What are the Egyptians doing differently?

[<<] [>>] by Jeff Soo
30th August 2001 (GC)

Malcolm Cawley asks "What are the Egyptian players doing that is different from the rest of us?" Jeff Soo responds:

Every Egyptian player I have seen uses the Irish grip, with a powerful wrist action through impact. There is undoubtedly a lot of stress put on the wrists. Beyond that, there is great individuality of style.

Khaled Younis has a very upright stance (legs straight, waist bent forward slightly), great wrist flexibility, and generates power with little apparent effort. He does bend forward a bit more during the back swing. He hits the ball with a pronounced slice (mallet travelling right to left across the face of the ball).

Salah Hassan stands well back from the ball, legs straight, waist bent well forward. He keeps his feet very close together and has a fairly straight swing. At the end of a hard shot his arms are fully extended and his waist bent even more.

Then there are the players who hit it really, really hard, like Waled Salah and Yasser Esmat. Waist and knees bent, standing a "normal" distance from the ball, and a muscular, full-body swing.

Impressive as those swings are, I'm going to stick with my feeble Solomon grip. My wrists wouldn't survive an attempt to learn the Egyptian style.