Throughout the last 20 years, when returning serves, most of the world’s best players have looped the long serves and pushed short on the short serves.  In order to attack first, about 90% of the elite serves have been short.  This information has trickled down to even the lowest of the club level players.  I heard many many many club players repeating, “Com’on, serve short!”
 
SERVING SHORT has been the theme of coaches and players in an attempt to stop the receiver from looping the serve.
 

Whether you want to make the US Olympic Team, win the senior games, or beat your Uncle Bob; it is always a great idea to scout out your competition.  In this article, I’m going to describe two separate methods of scouting your table tennis opponent.  The first is the long-term method.  This is best accomplished by video analysis.  The second is short term; this is a more common situation.  You enter a tournament and are watching your opponent play the round robin group ten minutes before your match against him.  You have never seen him before, and you need to quickly make a game plan.