All things service

An option is to serve flat (light topspin) and fast

well damn that's exactly what i'm looking for. And on ping skills no less. SMH. I should have seen this.

Thanks for the tip. Will get out & practice, practice, practice. Thx.

There's a youtube on how to serve a rocket serve in japanese... can't find it now

here's a vid of my bad form rocket serve and mostly 3rd ball punch down the line

using old racket and longer serve motion (which i've been using predominately when i used to play a lot) ... with newer racket and working on shorter serve motion, not quite getting the placement or speed i want ... still working on it

Need to rewatch this a few times to really imprint in my old man pea brain.

Thank you yet again NL!

NextLevel said:

So here is my serve secret sauce video - this change took my backspin serve from good to consistent point scorer. Raises the spin on your serve significantly. Sometimes I feel guilty sharing this since a tip like this is paid content on TTEdge, but I know Brett wouldn't mind and I have learned that even when I show people these things, some people still think it is trivial or not important or can't get the most out of it.

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Yoshimura's serve has always been one of the more nasty ones around.

I like the concept of it. The hand and wrist is kinda behind the ball which allows you to toss it closer to your body making it hard to see vs out to the side and swiping under it like a normal backspin serve.

Anyways, if he's coming from behind the ball, I always thought he was done 1 of 2 things.

1 - topspin. contact back of the ball followed by fake the scooping under motion very, very quickly.
or
2 - Backspin. Same motion but actually contact the ball with that soouping under motion.
(this one I never could figure out how he's getting so much under action given the wrist is behind the ball and basically it plays little to no part in the process)

However this video almost seems to indicate that he's somewhat doing some reverse penhold action here.

The action Yoshimura is doing almost looks like what these guys are practicing in this video.

Although the guy in the video largely does nothing but topspin from what I see. His biggest tell is how fast the serve is. Hard to make a backspin ball behave like that.

Nontheless, and interesting one to watch.

Yoshimura was hiding the serve with his head. Once that became harder for him to continue and people figured out how to read the serve regardless, his serve advantages were not as strong. He is still a dangerous and talented player.

I'm continually amazed how after playing TT consistently for 8 years (started late and I know some of you have played much longer) how you can still learn things. Even things that are your strength.

I suppose this is why you should always practice your serves. I've always searched for that quick after fake motion that you see some top players have. Typically the paddle goes out to the side. Feeling that my hand speed just wasn't fast or quick enough to execute that while still being able to put good spin on the ball, for some time I largely gave up on that concept.

But those last videos inspired me to try again. Furthermore, I don't really execute this "up/down" serve as it's called in some videos. I do pendulum, reverse pendulum, sometimes punch serve but never this one.

It's early and I still need more reps with it but I honestly think I've got it. If you check the video in post #71. Go to 3:24. I would that is exactly what I've been able to execute last night except I was focusing on keeping my follow through below the table to continue to try to hide the paddle after contact.

I liked the motion these guys were using but the more expert guy (the one who was teaching) as far as I could tell was only doing this serve as a topspin serve. I can't have a serve that doesn't have any variation. I mean what's the point.

But I did it several times last night. So in that sample at 3:24 in the video, in my mind it was as simple as contact the back of the ball for topspin and just be sure to touch the ball on the bottom for backspin. In either case, you motion should be pretty much the same and quick. I'm excited to develop this.

It's funny but as you practice serve by yourself at home, you can start to tell when you have something that's good (make service practice balls shown on my youtube channel. They help) and when something you're working on is just sub par. This has a lot of potential.

Suds, thanks for posting #71. I have a serve similar to what is shown...but some of the detail of what they were doing inspired me go do a serve session yesterday...and I am excited to find I have a new variation that I think will pay off well!

There are lot of people who hide serve contact point with their Heads .... even if you tell them they won't acknowledge mainly because its harder to catch and they go through tournaments without somebody else catching it ... people will only care about the serves being wrong if they lose matches in tournaments because of those serves ...

ttmonster said:

There are lot of people who hide serve contact point with their Heads .... even if you tell them they won't acknowledge mainly because its harder to catch and they go through tournaments without somebody else catching it ... people will only care about the serves being wrong if they lose matches in tournaments because of those serves ...

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How exactly can you hide the contact point with your HEAD? As far as I know, I could be mistaken, the contact point has to be visible from both net posts at the height of the top of the net. Trying to think of a head hanging that low makes for a funny imagination. Did you mean hand or am I wrong about the rules here?

I have always wondered how badly a magician with a great sleight of hand would screw over his opponents at table tennis serves..

Looks like Yoshmiura's serve is a sort of reverse pendulum. I strongly believe that the reverse pendulum serve is the most difficult serve in table tennis to master. Even if you take out all fake movements and simplify as much as possible, it is still hard. It took me three years of hard work to learn how to generate reasonable amount of backspin on it consistently, whilst keep the ball reasonably low and short. And I still make faults in matches. Now imagine what would happen if you add all those fancy bells and whistles that Yoshimura's doing. Of course it will be tough. He also hides the ball on contact with his head. If I recall correctly, in a podcast made by Dan, Kristian Karlsson said that he had been practicing the reverse serve for a long time and it was still not there. I think I saw him using it recently, so he probably broke through.

The guys in the video above show the punch (aka hook, aka jab) serve. I don't think it is the serve Yoshimura does.

sanavasaraja said:

How exactly can you hide the contact point with your HEAD? As far as I know, I could be mistaken, the contact point has to be visible from both net posts at the height of the top of the net. Trying to think of a head hanging that low makes for a funny imagination. Did you mean hand or am I wrong about the rules here?

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Watch below at 0:54 I am pretty sure that Ma Long and other top Chinese do that too, just search for some close-ups of his serves (there are a lot).