great effectivity of fast long line serves at the right moment

UpSideDownCarl · Jan 20, 2016

Look: let's agree: Marc (slimjimmi) is an awesome player and these are pretty darn good serves, as can be seen by the surprise of the opponents in match play.

We can also agree that, in those matches, his opponents are taken by surprise but it does not look like anyone questions the legality of the serves.

These serves would probably not get called as illegal unless you had a very hard nosed umpire. I have seen that before. I remember in the 2011 WTTCs there was an umpire who was criticized for how many faults he called.

That toss, whether it is legal or not, as a result of the fact that it goes up and towards Marc, is not an issue to me. I would say it had an arc but it is mostly up.

An issue could be if the ball gets hidden behind his shoulder for a moment. However, the camera angles are not the right angle to determine this. Nor would an umpire's seat be! The only angle from which you could tell is the angle from which the receiver is watching. One important point with that: something that is legal for a right handed receiver may be hidden for a left handed receiver.

And none of the people receiving serve seemed to feel that the serve was illegal. So, it is worth noting that above the rest of the information.

And regardless of whether you agree or disagree with someone else on the forum, we can do it politely. There is no need for making personal attacks.

Everyone on the thread was trying to voice a valid opinion. No need to descend to street fighting tactics. That stuff only makes everyone who gets sucked in look worse.

Sent from Deep Space by Abacus

bobpuls · Jan 20, 2016

Good played Carl... And you call your self a conflict person?
This beer is on me. Botom up !

Tinykin · Jan 20, 2016

You are close but the real reason is...

Old School said:
I would say that this rules is worded to be a bit vague just to eliminate the worst kind of old serves where the players would create spin with their fingers and throw the ball hard to the bat to impart heavy spin.

What is "near vertical" anyway? How much drift is allowed? This is completely up to the umpire and like some have said not many umpires would call him for it.

I'm not certain how the final words are agreed, but the last thing the ITTF wants is to prevent is innovation for serves and service actions.
This is a good thing.
Look at tennis. Unless you are an afficianado of the subtleties of different player actions, they all look the same. In TT we have bh vs FH, inside vs outside, tomahawk bh vs FH and so on.
Vive la difference!

brabhamista · Jan 21, 2016

johnbhoy72 said:
It appears you are also devoid of humour and are unable to understand sarcasm.

Thanks again.... I really, really, really appreciate it.

Get over yourself, you'll feel better for it.

Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk

Sarcasm is funny if directed towards yourself or other things, but not in personal attacks. Persistent sarcasm is not funny sarcasm, it's just masked as it. It's a put-down and designed to hurt, no more, no less.

How to counter it? Well, to counter it you have to understand it and go one step beyond. One way to do it is by not acknowledging it and treating the comments as genuine, not taking the bait and not escalating the issue. It's a great way of dealing with it, because if any more sarcastic comments are made, it's clear for all to see that they are nothing but churlish, petty and not very clever.

That's my understanding of sarcasm.

johnbhoy72 · Jan 21, 2016

brabhamista said:
Sarcasm is funny if directed towards yourself or other things, but not in personal attacks. Persistent sarcasm is not funny sarcasm, it's just masked as it. It's a put-down and designed to hurt, no more, no less.

How to counter it? Well, to counter it you have to understand it and go one step beyond. One way to do it is by not acknowledging it and treating the comments as genuine, not taking the bait and not escalating the issue. It's a great way of dealing with it, because if any more sarcastic comments are made, it's clear for all to see that they are nothing but churlish, petty and not very clever.

That's my understanding of sarcasm.

Maybe you should just ignore me from now on.

Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk

brabhamista · Jan 21, 2016

johnbhoy72 said:
Maybe you should just ignore me from now on.
Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk

Why would I do that? You've made great posts in the past and I'm sure you will do that in the future too.

johnbhoy72 · Jan 21, 2016

brabhamista said:
Why would I do that? You've made great posts in the past and I'm sure you will do that in the future too.

It's all about perception and how you read things, I read bobpuls post as unnecessarily negative.

I wouldn't say slimmijimmi's serves were illegal, infact I think it's pedantic in the extreme to say they are.

We are human beings not robots.

I found bobpuls post to be critical for the sake of criticism and gave it the response I thought it deserved.

Sorry if that offended your sensibilities.

Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk

SchemeSC · Jan 21, 2016

When determining verticality, you have to take into account the height of the toss. Higher tosses can have more lateral movement towards the server and still be legal. His toss is well over his head.

ttmonster · Jan 21, 2016

Guys, not talking about people who toss the ball like Xu Xin or Par Gerrel, but ideally speaking you could only have a "vertical" only trajectory if someone drops the ball and not tosses it , I bet you nobody can toss the ball purely vertical in the real world , there will always be some horizontal component, our arms are human arms not mechanical levers

.
Anyways , coming back to the serve in question , this is the way I look at it , as long as there is six inches of upward and six inches of downward component to the toss , the toss was done with an open palm and the contact point is visible it does not bother me, so I would not be running after the referee. The only times it bothers me is when people hide the contact and or just drops the ball towards the paddle and do not toss it.
I don't see any of the above issue , however you could hire the umpire who made Ding Ning cry to call the serve illegal

. There are always these "holier than thou" umpires that know more about table tennis rules than table tennis and somehow give me the feeling , they are born again jailers not umpires

FlyRyder · Jan 21, 2016

Who cares if the serve is illegal anyway.
He was just reminding us of the effectiveness of serving down the line.

Chill out fellow ping pongers.

apodra74 · Jan 21, 2016

Check Ovtcharov serve practise he is basically tossing the ball back every time, most of the time he is tossing high, but on the 1:00 minute mark and on 2:17 also on 4:28 he tosses low and back to his body. I didn't new about the vertical rule and I wanted to try some serves tossing backwards. Is he breaking the rules?

brabhamista · Jan 22, 2016

johnbhoy72 said:
It's all about perception and how you read things, I read bobpuls post as unnecessarily negative.

I wouldn't say slimmijimmi's serves were illegal, infact I think it's pedantic in the extreme to say they are.

We are human beings not robots.

I found bobpuls post to be critical for the sake of criticism and gave it the response I thought it deserved.

Sorry if that offended your sensibilities.

Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk

I don't agree, but I understand and I'm sorry if I stepped on your toes.

Anyway, let's move on. It's Friday and I'm going to a saké tasting tonight. I'll have one for you.

ttmonster · Jan 23, 2016

http://cdn.laola1.tv/ittf/iframe/pl...est/160122_t1_JHA_Kanak_USA_LAKATOS_Tamas_HUN

Watch the serve at 9:30 in this video and you will find a perfect example of such Jailer umpiring , I don't know if this has anything to do with national allegiance , but this was an example of blatant double standards and trying to bully a kid

slimjimmii · Jan 24, 2016

Hey @all TTD-members here

At first, sorry for my late late late reply! As I saw the controversity about the toss and the flight pass of the ball when I serve and with the statement of USD Carl:

As far as whether they are legal or not, it really is hard to say because you would need to see the serves from the receiver's angle to see. But the second serve, the view from behind looks like it, it looks like that ball gets blocked from the view of the receiver behind slimjimmi's shoulder.

... I had the idea to make a new video with slow motions of my serve technique and additionally a variation of the long serves with higher tosses (all from opponents view). Watch here:

You can try to guess where the serve goes, to the right or left

Would be interesting for me to know if someone can see a parallel serve before I have contact with the ball because then it´s not that effective

I didn´t expected such a great discussion about the legality of my serves because like FlyRyder said

Who cares if the serve is illegal anyway.
He was just reminding us of the effectiveness of serving down the line.

But the concerns of some are correct, my toss is of course with a lateral path of the ball to my body.

Sugar D said:

Guys, Marc is neither a retired player nor someone who only plays very randomly competitive. I believe if there's not a seasonal break he should be playing competitive nearly every week.

So why don't we just ask him how many serves he usually gets counted away?

I think it is only due to the tolerances of nearly all umpires that my serves aren´t called out. In many tournaments and all league games no serve is being called out. But I have to admit that there were only advanced umpires at my last tournament and in Septembre at "Verbandsrangliste". I will show it to you in another new thread about that tournament, there you can see it and you will see me with an early drop-out

So, in fact USD Carl and Tinykin were right (

There are not many umpires that would fault any of his serves.

In my first video about serve training (also my one and only serve training last year) I noticed this by myself and changed my technique a little bit. Now I am happy with my toss. But my opinion doesn´t matter at German Championships and other higher official tournaments. There, the umpires are more rigorous, so I think they probably call them out like ttmonster admitted with the last video at 9.30min, this serve looks great and not really illegal.

TTFRenzy said:

Nice job there. A few tips from me as I really like fast long serves and practice them regularly.
Try to focus on the first bounce, it must be close to the endline . Combine this with tightening the grip by only using your fingers at the moment of contact (not too much off course we dont want the wrist to be stiff) and u will see that your serve will bounce longer (compared to your current 2nd bounce) in the opponent's endline which is even more difficult to deal with

I tried it, thanks for your advice! You can watch the video, I think you can see when I nearly perfectly hit the ball with first bounce very close to the endline. Your motivation for serve practise is really good and usefull, keep on training. For me it is very boring and I can´t practise longer than one hour

And the video is about my second serve training session within one year... I have to change that!

Bobpuls said:

Yes this serves are great... But all your versions are ilegal...
Your tos start in the midle and ball contact is on the line.
This is to much difference.
But generaly they are great.....

hey bob, thanks! You are nearly correct. My contact point is not at side line of the table, more in middle. Take a look at my new video. But the toss is not always the same, when I do a reverse pendulum, I automatically throw the ball more to me... I saw that now in the new video, I will focus on that at next times and hope that a nornal toss is automatically performed

Kokain said:

This + no spin serve are great for quick points especially near the end of a match to claim an easy victory.

Yeah, you´re right! I do that very often at that match situation. The opponent is mostly not brave enough to make a killer point and I can counter-spin (if it´s not an ace...).

ttmonster said:

Anyways , coming back to the serve in question , this is the way I look at it , as long as there is six inches of upward and six inches of downward component to the toss , the toss was done with an open palm and the contact point is visible it does not bother me, so I would not be running after the referee. The only times it bothers me is when people hide the contact and or just drops the ball towards the paddle and do not toss it.

Great ttmonster, that my opinion, too! There are some players who throw the ball to themselves at critical match situations and that is very unfair!

SchemeSC said:

When determining verticality, you have to take into account the height of the toss. Higher tosses can have more lateral movement towards the server and still be legal. His toss is well over his head.

I did some higher tosses, so the lateral movement of the ball unsuspicious.

Greetings from Germany!

ttmonster · Jan 24, 2016

slimjimmii said:
....
Greetings from Germany!

I have become your fan after this post . As they have a saying in hindi , let it come late if it comes of sound body and mind.

Why did I like your post so much ?

Number 1 : You could cut through all the apparent negativity and still find so much to learn from and improve. Man , I am sure your mental game is top notch , no wonder you make all those "out of the world" shots we have seen elsewhere with such consistency in match situations over and over again .

Number 2 : I saw your video , and this has to be one of the all time great videos I have personally seen about serving long. In my opinion , serving long is way under rated and its one of the most important weapons to consolidate your game against lower level players and keep surprising the higher level players and keep them uncomfortable.

Now, I will will play it over and over again on my TV and let you know if I can have any feedback for you. I hope you won't charge copyright , if I get "inspired" from some of your serves

bobpuls · Jan 24, 2016

Nice ... i really like the "fast long parallel serve with side-spin" this i have to learn .
But you are forgot your left hand to hide in time on some serves.

but really great serves.\
and keep posting .. you have very good and inspiring videos.

karan705 · Jan 24, 2016

Thats a very nice serve. Serve it into the opponents body sometimes...that also works.

Suga D · Jan 24, 2016

slimjimmii said:
... I had the idea to make a new video with slow motions of my serve technique and additionally a variation of the long serves with higher tosses (all from opponents view). Watch here:

You can try to guess where the serve goes, to the right or left Would be interesting for me to know if someone can see a parallel serve before I have contact with the ball because then it´s not that effective

Hey Marc, i like the new video even more.

Very well done.

Most of the times i predicted the direction of you're serves right, but actually i didn't consciously watch for any hints in your bodylanguage, i just guessed, i think... Maybe subconsciously, but i don't know.

One thing came to my mind while watching the new vid:

Last time i had coaching while practicing serves, the coach also told us that serving fast every once in a while can be very effective and can help you catch your opponent off-balance, but however she told us to try to avoid no-spin, sidespin, or topspin serves but rather try to put on a slight under-/backspin instead.

Some players with good reaction time might otherwise just slap/smash them, if they can reach them, but with backspin they are more forced to loop.
Of course this actually mostly happens on the highest playing levels, but maybe you can take that in account for your next tournaments and championships.

Oh, BTW: nice shirt, Mr. Crazy Amateur

great effectivity of fast long line serves at the right moment

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