Receiving serves - advice needed

Well, if you have a difficult time figuring out the depth of his serve, you are in trouble already. Not having much a clue about the type or amount of spin is double trouble. Some of it, you can fix right away and a lot of it will improve with training and time. To help you with the depth, given a medium paced shot or fast paced serve, look for the first bounce. If the first bounce is near mid-court or past, it will most of the time be a short serve. That part of reading the serve can help you right away. A bigger problem is the type of spin. You have to be able to read the AT IMPACT the swing direction and blade angle. Those are your first clues about the spin. Understanding that concept is easy, but it takes a lot of time and experience to get it natural and correctly read. Even pros sometimes mess it up, so don't sweat it if you do not show 1000% progress the first couple days. Your next clue is hte placement of hte first bounce, then how the ball flys, then the last clue is how it kicks on your end. A cut will float in the air longer than a topspin.

Good servers thrive off the ability to confuse the opponent on the type/ammount of spin and the depth. Understanding how they do it is part of hte battle, but you got to put in the reps to get there. Making all these different spins, breaks, and depths is a matter of using a loose arm/wrist, having good timing, using the same/similar service motion, and altering the blade angle and direction of swing at impact. The result, if done smoothly, makes it really difficult to tell if the opponent did this or this just by looking at the impact. To make matters worse, some servers are very good at adding deceptive after-motions that have nothing to do with the impact, but make it look just like it was part of the impact.

Happy times practicing and hope you can get a lot of reps with him or others that trouble you.

Sorry Der_Echte I disagree. Higher level players do not aim at the middle of their side to serve short. They can serve both long and short doing this. It all depends on the amount of speed they choose to put on the serve. I personally prefer to keep my services a bit faster by serving closer to my baseline this allows me to have equally both double bounce serves or long serves whenever I choose.

@ homer - service return is very tricky to learn. If you have trouble reading spin then your best bet is to just practice service return with whomever is giving you trouble. Because services aren't all the same and everyone has their own style of serving it's very hard to read if you don't have the ability to read spin yet. The best way is to just ask them to serve the same services so you can get a feel for it. If they refuse to practice with you then just ask to play games, and try to play as many with them as possible until you start to figure out which services he's using and what they look like.

If you're just having trouble because he's a lefty player then stand toward the middle of the table still a bit to your left side, but this will help you cut down on time to reach the wider services and will also give you a bit more time to read any services to your forehand baseline. I would suggest getting a robot or a really good server to help you start to read spin. The easiest way to learn if there is side spin on the ball is to watch the arc of the ball. Whichever way the arc is pulled towards is the type of sidespin on the ball. By watching the way that the ball bounces tells you whether there is top spin, underspin, or no spin.

Topspin - usually bounces a bit faster. The first bounce should make the ball speed up slightly and the second bounce should remain the same speed.

Underspin - usually bounces with a floating characteristic. The ball after the first bounce should almost seem like it's slowing down and the same for the second bounce.

Dead/Nospin - usually bounces consistently. There shouldn't be a kick like top spin or lag as in underspin it should just sort of bounce in the same consistency fast or slow doesn't matter.

Hope this helps homer and good practicing.

Heres a little but effective tip I have found that has helped me loads on the receive of serve.

Always hunt for the ball coming long in your head... so if the ball drifts long or half long you are ready and you can topspin it. If the ball however goes short you then are ready to step in and receive the ball. Its a lot easier movement if you hunt the ball long...

If you receive a serve and you first think in your head 'short' before the ball is played you will find it hard to get back out if the ball drifts long. So basically always wait for the ball to come long first when your receiving

Sorry may sound bit confusing but its hard to explain. Hope it helps.

Another tip is against left handers, try and stand more to the middle of the table so you can cover the wide forhand (Im presuming your right handed?)

On the question of serve returns and receiving serves - do any of you use heavy backspin pushes to return underspin/sidespin serves to make it difficult for the opponent to topspin back? or do you simply push it back (with no underspin)?
Also, when 'flipping' do you just try to get it over the net, or attempt to put as much force/topspin with your returns?

@Dan : Having problems in returning fast , heavy sidespin serves to my backhand these days .. I figured it must have something to do with my initial movement while receiving the serve .. probably I am reaching out to my back hand instead of letting the ball come to ... please give me some tips on how to improve this part .. oh btw , I don't want to chop the ball back ( that I can )

@ jedi - There are varying degrees of success with your returns. It all depends on what your opponent is expecting. Sometimes if you have an opponent crowding the baseline it's best to push to their middle as deep as you can go this usually ends up being a really bad block or an error on them. Other times if they're crowding but on the backhand side it usually means they're gonna step around for a dtl shot and you can push heavy and deep to their forehand side. They'll have already committed their body weight for the step around and have to lunge for the ball meaning you can start smashing.

For the person who's ready for a deep push (i.e. they step back ready for a longer shot) it's absolutely a great tactic to push short and with no spin or negating the service spin aiming toward either of their wings adds to the effect as they have to step not only forward but to whichever side you choose.

@ ttmonster - It sounds like you're a bit too close to the table. Typically heavy sidespin means a longer service so try taking a step back so that you don't hit the ball too early. With sidespin it's the most common error to hit the ball too early off the bounce. Basically if the ball bounces halfway to the baseline of your side of the table take a step back. If it's halfway or to the net step in.

Another great tip is that you should always close the side of the ball that the arc is pulled. Meaning when the sidespin service hits your side of the table you should notice an arc to the left or right so whichever side it's pulling put your paddle on that side and hit forward towards the net. You'll get some great shots regardless of the top or underspins.

homer_123 said:

Cheers Dan - I'm assuming here that you are preempting a longer serve where you can get in and attack? Effectively, you are working on the basis that every long serve is attacked but if a short/shortish serve comes in you are ready as you are watching for the longer serve?

I hope that's right.

Yup, right handed and do position more centrally when playing a lefty!

Cheers for the feedback,

Homer.

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Yeah you got it Homer.

Try it out, see how it goes. Its all about watching your opponent and reading what they are going to do. Look for the cues... you will be surprised how many balls drift long on a serve. To work on your half long balls against a serve do lots of multi ball if you can, where the feeder feeds backspin (Half Long). Work on spinning it up

ttmonster said:

@Dan : Having problems in returning fast , heavy sidespin serves to my backhand these days .. I figured it must have something to do with my initial movement while receiving the serve .. probably I am reaching out to my back hand instead of letting the ball come to ... please give me some tips on how to improve this part .. oh btw , I don't want to chop the ball back ( that I can )

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Interesting you have said this. I have a very similar problem with this to. Try opening the racquet face and let the ball come to you and spin the ball on the table.

Maybe aim for the middle of the table if there is a lot of side spin on the ball. Try to use the wrist and forearm when playing this shot. Watch Paul Drinkhall on youtube, his backhand is very good at this.

Once again as before tho, to really perfect this, do a lot of multi ball or practice receiving serves similar to this. You have to train on your mistake to be able to perfect the shot for a game situation

With the multi ball, get the feeder to recreate the sidespin that you struggle with when receiving serves, good luck!

Thanks Carl and Dan !! ... notes for the weekend

Hi Homer, don't take my advice..this one is from Grand Master Liu Guoliang himself

QUESTION :You have very high quality serves. You play pips-out, but tests have shown that your serves have more spin than the average among national team members. Can you share with us your knowledge?

ANSWER : You have to practice a lot on serves, and I also have a little talent in this area. Kong has outstanding skills, and yet his serves are very "amateurish". He could shore up this weakness by developing other skills. He practices serves every day, but his natural talent is less. He also practices his basic skills every day, and he has a great foundation in basics. I feel that I can learn things fast. Partly that is because I like to really study things, and partly it is because I have some talent in understanding spins. I actually practice less on my serves than my teammates do. A lot of my serves I learn from others. For example, if you are not good returning someone's serves, then you should try to learn his serves. In the beginning, they may not be as spinny, but after a while, you realize that other people are having trouble returning those serves. Perhaps you can now execute those serves better than the original server, and those serves have become yours. Kong probably has spent less time thinking about serves; his time is spent thinking about how to integrate his backhand with his forehand. So each person has his/her own specialty. When I have good serves, I can fully exploit the advantages of my 3rd-ball attacks. Kong may feel that it's more important to play a solid all-round game.

In terms of service returns, just a very beginner piece of advice is to really pay attention to how and where the opponent hits the ball. This gets a lot harder when more professional players move their wrists really quickly and give different fakes, but if we are just talking beginner stuff, you want to see where your opponent hits the ball, and then in order to return it well you want to basically hit the exact place he hit it in order to have a consistent return. It seems really basic, but when you really pay attention to is in game, it can help you return balls a lot better. This is especially helpful against players with good sidespin serves. If you hit the same spot on the ball as your opponent did, you basically stop his spin and then impart your spin, this way you don't find yourself adding to his spin thereby hitting the ball either too far left or right of the table. The principle is basically the same for backspin and top spin serves also.

Once you get better at this basic thing, you can start mixing it up more, sometimes if you think you have the timing and the stroke right you can hit the ball in the same place he did in order to impart even more spin to the ball.

I have heard coaches says that every return of the serve or just in every hit in general, you should think of it as a two step process, the first step being the initial contact with the ball, where you negate his spin, and then your own stroke to impart the type of spin you want on the ball. This 2 step process when you start to master it, really helps you understand and become good at flipping back a serve or flipping a short ball to transition to a mid range game.

azlan said:

Hi Homer, don't take my advice..this one is from Grand Master Liu Guoliang himself

QUESTION :You have very high quality serves. You play pips-out, but tests have shown that your serves have more spin than the average among national team members. Can you share with us your knowledge?

ANSWER : You have to practice a lot on serves, and I also have a little talent in this area. Kong has outstanding skills, and yet his serves are very "amateurish". He could shore up this weakness by developing other skills. He practices serves every day, but his natural talent is less. He also practices his basic skills every day, and he has a great foundation in basics. I feel that I can learn things fast. Partly that is because I like to really study things, and partly it is because I have some talent in understanding spins. I actually practice less on my serves than my teammates do. A lot of my serves I learn from others. For example, if you are not good returning someone's serves, then you should try to learn his serves. In the beginning, they may not be as spinny, but after a while, you realize that other people are having trouble returning those serves. Perhaps you can now execute those serves better than the original server, and those serves have become yours. Kong probably has spent less time thinking about serves; his time is spent thinking about how to integrate his backhand with his forehand. So each person has his/her own specialty. When I have good serves, I can fully exploit the advantages of my 3rd-ball attacks. Kong may feel that it's more important to play a solid all-round game.

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Awesome advice! Thanks for this!

The first shot in a game is the serve, and second shot is the return... people underestimate how important these skills are.

My serves and returns use to be my major weakness as a junior. Once my new coach taught me the serve and return game, I use to win games simply from just the serve and return.

One major advice I learnt also, was to try and experiment loads on serves. Throw in some random ones, one you master how to get that initial spin you can do pretty much anything

On the receive, spend plenty of time on multi ball and actually do lots of exercises where the serve return is involved. Keep it random and irregular!

Exactly Dan, by learning a serve, we will understand the spin of the ball which will make us understand how to return that particular serve. Grand master Liu did make a lot of sense. Sometimes we ended up doing a better serve than the original player...