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Try it in front of a mirror. Many people start out with their angle tilted, then they change it as they approach the ball and even with a mirror, you often do the same thing because you are so focused on hitting the ball you don't see what you do in the mirror. It's the same as my struggle...

Your racket is probably not travelling fast enough which is why they are flying so high. You are also possibly hitting into the ball too hard. Serving low heavy backspin is like making a rock skim across a pond. You want the ball to travel fast and low trajectory enough to go in a straight...

Not just the bottom, the bottom FRONT. Almost tilt your paddle angle so that it faces the back wall slightly and not the front wall. Serve with that and see how much backspin you get without seriously trying. Then try to find the right balance with racket head speed and height. One of the...

Yes, try to get used to serving through up to the bottom front. The follow through is not bad for a table serve, but it is not good for a practice floor serve when you are really trying to practice loading the ball up. When you can do the bottom front naturally, all the other contact points...

Archo, Ah, videotape. Good for you. I have no clue why the angle opens up with the racket perpendicular to the floor at the follow through. This likely means that you are not brushing through the bottom front of the ball and are not getting really heavy backspin. But I can't see the quality...

What am I going to tell you that is better than what Brett put in his video on the backspin serve for TTEdge on his youtube channel? Brett also has a video on backspin vs no spin out there on his youtube channel - what am I going to tell you that he doesn't say there? All people can give is...

The best I can tell you, Archo, is that practicing and looking at the ball and trying to reproduce what gave the best results will get you as far as you can go over time. There is no magic formula to improving the quality of your serves. The most important thing is regular practice and...

You seriously want us to respond to this without video? “Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.” - George Santayana

England seems to be getting TT Rich!

So true and underestimated by some that it is not even funny. When people push my serve into the net, the first reaction from lower level players is to say that they made a mistake. They often don't realize that if they let that ball go off the table (if it made it that far), it would come...

There are a lot of interesting issues here - may come back later to contribute when I have time to discuss deeper. I think izra's point is important that negative thinking is not necessarily negative - there is a book on it call "the power of negative thinking". I just think that everyone has...

Yes, but he thinks serving tricks only work until easily defused and can also build a laziness into one's game that makes one play less well when the serves are returned well. He finds the struggle of the rally more noble and points out that unfamiliarity will win you some free points on serve...

Yes. They think it is no spin or light backspin and they come in with some cool angle or don't try to stroke the ball so the spin just does the rest - acts like gravity. Sometimes, they are even trying to loop the ball when this happens. I was playing someone recently at the last tournament...

Some people don't even net my serve, THe ball just goes into the table as if they batted it down really hard.

I like to say that my backspin serve turns people into believers. Sometimes until people face my serve, they never knew that kind of backspin existed.

Not to make you the poster boy but yes, Archo can watch that match and see what I mean.

I think ttmonster pointed out to you more explicitly that while things may look superficially similar and may lend themselves to the same language, the problems higher level players face should not be confused with those of lower level players if only because of the ball quality they are...

He lacks an opening backhand topspin. It is not as rare as you might think. Even some people who have openers lack the confidence to use them in matches, or cannot open safely with spin to get into a rally. I have played lefties with precisely this problem and this is how I play them - I push...

Too much of the match and your attitude was influenced by prior history. He is a structurally unsound player who uses athleticism instead of strategy to cover up his bad structure. His backspin attack is not a powerful stroke and he is serving mostly sidespin to mask this. You should mostly...

It takes me back to my Big Dipper days - my short game control is just so much better with it. Even if I don't use it all the time, it is going to improve my technique in a massive way. The rubber is EXTREMELY direct and you can feel the spin and the power working in the same direction. All I...