Deception in Serve

This user has no status.
This user has no status.
Member
Feb 2016
47
24
113
Hello everyone, hope you all are good. Today I want to talk about serve. When I am talking about my serve, every one just say, "Your serve is so easy to read and receive. You can't deceive your opponent with your action, it's so simple." Now my question is how to make deception in serve? Please give your valuable suggestions and opinion to improve my serve.
Thanks in advance.
 
This user has no status.
This user has no status.
Member
May 2014
97
63
169
Hello everyone, hope you all are good. Today I want to talk about serve. When I am talking about my serve, every one just say, "Your serve is so easy to read and receive. You can't deceive your opponent with your action, it's so simple." Now my question is how to make deception in serve? Please give your valuable suggestions and opinion to improve my serve.
Thanks in advance.

For me, it's all about trying to keep every serve looking as similar as possible. To do this, I have to rule out a fully backspin serve, because to do this, my bat would have to be almost totally underneath the ball, making it obvious what is on the ball. Each one of my serves have side spin plus one of top or back spin, this means I am always contacting the side of the ball, I can just alter weather I am contacting the top of the side or the bottom of the side.

Remember, a good, consistent serve shouldn't win you points out right, it should create an opening to allow you to build a point around.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
This user has no status.
This user has no status.
Member
Jan 2016
469
738
1,403
I gave a really long talk about service deception a few weeks ago to a teammate of mine in college.

There are a lot of factors that go into service deception, so I'll talk about them one by one as I remember them.

This is a lot easier if I made a video of this to demonstrate, but whatever; it's too late at night.

*************

Making all of your serves look the same. Now this is obvious, but this is easier said than done. Everyone will say this, but not many will give detail as to how to make thhe serves look the same. The below tips will help you out.

********************

Serving by contacting near the bottom of the ball (for short serves). The reason for this is, if you contact near the back of the ball, it is easier for your opponent to see what direction your paddle is moving in, thusing making it easier to read the spin. However, if your paddle is relatively flat, it is much harder for your opponent (who is 9 feet away) to see how much forward your paddle went.

With a flat paddle, it is hard to tell if you went to the side and a little forward, or if you went to the side and more forward.

Not only that, with a flat paddle, it is hard to tell if you went forward quickly, or if you went forward a bit slower.

**********************

Serving the ball at the same speed, length, and height. This is related to having a flat paddle. Making short serves all look the same is a lot easier with a flat paddle, since you are kind of slowing the ball down (in a way, you are hitting the ball tangentially, since you are forcing the ball forward)

*********************

Showing paddle at the last second (Hiding your swing). If your opponent can see the backswing of your serve, it can easily give away what direction your paddle is going in, thus letting the opponent read the serve more easily. This is easily done by having your paddle close to your body, and contacting it close to your body.

********************

Using mostly your wrist to vary the spin. This is related to backswing. The smaller the backswing, the harder it is for your opponent to read and react.

*********************

Using a fast wrist. If your paddle is moving slowly, it becomes easier to read.

*********************

Height of the ball toss is another varying factor. A high toss can change a service that normally would have been side-underspin, into just sidespin, due to how fast the ball is falling.

*******************

Contacting the point at the same height. Now this one is a little more subtle. Usually when players serve some kind of no-spin/sidespin/side-topspin, they contact the ball at a fairly low point. To keep it consistent, you should be able to serve underspin also at a fairly low point.

*********************

Optional tip: Have your paddle keep going down after you serve. Now, when you serve, most of the time, your paddle is going downward to carry the ball down. This is very noticeable when you serve any kind of underspin. Now, if you want your other serves to look the same, your no-spin, sidespin, side-topspin variations should all do the same.

******************

Optional tip: Have your paddle go from close to open (or open to close) for all similar looking serves. For example, if you do different pendulum serves, try having them all go from close to open. The reason for this is, it is a lot easier to serve no-spin/side-topspin serves with a more open racket, so it is nice if your service movement can disguise both.

**********************

Optional tip: extra movement. Just a distraction

********************

Important Optional tip: Starting and ending with the serve the same way: Pretty obvious, but often the lack of this gives away the serve. There are so many times where I immediately can tell when someone is going to serve long simply from their body language.

********************

Optional tip: stomp when you serve. It can be a distraction, and you can play mind games (make your opponents pavlovian dogs), but one actual purpose of the stomp is to hide the sound of your service contact. Spinning the ball, and not spinning the ball: they make two different sounds, so if you can cover that up, great.

************************

TIP: On your computer on YouTube, you can pause the video, and look frame-by-frame by pressing the comma and period buttons. (I suppose it's really the < > buttons)


Look at first two serves that Fang Bo does in this video. He pretty much does most of the tips mentioned.

***************


In this video, observe how these players serve no-spin to each other. Think about what they did to make their serves spinny or not-spinny.

*************


Start at 1:10 to look at the serves. Pay attention to some of the things they are doing. Frame-by-frame.

Where did their paddles start from?

Where do their paddles go after contact?

Open to close? Close to open?

What direction is their paddle going in?

What direction do their wrist move in?

What direction is their forearm moving in?

What direction does their paddle face?

What direction does their racket head point to?

Think about these things when you watch these videos.

****************

There are some more tips that are more mechanically specific:

Changing where on the paddle you contact the ball is a pretty good way of changing how fast your racket hits the ball, varying the amounts of spin you put on the serve.
For example, contacting near the handle on a wristy serve should give less spin. This is pretty good for serving no-spin.


There are others, like doing things that are different from what's usual, like:

(This one is hard to explain) Changing the direction you move your wrist, but keeping the same appearance. This one is easier to explain with pictures, so:

Capture.JPG

This is related to having your wrist and your forearm go in slightly different directions (which is another thing you can do).
**************
 
Last edited:
This user has no status.
This user has no status.
Active Member
Apr 2014
653
700
3,324
Read 7 reviews
Let's start with an amazing example. The side view from the gif really shows you how intricate and deceptive Waldner's follow through motion was. I

1. Though this video is on serve reception, it shows pretty well how you can vary the spin of the sidespin serve by changing when you contact the ball.
2. This article explains the different ways of how you can make it harder for your opponent to guess the spin.


It's silly to make every serve look the same. Then how on earth are you going to have an effective pendulum and reverse pendulum serve if you try to make them look similar (at the non-international level anyway) I think what the other posters mean is that you want to make every variation of a particular serve look the same.

I have a high toss backspin serve. After the serve I also have the same follow up motion for the serve. I can vary the serve to heavy backspin (good wrist movement, really biting into the ball), light backspin (wrist moves but not as fast and I don't really bite into the ball), sidespin (regular sidespin motion, can be side-under, side-top). This gives me so many third ball attacks.

What works pretty well is doing the light backspin serve first so the opponent thinks (aha, I know what his backspin serve looks like) and then following it up with the heavy backspin serve.


https://www.experttabletennis.com/brett-clarke-how-to-serve-like-a-boss/ This is an illuminating podcast by a seriously amazing server (Brett Clarke)

As a bonus, this is what Waldner will do with your serve if it's not deceptive enough (by his standards) :)
 
Last edited:
This user has no status.
Try watching this video. It can give some tips on deceptive side, under, and no spin serving using the same motion. I actually use it myself sometimes and it works. Every one in a while I get a ball to go into the net or pop up.

https://youtu.be/Y5KIbdXzlYI

Another thing to do is record yourself serving. Then let some friends review it with you. Maybe post it here like I did a while ago. I had no idea my hand was blocking the serve so bad until I recorded myself.

https://youtu.be/wMYcyJu3nPM
 
This user has no status.
I do the reverse pendulum serve a lot. What I've found is that I can brush down on the back of the ball for underspin. Instead of brushing under the ball. This helps because once you learn that technique then it's easier to deceive opponents as you can use the very same reverse pendulum motion and put sidespin or side topspin on the ball. I really haven't found a way to hide pure topspin with the same motion but I'm working on it. Trying the Lin Gaoyuan technique lately.
 
Last edited:
This user has no status.
This user has no status.
Active Member
Aug 2016
869
1,202
2,883
********************

Serving by contacting near the bottom of the ball (for short serves). The reason for this is, if you contact near the back of the ball, it is easier for your opponent to see what direction your paddle is moving in, thusing making it easier to read the spin. However, if your paddle is relatively flat, it is much harder for your opponent (who is 9 feet away) to see how much forward your paddle went.

With a flat paddle, it is hard to tell if you went to the side and a little forward, or if you went to the side and more forward.

Not only that, with a flat paddle, it is hard to tell if you went forward quickly, or if you went forward a bit slower.

**********************

cache.php


Seriously that's some good stuff.

A lot of helpful replies to the OP here so I'll try to be brief.

+1 when someone said record yourself serving. Put the camera on a tripod (ideally eye level) where the opponent will be receiving and take a look. I found that my tosses weren't close to my body. I felt like I was doing a toss close to my body and making it hard to see but I really wasn't at all.

I'm guessing for the OP if your serves are easy to read you're probably like 95% of people at the club I attend. They serve too long and generally try to just load up the serve with spin with big arm swings. Spiny yes, but easy to read. Tighten it up and make it smaller & shorter.

I think Par Garell is a good example of this but keep this thought in mind. There's nothing against keeping your swinging motion (if yours is bigger) hidden behind your back only bringing the part of the face of your blade to contact the ball at the last second. They just have to see the contact of the ball.

Lastly, think about what David said here about keeping your paddle flat. I think that's gold. I have a serve that gets a lot of people but my training partner not so much because he's seen it a million times. I use to (and still do if I'm not focusing on my serve) do my pendulum serve with side/back coming down & under the ball (more flat). Then I'd come up & on the side with my blade face more vertical for side/top. That's an easy read. Now picture this. Try this on your table. Leave your blade almost completely flat (angled just a little bit towards their side) and just drop a ball on a the face of your blade letting it bounce over. What happens? It rolls off your blade and after the two bounces is topspin. That's with a flat blade face! The same one I use for side/backspin. So instead of coming up the back of the ball on my side/topspins, which is an easy read, what if I had that same flat angle and instead of flicking forward so much (which is side/back) i somewhat lift the ball or more so let it simply roll off. The result will either be more dead or light topspin of which I remember when practicing that without telling my training parter, the one I have trouble fooling anymore, he said "that's a hard one to read".
 
Top