I'm a penholder. Should I switch to shakehand ?

[Park Lee Kim]

i have been penhodler all my life. I notice that almost all top players in the world are using shakehands.
People keep telling me that is because shakehands is better for backhand etc.
So I am wondering if I should switch to shkehands grip.
I have tried before & can play shakehands about 60% to 70% as well as penhold.
So I am seriously wondering whether it is good to switch to swicth to shakehands regardless

[Cross Blocker]

i have been penhodler all my life. I notice that almost all top players in the world are using shakehands.
People keep telling me that is because shakehands is better for backhand etc.
So I am wondering if I should switch to shkehands grip.
I have tried before & can play shakehands about 60% to 70% as well as penhold.
So I am seriously wondering whether it is good to switch to swicth to shakehands regardless

Answer is No for almost all cases with very few exceptions.

Your grip is what you were born with & comes to you naturally. Most shakehanders cannot play penhold even 25% as good as with shakehand. But most penholders can play shakehand at least 50% or 60% but still that is not good enough.

It is a big mistake to be seduced by the latest trend & fads.

Also you are lucky because with the development of the RPH ( Reverse penhold) grip, penhold is easily the best grip.
Why , because whether you are a spinny smooth rubber looper or a short pips out hitter, penhold is simply more devstating grip on the forehand.
There had been a few world champions who were penhold short pips hitters as well as Liu Guoliang who was the first prime exponent of RPH using short pips on forehand.
More and more penholders are also beginning to combine TPH (Traditional Penhold) with RPH that is sort of a three way threat (or a four way threat with twiddling) .
The serves, forehand loops using smooth & smashing with short pips are all far superior using penhold compared to shakehand.
There are few shakehand players who use penhold just for serving to get more spin & deception & variation to their serves.
Add to that the dead ball punch blocks a penholder can do especially in the TPH backhand mode even using smooth inverted (muchmore lethal with short pips).
Also of course the penholders do not have the shakehanders disease, the middle weakness (where a shakehander is caught at the indecisionpoint in the middle whether to play forehand or backhand).

There had been theories that a penhodler's backhand is weak. But the three time World Champion penholder Zhuang Zhedong suppsoedly had a better TPH backhand than forehand.
The RPH backhand is such a unique stroke with naturally built-in sidespin & difficult to read even at higher levels. Liu Guoliang , Wang Hao & Xu Xin have dominated at the highest level.
So the backhand wekaness of penholders is really a myth.

Anyway there is nothing wrong in spending sometime (10%) to develop yourr shakehand but this is not true for shakehanders.