I had an interesting Ask The Coach question about playing against anti-spin rubbers the other day. For those who aren't familiar with anti-spin - it is very smooth surfaced rubber with almost no friction. I've been fortunate enough during my career to have trainined a lot against different kinds of rubber like short pimples, long pimples, grippy pimples, smooth surfaced pimples and anti-spin. It's easy to forget that the only experience most players get against these types of rubber is during a few (mostly infuriating) competition matches.

Thes rubbers work very differently from the grippy rubbers that most players play with and understanding the tactics, racket angles and spins is not easy. The more exposure you can get against them the more you will understand how they work. Track down players with these rubbers and ask for a practice session.

The question I recieved was about how to know what spin is on the ball when a shot is played with the anti-spin rubber, and in particular if my spin would always be reversed (ie my backspin comes back as topspin and my topspin comes back as backspin). Against anti-spin rubber the ball will mostly come back with little spin. You topspin, the opponent chops and the ball has very little spin. The hardest part I find is convincing your mind that the ball actually hasn't got any spin even though your memory and muscle memory is telling you otherwise; 'he chopped the ball - of course it has backspin'. It can and will lead to some embarassing 5 metre misses...

Skillful users of anti-spin rubber will be able to generate spin on the ball. Seeing as anti-spin has little friction, the player will have to get their racket moving very fast as time of contact in order to generate spin. Good anti-spin players usually have fast wrist movements and flick their wrist and racket through very quickly on contact with the ball. This can give away that there is spin on the ball, however the really skillful anti-spin players will be good at disguising these shots either by making their spin and nospin shots look similar, by making disguising movements (eg exhagurating the swing on their nospin shots) or by stamping their foot to disguise the sound of the ball contact.

Much of the advantage in anti-spin rubber is this disguise and deception. An opening 'topspin' (think the swing of a topspin shot rather than there actually being much topspin on the ball!) can move unexpectedly through the air depending on whether the topspin shot actually has topspin or not. A counter-hit can have some backspin on it and its speed can die off before the ball reaches you, making timing difficult. In addition anti-spin players are often experts at twiddling; that is turning their racket 180 degrees and hitting with the other side of their racket, which can be difficult to see and read if the players has a smooth frictionless rubber on one side and a grippy rubber on the other.