hook serve

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Im a beginner cpen player. I find best way to serve heavy pure underspin serve is to brush the ball with a horizonal flat open blade. If u add body/hip rotation it imparts even heavier underspin even though the movement is arced horizontally across the ball.

Best effect if u contact ball as close the table surface with a smooth even constant arc with no pause or stops until the ball leaves the bat and bounces once on your side.
 
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Ur problem likely lies in your "Whip", timing, and grip pressure.

To get a spinny serve, you stay loose, accelerate the lower arm and a little wrist, and have a very loose grip... all with a bat angle that is pretty much the flat surface of the table +/- the tip of bat angled one way or another. (Mostly tip down some.)
 
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Ur problem likely lies in your "Whip", timing, and grip pressure.

To get a spinny serve, you stay loose, accelerate the lower arm and a little wrist, and have a very loose grip... all with a bat angle that is pretty much the flat surface of the table +/- the tip of bat angled one way or another. (Mostly tip down some.)

I don't know whether further endorsement is needed but I observed a top English coach working with a young player on how to obtain more spin on his serves and his advice was identical to that in Der Echte's post.
 
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One can enhance the spin even more with some tweaks down the line, but a player first should master the ball toss, area of impact zone to stick, the timing and use of each component, how to amplify each little movement, and how to control impact.

The other little things can help, but I say get the basics right first.

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Opposite to ecthe, I find that most peoples problems in getting good spin on serves is that they don't hold the racket tight enough. Hold it as tight as you can and try a backspin serve. You'll find that the ball enters deeper into the rubber.
Then loosen up to the point where you can flow more freely.
Then loosen up and tighten up only at the point of contact.
 
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I guess it is okay if there are different schools of thought. But my understanding is that, in sports in general, it you are too stiff and rigid it does not help you.

In TT, if your grip is too tight you cannot use whip mechanics which means your racket speed will be much slower.

Now, when you use whip mechanics, your grip will naturally tighten as you whip, which also means your grip will be firmer at impact. And that combination of whip and grip timed to impact will increase your level of spin.

And if you wanted the ball to have less spin with a motion that is very hard to distinguish from the first whip, keeping your grip lose so it does not tighten as you whip would give you a less precise contact and so, less spin (good deception). But you would have to try to do that. Because when you whip it is natural that as you whip to use the index finger and thumb to stabilize the blade face during that acceleration.


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Brs

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I didn't think hook or jab or punch or whatever serves were ever pure backspin. Aren't they always sidespin and -back or -topspin?
 
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Opposite to ecthe, I find that most peoples problems in getting good spin on serves is that they don't hold the racket tight enough. Hold it as tight as you can and try a backspin serve. You'll find that the ball enters deeper into the rubber.
Then loosen up to the point where you can flow more freely.
Then loosen up and tighten up only at the point of contact.

I have never found that concept to work on serves. However, on strong impact / powerful shots, I find that firming up the grip right at impact allows you to deliver maximum force that will amplify your rebound. That concept you discus is IMO big-time essential to a powerful shot.

With the serve, we are catching, accelerating, and throwing the ball almost perpendicular to the bat. The firming of grip works for when we are trying to make the most rebound, which translates mostly in pace and some more spin.

You get more acceleration and terminal speed of bat by being loose.

There are a number of ways to visualize things.

I frequently tell people to set themselves up all the way around the BH corner right up to the table and look down the endline. It help keeps one in position. One uses the endline as a baseline guidline in their ball toss and impact. Using the endline makes one subconsciously much more consistent in where they impact the ball (and toss it)

Sometimes it helps to imagine you are impacting the ball under it and a bit to the FRONT of the ball. That helps one keep the bat angle open so they strike the bottom of the ball. Too many players close their blade on the backswing and never open it enough to get under the ball, then do all kind of crazy stuff to keep ball short - usually it is swinging down or stopping their stroke to slow down the rebound that is already too direct.

Serving pendulum with tip down and bat full open is a great way to initially improve impact consistency.

Often, a player tries to practice with a real short toss and a real long backswing and swing. I am the odd person that recommends a higher toss and a shorter backswing and swing. The part of the whip where one generates all the bat speed needed doesn't take a lot of space, maybe a foot or so is all that is needed. maybe later, when the main part of the swing timing is good, a player could profit from learning a variation with a long swing. I believe at first, it is too much to work on and get the timing of that long swing to impact the ball at the right time and way. Same for the short toss, not enough time for a player to setup and go into action. I see player after player initiate their swing too late and with a short toss, it is already over.

Once one gets the basics to a real high consistency, they are ready for a few small things that improve their impact and recovery. It is better to work on those later, after one is real good on impact dynamics.
 
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Elite amateur players and pros don't over-worry about reading a 50 page manual on how to serve like we discuss on the forums, they know basics and spend hours and hours and hundreds and thousands of hours in the hall practicing their serve to the point where they get instinctive timing and ability to vary their impact and bat to produce all the possible and new serves.

Yet I get it, adult learners like us on the forums do not learn and achieve just by some observation and repetition. We must understand why something is and how to do it before we can associate things in our minds and be able to begin to do it. Then we gotta do it a lot more than the kid to get there.
 
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I didn't think hook or jab or punch or whatever serves were ever pure backspin. Aren't they always sidespin and -back or -topspin?

BRS, I would agree, I do not think the OP is talking about a pure underspin serve. Using a pure underspin serve is waving your arms back and forth jumping on the table proclaiming it is DUCK SEASON - SHOOT ME NOW! I DEMAND THAT YOU SHOOT ME NOW!

Nah. My boy Mark Croitoroo can do a hook serve that has massive backspin, full backspin, as close to no side as you can get.
 
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Well its easy to test.

Hold the racket very loosely and swing it not too fast under the ball, hitting it at the bottom, observing the spin.

Now hold it with a death-grip and do the same. High speed isnt necessary.

The spin should be much much higher with the death grip.

Then u go from there once the concept is regarded.
And it is no problem to relax the wrist enough for a large swing even when the fingers hold tightly, or some of them.


A good example is liu shiwen, you can see how much pressure she applies with the thumb on the blade in her serve grip. The thumb is white and bent like a claw
 
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I have never found that concept to work on serves. However, on strong impact / powerful shots, I find that firming up the grip right at impact allows you to deliver maximum force that will amplify your rebound. That concept you discus is IMO big-time essential to a powerful shot.

With the serve, we are catching, accelerating, and throwing the ball almost perpendicular to the bat. The firming of grip works for when we are trying to make the most rebound, which translates mostly in pace and some more spin.

You get more acceleration and terminal speed of bat by being loose.

There are a number of ways to visualize things.

I frequently tell people to set themselves up all the way around the BH corner right up to the table and look down the endline. It help keeps one in position. One uses the endline as a baseline guidline in their ball toss and impact. Using the endline makes one subconsciously much more consistent in where they impact the ball (and toss it)

Sometimes it helps to imagine you are impacting the ball under it and a bit to the FRONT of the ball. That helps one keep the bat angle open so they strike the bottom of the ball. Too many players close their blade on the backswing and never open it enough to get under the ball, then do all kind of crazy stuff to keep ball short - usually it is swinging down or stopping their stroke to slow down the rebound that is already too direct.

Serving pendulum with tip down and bat full open is a great way to initially improve impact consistency.

Often, a player tries to practice with a real short toss and a real long backswing and swing. I am the odd person that recommends a higher toss and a shorter backswing and swing. The part of the whip where one generates all the bat speed needed doesn't take a lot of space, maybe a foot or so is all that is needed. maybe later, when the main part of the swing timing is good, a player could profit from learning a variation with a long swing. I believe at first, it is too much to work on and get the timing of that long swing to impact the ball at the right time and way. Same for the short toss, not enough time for a player to setup and go into action. I see player after player initiate their swing too late and with a short toss, it is already over.

Once one gets the basics to a real high consistency, they are ready for a few small things that improve their impact and recovery. It is better to work on those later, after one is real good on impact dynamics.

That's really good.

It's a simple thing but even spending an hour with racket and ball, nothing else, is a good way to start. There's similar advice in this video, although he's a shake-hander you should definitely watch it:
https://youtu.be/sjm9PvelFnA

And the mandatory Ma Lin video to go with it:
https://youtu.be/kXzIdqX3UMs

To those in doubt: that backspin enough for you?
 
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I didn't think hook or jab or punch or whatever serves were ever pure backspin. Aren't they always sidespin and -back or -topspin?

Yes if this serve of what the OP is talking about is executing the Wang Hao like version of the hook serve, then this is a distinctly penhold serve because your wrist is behind the paddle as it's coming around. In short, it's harder to use the wrist whip like you can in a normal pendulum penhold serve.

Having said that, this is what I've found for my variations of the punch serve. Again, picture Wang Hao's version of doing it (i'll post video of him demonstrating it shortly).

So you're punching somewhat to the side in your motion.
- Paddle flat or neutral - heavy side/top
- Paddle 45 deg angle as you come around - some side back but it's light spin. Honestly a lot of people will push this ball thinking it has more back on it. Easy 3rd ball kill.
If you really want a backspin version of this serve, as you come around, your paddle has to be (at least for me) completely parallel to the table and as you slice under it, be sure you're slicing forward to the opponent. It honestly turns into a somewhat normal flat pendulum serve. You can then get the wrist back in it to get a lot of spin.

But enough talk from me. Here's Wang Hao.

Serve 1 is back/side. That's the underspin version i'm talking about. Note how flat is paddle is. He doesn't use wrist in this but I prefer it with wrist.
Serves 2 & 3 don't have much backspin at all because the way his paddle is angled.

There's a fair number of penholders out there who prefer to execute this serve with the RPB side of their bat as the angle is more condusive IMO for backspin. See wang zeng yi or tao wenzhang who uses it a lot.

Tao: (a great match. Tao uses this serve a lot. He first uses it at 0:42 in the video)
 
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