Penhold with a reverse backhand (RPB)

The previous section ended with a structural limitation: traditional penhold concentrates the whole attack on the forehand and leaves the backhand reduced to a push or a rudimentary block. For decades that weakness was offset by footwork and by a forehand so superior it justified the cost. What changed in the early 2000s was the appearance of players — Wang Hao as the founding figure, Xu Xin as the artistic evolution — who began using the rear face of the penhold bat to attack on the backhand with topspin. The reverse penhold backhand was no minor technical adjustment: it was a change of paradigm that turned penhold into a two-winged style with equipment rules of its own.

The RPB consists of rotating the wrist to strike with the rubber on the back of the bat, the one that in classic penhold barely intervened. The movement is biomechanically different from the shakehand backhand: the wrist works more, the elbow less, and the contact point shifts relative to the axis of the forearm. That difference has direct consequences for what the stroke asks of the equipment. Section 1.7 describes the grips; what matters here is only what the RPB demands of the bat.

The blade. Traditional penhold leaned towards outer carbon because the dominant stroke was always at full power, as explained in 16.2. The RPB changes that logic. By introducing an attacking backhand with a shorter, less sweeping movement than the forehand loop, the player needs a smoother transition between intensities: inner carbon — or even a fast all-wood five-ply — offers that gradualness, because composite closer to the core damps the response on soft contacts without taking power from the full stroke. The differences between composite positions are developed in 10.3. In practice, many high-level RPB players have migrated from outer to inner, and the penhold blades designed over the last decade reflect that trend. The handle remains the short Chinese penhold, but some manufacturers have adjusted its ergonomics to accommodate the wrist rotation the RPB demands.

The rubbers. Here lies the most visible change from one-sided penhold. The rear face is no longer dead weight: it carries a rubber meant for attacking. The usual combination keeps a Chinese rubber with a tacky topsheet on the forehand — the Hurricane 3 remains the reference, normally boosted — and mounts a European or Japanese tensor on medium sponge on the backhand. The logic is functional: the forehand loop, executed with the wide arc and wrist pronation characteristic of penhold, exploits the extreme grip of the tacky topsheet; the backhand RPB, with a more compact movement and less contact time, performs better with a rubber that delivers speed without demanding so much activation. Section 5.4 develops the difference of philosophy between Chinese and European or Japanese rubbers; section 11.4, the logic of combining different rubbers on each side.

Weight and balance. The RPB introduces a demand classic penhold did not have: the weight of the rear rubber can no longer be residual, because it is a performance rubber. The assembled set-up rises relative to one-sided penhold and approaches the ranges of the two-winged attacker described in 16.1 — between 175 and 190 grams — with the difference that the balance leans somewhat further towards the head because of the geometry of the penhold handle. That higher balance favours energy transfer on the forehand but tires the wrist more in long RPB exchanges, where the movement is repetitive and the leverage short. Section 11.5 deals with assembled weight in detail.

Distance and tempo. The RPB player operates in the same band as the two-winged attacker — mid-distance, with excursions into close play during the serve phase — but with one relevant nuance: the RPB is a stroke that works better at mid-distance than right at the table, because it needs a minimum of space for the wrist rotation to complete its arc. Close in, many RPB players revert to the traditional penhold block or to the short push with the forehand face, reserving the RPB for when the ball arrives with time enough. The equipment has to work in both registers, which reinforces the preference for blades that do not over-amplify the short contact.

What distinguishes RPB penhold from the other two offensive styles in this chapter is that it lives in permanent tension between two equipment logics. The forehand asks for what penhold always asked — grip, power, a hard rubber activated by the wrist; the backhand asks for something closer to shakehand — speed, forgiveness, a smooth transition. The resulting bat is a compromise that fully optimises neither side, and finding the point of balance is the most delicate equipment decision of this style. When the compromise fails through excess towards the forehand, the RPB becomes token and the player retreats to one-sided penhold without having decided to. When it fails through excess towards the backhand, the forehand loses the explosive character that justified the penhold grip in the first place.