Need help receiving a particular serve

[Musaab]

Hello folks, I posted years ago about something similar and I actually got a response that solved the issue, here is me trying again on a different issue.
Forehand oriented, been working on my backhand for few years and I got to the point where some opponents telling me that it is because of my strong backhand you won (and I'm like you don't even know). The truth is I'm comfortable with some specific balls and even that is not everyday sometimes it is not even as good. Some other balls not so much. The one thats bothering me the most is the following:
In my gameplay if I receive a long serve I'm looping it there is 0 tolerance here. So the pendulum long serve to my elbow I don't seem to find the right contact angle or something to loop it. For contrast if the same player changes to backhand serve and give me one in the same spot I'm looping it clean almost as my forehand but the pendulum at best I just put the ball back but I can't loop it I couldn't. It is the sensation that the ball is curving away from my racket when it is time to hit or something. Would love a piece of advice from backhand-oriented players

 

[jk1980]

It really depends on if you are backhand or forehand dominant
This decides how you shift your stance to receive serves to the elbow. One option is to low/widen your stance so you can change your sideways posture by shifting to the left while squatting and then loop it with the backhand when the ball drops from the table and and spin would just drift the ball more to you backhand

 

[pong99]

 

[blahness]

This is one of my fav BH serves to loop against. Against FH pendulum you need to BH loop by going along with the sidespin. Incoming ball is spinning clockwise (from your perspective), you should ride and add to the clockwise spin. For under vs top adjustment it is the same like other loops. Make sure you lunge well with your right foot to make way for the stroke, otherwise the ball is not gonna be in an ideal hitting spot. If the ball is going wide to your left then you need to lunge with your left foot.

Going with the spin offers the best control and safety. If you try to impact it head on or even worse on the right side you are gonna miss quite a lot more.

 

[Musaab]

Thank you , will try these ideas and report back

 

[Musaab]

This is one of my fav BH serves to loop against. Against FH pendulum you need to BH loop by going along with the sidespin. Incoming ball is spinning clockwise (from your perspective), you should ride and add to the clockwise spin. For under vs top adjustment it is the same like other loops. Make sure you lunge well with your right foot to make way for the stroke, otherwise the ball is not gonna be in an ideal hitting spot. If the ball is going wide to your left then you need to lunge with your left foot.

Going with the spin offers the best control and safety. If you try to impact it head on or even worse on the right side you are gonna miss quite a lot more.

Ok yesterday I tried this first because I’m fan of receiving with/against spin concept that I discovered on my own on YouTube (it irks me coaches don’t talk about it). So clearly your suggestion is receiving with the spin in this case. I understand the concept because I do it for this serve in its short version but for that I do have my elbow up and front and my hand really pointing to my body and if you can imagine this position, it is exactly what you need to play it with the spin. The serve I have problems with is the long one , no time to do all that elbow position nor pros do that either,instead they are just in normal top spin position. I couldn’t find a good contact point and I blv I should do the inverse i.e. playing against the spin because this is where I can grip onto the ball , more power to you but this receive you describe is not easy.

 

[IB66]

This is one of my fav BH serves to loop against. Against FH pendulum you need to BH loop by going along with the sidespin. Incoming ball is spinning clockwise (from your perspective), you should ride and add to the clockwise spin. For under vs top adjustment it is the same like other loops. Make sure you lunge well with your right foot to make way for the stroke, otherwise the ball is not gonna be in an ideal hitting spot. If the ball is going wide to your left then you need to lunge with your left foot.

Going with the spin offers the best control and safety. If you try to impact it head on or even worse on the right side you are gonna miss quite a lot more.

Hi Blahness,
Not sure I’m following what you mean.
For a RH server and receiver, from the receivers view, a pendulum serve from your opponent means that they are striking the RH side of the ball as you look at the serve. This means that the ball will be dragged back to the right by the incoming spin, towards the servers BH corner. To control the incoming spin the ball needs to be contacted on the RH side which is against the spin. Or the receive aimed out to the left.
It’s easier to return a RH players pendulum serve (by a RH receiver) with the receivers FH, this is because the natural bat position for a FH stroke will impact the RH side of the ball, ie the bat face is naturally aiming to the left / servers FH side.
a general rule to deal with side spin is to aim where the bat starts (if the server were to stand parallel to the end of the table, facing you square on. Their bat would swing from your left to right, so you need to aim to the left, where their bat starts.

 

[Musaab]

Hi Blahness,
Not sure I’m following what you mean.
For a RH server and receiver, from the receivers view, a pendulum serve from your opponent means that they are striking the RH side of the ball as you look at the serve. This means that the ball will be dragged back to the right by the incoming spin, towards the servers BH corner. To control the incoming spin the ball needs to be contacted on the RH side which is against the spin. Or the receive aimed out to the left.
It’s easier to return a RH players pendulum serve (by a RH receiver) with the receivers FH, this is because the natural bat position for a FH stroke will impact the RH side of the ball, ie the bat face is naturally aiming to the left / servers FH side.
a general rule to deal with side spin is to aim where the bat starts (if the server were to stand parallel to the end of the table, facing you square on. Their bat would swing from your left to right, so you need to aim to the left, where their bat starts.

You are absolutely right but that doesn’t mean you can receive with the spin too. Actually found this to be a good variation for your FH receive , do what just described especially if you want to receive long , as a variation and especially if you want to receive short point your blade as you would normally do but instead cut the ball towards i.e. with the spin this will result in a short receive , sometimes tricky to deal with. Another example see Truls receive against reverse pendulum where open the blade as you would normally do but instead of actually pushing he slides the blades with the spin.
However for the backhand receiving with the spin is really tricky because as you said the ball already wants to go to the receiver backhand so if you touch it with the BH from LH side the contact time is really minimal isn’t it ?!

 

[IB66]

You are absolutely right but that doesn’t mean you can receive with the spin too. Actually found this to be a good variation for your FH receive , do what just described especially if you want to receive long , as a variation and especially if you want to receive short point your blade as you would normally do but instead cut the ball towards i.e. with the spin this will result in a short receive , sometimes tricky to deal with. Another example see Truls receive against reverse pendulum where open the blade as you would normally do but instead of actually pushing he slides the blades with the spin.
However for the backhand receiving with the spin is really tricky because as you said the ball already wants to go to the receiver backhand so if you touch it with the BH from LH side the contact time is really minimal isn’t it ?!

Yes, you can receive with the spin, but this is for many, an advanced technique.
fast long side spin serves tend to ‘pop’ as they have loads of energy, so can be difficult to control.
Depends what you want to achieve.
if you consistently fail to return the serve then just getting the ball back on the table is the main aim. if returning with the spin works for you, then crack on.
How much risk do you take when returning serve? This is something that you have to take into account. High risk = more return errors without your opponent having to play a stroke, medium risk = opponent having to play more third balls. Low risk = you’re in every point. Of course quality of return is key at higher levels, sometimes a low risk high quality return beats a high risk low quality return hands down.

 

[Musaab]

Yes, you can receive with the spin, but this is for many, an advanced technique.
fast long side spin serves tend to ‘pop’ as they have loads of energy, so can be difficult to control.
Depends what you want to achieve.
if you consistently fail to return the serve then just getting the ball back on the table is the main aim. if returning with the spin works for you, then crack on.
How much risk do you take when returning serve? This is something that you have to take into account. High risk = more return errors without your opponent having to play a stroke, medium risk = opponent having to play more third balls. Low risk = you’re in every point. Of course quality of return is key at higher levels, sometimes a low risk high quality return beats a high risk low quality return hands down.

Just returning the ball is not the goal here because this is not a problem. Actually I even have a better solution by adopting a forehand stance and this long serve and sometimes even the semi-short serves I just loop them with the forehand but we all know this is not a good situation when they start to serve to the forahnd side or when the start blocking to the wide forehand , when I'm energized thats ok but a lot of times specially in tournaments I'm not.
As for the risk I don't care, I follow a simple rule, a long serve it HAS TO BE LOOPED and since I'm comfortable with looping long backhand or reverse serves with my backhand I want to develop the same for this serve.

 

[blahness]

Ok yesterday I tried this first because I’m fan of receiving with/against spin concept that I discovered on my own on YouTube (it irks me coaches don’t talk about it). So clearly your suggestion is receiving with the spin in this case. I understand the concept because I do it for this serve in its short version but for that I do have my elbow up and front and my hand really pointing to my body and if you can imagine this position, it is exactly what you need to play it with the spin. The serve I have problems with is the long one , no time to do all that elbow position nor pros do that either,instead they are just in normal top spin position. I couldn’t find a good contact point and I blv I should do the inverse i.e. playing against the spin because this is where I can grip onto the ball , more power to you but this receive you describe is not easy.

Don't lift your elbow up, elbow should be in neutral position for looping. You cannot use a chiquita movement for fast long serves. Really the going with the spin is the feeling of contact. Against fast long pendulum I am only using my fingers, forearm and a bit of weight transfer, not drawing a big af circle. From top looking down imagine drawing an arc from 6oclock to 12oclock, this is the feeling of looping long sidespin pendulum for me.

Playing against the spin is good if you wanna chop or push the long serve and is pretty error prone if you wanna loop it. The issue is that the serve will curve to the left while your stroke is going to the right making it super easy to miscontact the ball. Basically going with the spin also means going with the ball trajectory which has a more forgiving contact. Even if you are late or the ball curved more left than what you thought, you will still succeed in looping because the starting loop movement is also headed leftward and still close to the ball. If your stroke started with a rightward swing, once you miss your contact timing you missed it forever because the ball would have travelled further left and your bat is further to the right (the racket and the ball are suddenly very far away from each other). This is why looping against the spin is more unforgiving.

 

[blahness]

Hi Blahness,
Not sure I’m following what you mean.
For a RH server and receiver, from the receivers view, a pendulum serve from your opponent means that they are striking the RH side of the ball as you look at the serve. This means that the ball will be dragged back to the right by the incoming spin, towards the servers BH corner. To control the incoming spin the ball needs to be contacted on the RH side which is against the spin. Or the receive aimed out to the left.
It’s easier to return a RH players pendulum serve (by a RH receiver) with the receivers FH, this is because the natural bat position for a FH stroke will impact the RH side of the ball, ie the bat face is naturally aiming to the left / servers FH side.
a general rule to deal with side spin is to aim where the bat starts (if the server were to stand parallel to the end of the table, facing you square on. Their bat would swing from your left to right, so you need to aim to the left, where their bat starts.

The general rule of going against the spin is not correct for looping and is the reason why I struggled to loop long super spinny sidespin serves for a long time. Now that I learnt how to go with the spin it is just trivial to loop them no matter how spinny the serve is.

 

[IB66]

Just returning the ball is not the goal here because this is not a problem. Actually I even have a better solution by adopting a forehand stance and this long serve and sometimes even the semi-short serves I just loop them with the forehand but we all know this is not a good situation when they start to serve to the forahnd side or when the start blocking to the wide forehand , when I'm energized thats ok but a lot of times specially in tournaments I'm not.
As for the risk I don't care, I follow a simple rule, a long serve it HAS TO BE LOOPED and since I'm comfortable with looping long backhand or reverse serves with my backhand I want to develop the same for this serve.

The “has to be looped” is a good attitude, but sometimes not the best option. Even the pros don’t loop everything, sure their goal IS generally to loop everything where possible but occasionally they don’t because they may have been caught out, not be in the right position etc.
You need to get someone to serve loads of pendulum serves into your BH and a coach to evaluate your returns and stroke. If you are already doing this, then carry on and eventually it will come together.

 

[IB66]

The general rule of going against the spin is not correct for looping and is the reason why I struggled to loop long super spinny sidespin serves for a long time. Now that I learnt how to go with the spin it is just trivial to loop them no matter how spinny the serve is.

Check post no3 by pong99 is Hemming Hu wrong? He isn’t looping with the spin.

 

[Musaab]

Don't lift your elbow up, elbow should be in neutral position for looping. You cannot use a chiquita movement for fast long serves. Really the going with the spin is the feeling of contact. Against fast long pendulum I am only using my fingers, forearm and a bit of weight transfer, not drawing a big af circle. From top looking down imagine drawing an arc from 6oclock to 12oclock, this is the feeling of looping long sidespin pendulum for me.

Playing against the spin is good if you wanna chop or push the long serve and is pretty error prone if you wanna loop it. The issue is that the serve will curve to the left while your stroke is going to the right making it super easy to miscontact the ball. Basically going with the spin also means going with the ball trajectory which has a more forgiving contact. Even if you are late or the ball curved more left than what you thought, you will still succeed in looping because the starting loop movement is also headed leftward and still close to the ball. If your stroke started with a rightward swing, once you miss your contact timing you missed it forever because the ball would have travelled further left and your bat is further to the right (the racket and the ball are suddenly very far away from each other). This is why looping against the spin is more unforgiving.

I guess I would be interested to know the angle of your blade to make the contact

 

[IB66]

The general rule of going against the spin is not correct for looping and is the reason why I struggled to loop long super spinny sidespin serves for a long time. Now that I learnt how to go with the spin it is just trivial to loop them no matter how spinny the serve is.

The statement to say “the general rule of going against the spin is not correct for looping” is NOT CORRECT.
what do you do when playing a loop v backspin” play a loop chop!!! If you can overcome heavy backspin by playing against the spin, then you can do the same v heavy side spin.
there is more than one way to skin a rabbit.

 

[blahness]

The statement to say “the general rule of going against the spin is not correct for looping” is NOT CORRECT.
what do you do when playing a loop v backspin” play a loop chop!!! If you can overcome heavy backspin by playing against the spin, then you can do the same v heavy side spin.
there is more than one way to skin a rabbit.

I meant against sidespin balls... btw looping against backspin is going with the spin not against it. Your opponent's backspin is in the same direction as your topspin.

 

[blahness]

I guess I would be interested to know the angle of your blade to make the contact

I know the issue now, you need to approach it a bit like curving the ball around the net, ie you actually have to aim the loop more towards the left otherwise it is gonna go out on the right side. The hard part is making enough room with the legs and body to get a good striking position, when pressured with long fast serves on the elbow. If you rotate your upper body enough, you can make your body face forward and left which allows you the freedom to aim the ball left. Sometimes with fast serves when you step to the right using the right leg you can already create the angle with the leg positioning.

See 15 mins onwards:

 

[blahness]

Check post no3 by pong99 is Hemming Hu wrong? He isn’t looping with the spin.

Yes he is going a bit against the spin in the video demonstration. Also it is clear that he is not playing against players of his own level. Against weaker players you can do anything and it will still work. If he was facing WTT level players nearer his own level who are serving quality fast long pendulum (both heavy sideunder and sidetop) to nasty placements, it probably is a suboptimal way to loop.

 

[IB66]

I meant against sidespin balls... btw looping against backspin is going with the spin not against it. Your opponent's backspin is in the same direction as your topspin.

I stand corrected!