I don’t mind admitting that I am completely fascinated with Truls Moregardh. He has had a sensational Olympics in Paris, reaching the singles final and helping Sweden to the team final. He’s had a string of excellent wins against Wang Chuqin, Hugo Calderano, Anders Lind and Dimitri Ovtacharov. He is the player in form.
What fascinates me most is the sheer creativity of his table tennis. Yes, he can do all the conventional attacking strokes – the flicks, the loops, the topspin to topspin exchanges. But he has such a range of other shots which he regularly uses – chop blocks, fades, strawberry flicks, punches, snakes, empty loops.
To use all these shots, and to blend them into a functional playing style at the highest level, is so massively difficult. In other Olympic sports, such as gymnastics, diving or skateboarding, athletes get higher scores based on the complexity of the manoeuvres they perform. If table tennis was scored in a similar way, Turls Moregardh would be way out in the lead. He’d be untouchable.
The shots Truls plays with seemingly such ease are actually very difficult to execute consistently, even at a much slower pace. To play these chop blocks, fades, sidespin pushes, empty loops against the immense speed and spin of other professionals, and with the pressure of competing at the Olympics, is quite astonishing.
How does he even have the mental capacity to shift through all his shot options, select the right one, and then execute with precise timing? It’s an incredible skill.
High risk, high reward
Truls’s playing style is massively high risk. It doesn’t always work. Any slight mistiming when playing a chop block, for example, and the shot will go wrong. It will pop up too high, or go wide off the table. Point lost. But when his disruptive shots work, as they have been in the Olympics, then Truls is a nightmare to play against.
There is a constant change of speed, spin and tempo. You really have no idea what shot Truls is going to play next. I’m not convinced Truls knows what shot he is going to play. But his brain processing is so fast he can seemingly pull out any number of shots in any situation. This unpredictability makes it very hard for his opponents to find any consistent rhythm. The variety of shots forces opponents to hesitate, make errors or play weak shots which Truls then punishes.
Some may feel that Truls is messing around when he’s playing and he’s not taking table tennis seriously enough. That he is trying to show off with all his crazy shots. That he is more focused on entertaining than winning.
But I don’t see it this way. He has developed the ultimate disruptive playing style. His creativity has a purpose. And he’s brilliant at it. And table tennis is better for it. We need personalities in the sport. And Truls, with his range of crazy shots, his expressions, his celebrations makes people want to watch table tennis. Not only does he entertain, but he is having success. In a sport which sometimes feels a little one dimensional – topspin to topspin power play – Truls is showing there is still another way to play and be successful at the highest level.
Copying Truls
Is there anything we mere mortals can do to be more like Truls, other than buy a STIGA Cybershape blade? Well, let’s not pretend we can play just like Truls. All the trickery is way beyond most of us amateur players. Just getting our feet in the right position is enough of a challenge! But there is scope to add at least one disruptive shot into our game, whether a chop block, a fade, a punch or an empty loop. Doing something a little different can have a disruptive effect and positive impact on our game.
For me, I find an empty loop is surprisingly effective. This is a loop which has very little spin. It looks like topspin, but the contact is slower and not as much brush, so in reality there isn’t much topspin at all. This very often gets blocked into the net. My opponent will inspect his bat wondering what went wrong.
I must admit, this empty loop isn’t always intentional. I am actually trying to spin the ball. But I get a little tense and the shot goes over slower than I intended. But it somehow works. Rather than admonish myself for my rubbish loop, I now congratulate myself for playing like Truls!
Perhaps the easiest way for us mere mortals to play like Truls is to keep changing the tempo of our shots. Mix up slower shots and faster shots. Take some balls earlier and some balls later. Play shots with more spin and some with less spin.
You don’t need to learn any new shots to do this. You just use the existing shots you have, but do them with different levels of speed, spin and timing. This constant tempo change can be very unsettling for an opponent. If it works, we can disrupt an opponent’s rhythm, force our opponent to make errors or play weak balls. There’s a bit of Truls in all of us. Let’s embrace creativity!
There are very strict copyright rules on sharing footage from the Olympic games, so instead here is a compilation of some of Truls Moregardh’s brilliant range of creative shots over the past few years. Enjoy…
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