Forget the blade. Lets talk about this reverse pendulum serve.
so in the video you get good looks at it at 10:31 (real time) or 10:44 (slow mo)
I made a gif of it at 10:44 here.
So I can do this serve but I've always considered my reverse pendulum backspin version to be my weakest version of the serve. The pure side or side top is pretty good.
Dan, if you see this, maybe you can expand on this. Plus it looks like you do this serve yourself. What do you like?
For starters, it looks like Dan misses it because he had to reach thinking the serve was going down the line. Nonetheless, it seemed he was still relatively under the ball but the spin still took him into the net.
How does Timo achieve this amount of spin? In my experience, if your blade is angled like his is, the more you swing to the side, the more corkscrew or side you'll get. The only way I get backspin is if I really flatten out my blade and come under, touching the bottom of the ball, and come through it going forward almost pointing at the opponent. That being said, my reverse action wrist flick with a flat blade (parallel to the floor) is only so strong so my backspin is I'd say light. Perhaps I just need to work on my whip action with this more.
Timo seems to approach it differently. His bat is angled. Almost 45 degrees by the looks of it. When your blade is angled like this, you can't touch the pure bottom of the ball. Perhaps it's not fully seen here but maybe he's getting all that backspin with some strong downward action on the back/side of the ball on the swing going toward the floor. I hope this makes sense for anybody who routinely does this serve.
Anyways, curious to hear your guy's thoughts.