When playing against a blocker or chopper, the object of their game is to tire you out.

They want you to make mistakes, and they will do everything they can to try and make you sweat.

They use your spin against you. Usually the rubber they have will spit the ball back out either with or without your spin. This is tricky to handle.

If you loop with a little sidespin, the ball can come back with a wacky spin on it that will mess up your swing and either make you miss-hit the ball or give them an easy ball that they can possibly attack.

In order to play against a blocker or chopper, you need to be the jokester. Instead of them making you screw up, you need to be crafty.

Trick them just as they would you by letting up on spins and giving short balls, long balls, slow loops and fast loops in every direction; because unleashing powerhouse topspin after topspin and smash after smash is going to kill you unless you’re an iron man.

The Dead Ball or Fake Loop

This nifty little trick used sparingly (because you don’t want you’re opponent to figure out what you’re doing) can help you throw your opponent’s game off leaving him to give you an easy ball that you can put away.

This shot is a no-spin loop. It looks exactly like a topspin, but is almost dead (no spin), and slow, and quite tricky to do. It will send your opponent’s ball right into the net.

This shot is used best right after a slow topspin because the swing is similar and the ball travels at about the same speed in the air. If used after a fast swing, your opponent might be able to figure it out that you’ve changed your swing.

Your swing is going to be almost the same as a normal loop but the speed with which your arm swings is going to be after you hit the ball, rather than at the same time.

In the normal loop, your power comes upon contact with the ball, which gives you the spin, but in this shot, you’re going to hold your snap (when your forearm pulls in) until after you connect with the ball. This gives the illusion that your swing is the same (for it only differs by a fraction of a second) and will lead your opponent to believe that it is the same.

However, because the ball is hitting your bat before you forearm snaps in, the ball has almost no spin, and the ball sent back to your opponent is a knuckle ball, sending his return into the net.

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