should be able to do nearly all of them, and then pick and choose which ones are the most effective options against a given opponent - and then "cycle" through those options so the server never knows what's coming next. The following is just for receiving short backspin serves to the forehand; you should work out on your own the options on other serves. In general, you should look to have more options against short serves, and be aggressive against long serves. (We'll assume the volunteer is a righty.) 

1. Quick push to forehand.
2. Quick push to middle (opponent's elbow - when you go there you want to be quick).
3. Quick push down line to backhand. 
4. Aim to wide forehand then quick push to backhand.
5. Aim to wide backhand then quick push to forehand. 
6. Extremely heavy push to wide forehand.
7. Extremely heavy push to wide backhand.
8. Aim to wide forehand then sidespin push to wide backhand (ball breaking to right).
9. Aim to wide backhand then sidespin push to wide forehand (ball breaking to left). 
10. Aim to wide forehand then push short to backhand.
11. Aim to wide backhand then push short to backhand. 
12. Aggressive topspin flip to wide forehand.
13. Aggressive topspin flip to middle (opponent's elbow).
14. Aggressive topspin flip down line to backhand.
15. Aim to wide forehand then flip to wide backhand. 
16. Aim to wide forehand then flip to middle (opponent's elbow). 
17. Aim to wide backhand then flip to wide forehand. 
18. Aim to wide backhand then flip to middle (opponent's elbow). 
19. Flat but quick flip to wide forehand.
20. Flat but quick flip to middle (opponent's elbow).
21. Flat but quick flip to backhand. 
22. Fake a push but at the last second flip - this gives you about ten more possibilities.
23. Step to right and flip with backhand - and suddenly you have lots of new possibilities as you can aim one way, go another, and go after the backhand, middle, or forehand. 
24. When pushing, vary the contact point to throw off opponent's timing, sometimes taking the ball quick off the bounce, sometimes at the top of the bounce, and other times taking it later, which surprisingly throws many opponent's off. 
25. No-spin pushes! 

Are you starting to see the possibilities? You don't need to learn all of these; pick the ones you like, and practice them until they are weapons in your arsenal, ready to pull out as needed to "mess up the server." 

A match doesn't always go to the player with the best shots. Just as often it goes to the player who knows how to control play. It doesn't matter how strong the opponent's shots may be if he rarely gets a chance to use them effectively. How do you do this?

You control a match primarily with serve and receive, which sets up your first shot in the rally. When choosing these shots you should ask yourself three questions: 

1. What serve/receive is your opponent weakest against?
   This is the most obvious and needs little explaining. It's also the most overused, as opponents expect this, and develop ways to overcome these weaknesses. This doesn't mean you shouldn't pound your opponent on his weaknesses, but if that's the limit of your tactics, you'll have trouble controlling a match against many players. 
2. What serve/receive will put your opponent into a weak position?
   Sometimes this overlaps with #1 above, but not always. For example, a player may have a very good forehand flip against a short serve to the forehand, but it draws him over the table, and if he's weaker on the backhand, it might leave him open on that side. So you might sometimes serve short to the forehand, and prepare to block his flip to his backhand, and then take control of the rally. Or, against a strong forehand player, sometimes challenge his forehand by serving deep there, and quick block to the weaker backhand side, and take control of the rally. (The reverse of both of these also works, where you serve to the backhand and block to the forehand.) 

   The same idea works when receiving. For example, a player may have a strong forehand loop against backspin, but if you aim your receive to the forehand, and then at the last second instead quick push to the backhand, it takes away the opponent's forehand loop and puts him in a weak position. In general, if an opponent is strong on one side but weaker on the other, you might want to go wide to the strong side first, then quick block to the weak side, catching the opponent out of position and forced to use his weaker side while moving or reaching.

3. What serve/receive is your opponent not expecting?
   This is probably most underused tactic. If a player has trouble with a certain serve, receive, or shot, he'll likely be expecting it. While you should still pound him on this weakness, you'll do even better if you regularly catch him off guard with the unexpected. Examples are endless - you simply vary all of your serves, receives, and shots to keep the opponent off guard, forcing erratic or weaker returns, and then take control of the rally. But there are a number of standard combinations that can keep an opponent guessing. For example, using the same serving motion, serve either short to the forehand with varying spins (including no-spin), and deep, breaking serves to the backhand. The opponent doesn't know if he's got to be ready to step in for the short serve to the forehand or cover the wide, deep backhand. Then throw in a few other serves, such as a fast no-spin to the middle, and watch the opponent wither. 

   This tactic is also way underused when receiving. Far too many players receive predictably over and over rather than catch the opponent off guard. This is often because a player doesn't have confidence in more than one type of receive against a given serve - but rather than resigning himself to mediocrity, why not develop a full range of receives, so that you can both receive in the way the opponent has the most trouble against (#1 above), as well as being able to vary the receive and so leaving your opponent never knowing what to expect?

Always remember - whoever has the bigger serve & receive arsenal - and knows how to use it to control play - usually wins. 

There's a myth that to be light on your feet, you have to be in great shape. It's true that being in great shape will allow you to move faster than one who is not. But this is not the same thing as being light on your feet, which is about how quickly you start to move, not how fast you move once you get going. 

How quickly you start to move - i.e. how light you are on your feet - is mostly a technique thing. If you watch the top players or anyone who seems to move quickly, watch how they take a slight hop as the opponent is making his shot. It is this slight bounce that prepares a player to move almost instantly. Those who simply stand there, waiting to see if and where they have to move, lose the bounce that comes from this, and so they are very slow to start to move. 

There are players a hundred pounds overweight or in their seventies who are light on their feet, and players in tiptop physical condition who are not. This doesn't mean they move fast; it means they get started quickly, and so while they may not cover a lot of ground, they often seem to always be in position - because they are never flat-footed and stuck in place. It means they react to shots very quickly because they are always ready to move. 

Are you light on your feet? There's a simple test. When you are caught off guard, such as against a net or edge ball, do you step to the ball, or do you just reach for it? If the latter, you are flat-footed. 

To see this little bounce that players do between shots, you can watch just about any video of top players, and focus on one player. You'll see this slight bounce as the opponent is hitting the ball. Few people see this because 1) it happens too fast, and 2) when watching a match, most viewers are watching whoever is hitting the ball rather than the one who is not. Ideally, see it in slow motion. Here's video of Zhang Jike doing multiball. Watch seconds 45-50, and you can see (in the slow motion) the very obvious bounce he does between shots.

Or just watch video of just about any other high-level match, such as the video highlights (4:50) of the Men's Singles Final at the 2015 World Championships. Focus on either player (Ma Long in Black, Fang Bo in orange), and watch their knees. For example, in the very first point, see how Ma Long returns the serve, and then makes two great forehand loops. But it is the slight hop he takes before moving to each of these shots that allows him to get the quick start that positions him for these shots. 

Another thing that's important is the foot positioning. To be light on your feet, use a relatively wide stance in a slight crouch, knees pointed slightly outward, with weight on the inside balls of the feet. 

The thing to emphasize is that you can be overweight, old, and have bad knees, and you can still take this slight bounce - it's just a matter of making it a habit. How do you make it a habit? Like anything else - practice. But the nice thing is that this is one of those few things you can practice doing just as well in a match as in a drill, so there's no excuse for not practicing it. Just do it. 

Many coaches and players try to fix problems by fixing the symptoms. In many ways, this is what separates a good, experienced coach from, say, a top player who knows proper technique but isn't that experienced in coaching it.

Here's an example. Suppose a player tends to fall back as they loop forehands. The "simple" solution, of course, is to tell them to focus on rotating around and forward into the ball, i.e. "don't fall back." And many coaches try this many times, and it doesn't work – because they are treating a symptom of a problem rather than the root of the problem. The real question is why is the player falling backwards – and the answer almost every time is that he's too far from the ball, with his left leg too far from the table. And so he's forced to reach a bit forward. The falling back is to keep his balance. Solution: Have the player stand closer to the ball, with the left leg closer to the table. Then he'll have a natural rotation into and through the ball, with no falling backwards and off balance afterwards.

Here's another. Some players struggle to rotate their body backwards (to the right for righties) on the forehand. The more they try, the more awkward they look. I've seen coaches struggle with this, not being able to figure out why the player has so much trouble with something that's so easy for others. And so they'll keep telling the player to rotate more on the forehand. But the player simply can't do the rotation comfortably – the symptom of a problem – because they haven't fixed the root of the problem – which usually is their knees are facing forward. If you watch top players, the knees point somewhat outward in their ready stance, which allows easy rotation in either direction. Here's an example – see how the knees point somewhat sideways, not forward?

And here's another. Often players struggle to get great spin on their serves. Rather than converting most of their energy into spin, and getting slow but super-spinny serves, their serves go long, with only moderate spin. Often they are told to graze the ball more, but when they try, they are unable to do so – because the inability to graze the ball is a symptom of a problem, not the root of the problem. The root of the problem usually is they are contacting the back of the ball, often toward the top. If they want to graze the ball more, they need to contact more under the ball and more on the side. If the player doesn't change his contact point, he'll continue to struggle to graze the ball as his racket will be approaching the ball too directly to graze the ball, resulting in a flatter contact. You can still get moderate spin this way, and many players (and coaches) settle for that, never realizing how they are limiting themselves.