Please help me how to receive opponent's services in the best way !

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Time, practice. Coaching. Hate to say it, that's all there is. It may not be what you want to hear but it's the truth.

Some of the advice that people have given sounds nice (just flick the return like ZJK or FZD) but if you are not good at deciphering what the serve is, you will never succeed with techniques that advanced. One of the first things, is your ready position proper? Make sure you understand the correct way to return a moderately spinny serve (various spins) in which the spin is not hidden. Only then you can learn to not be fooled by the things people do to disguise either the amount or direction of the spin. Know what to do with short serves, long serves, and then, practice figuring which serves are going to come long and which ones stay short---that is, learn to see the trajectory early rather than late. Later you can learn that people can fool you with trajectory and timing just as much as with spin, and can use that to disguise spin. Learn to improve your own serve (because it helps understand how other people mess you up, and one of the best ways to cope with an opponent with good serves is to be able to inflict the same damage yourself).

There no shortcuts or secret ingredients. People don't practice this enough or the right way
. I hear people say, "I would be just as good as this guy if only I could get his serve back". Which means they are not as good as the other guy.

Thanks your advices. I completely agree with you, the best way to improve this skill is time, practice, and coaching. I totally understand the principle of spin in table tennis, and how to cope with each kind of services in theory. I can also serve various spins in many ways. But you know, it is not easy to put into practice in a real match. Maybe I need more time and practice.
 
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Baal is asking a LOT of the right questions you gotta ask yourself.

To simplify it all, you will get better at reading spin as you become a better player, and there is no way to achieve that overnight.

You will get better much quicker if you understand what is happening to the ball, know the clues, the possible responses, and be ready to do them. That sounds really simple, and it is in concept, but in application, it takes a heck of a lot of time and assistance with competent help near you often.

You must develop an ability to take a snapshot of the ball and bat at the moment of impact. You need to know the opponent's surface, the bat speed, the bat angle, and the swing plane at impact. After that, you got the placement of the first bounce, how the ball travels in the air, and how it bounces once it hits your side. After that, if you haven't figured it out, you are shooting in the dark.

These skills of recognizing it are only the beginning. There are many possible responses you can do based upon your opponent and your abilities. Confidence is also a huge factor. After it is all boiled down, it comes to how much you can rely on your skills, training, and experience. This holds true for most things in life. Sometimes luck is a factor, but skill and caution are numbers 1 and 2 in many things in life.

There are a ton of write-ups on how to receive serves and there are a thousand tons of vids for it. It is profitable to look at these and learn from them, but NOTHING replaces a competent individual SHOWING you what is going on, telling you what you can do, and placing you in the situations to do it and give you the right feedback and motivation. Usually, we call such an individual a COACH, but even in my own highly developed industrialized home nation, there are woefully few of these TRUE coaches.

I am along the lines of BAAL, I would rather tell you straight up what you are up against instead of baby sugar coat it.

Thanks for your advices, I'll keep it in mind.
 
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Take a video of your matches, and then watch them. Figure out what happened to various serves on your return and ten ask yourself, or another player/coach what you should have done. If it's during a match. Ask somebody to coach you. Most people love to do it because you gain experience. The person might tell you how to receive a serve.

Thanks and Maybe I should do like your advice.
 
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Hi @LuckyMan

I use to have a good backhand and forehand and even service, but my receive of serves use to struggle real bad. It wasn't until I met @Gavin Rumgay I had to quickly adapt. His serves are very good, and when I first played him I just had no chance. However after time, I adapted to them. I found my receive of serves got a lot better against other players to. So what did I do to improve this? Here are a few tips below I found helped a lot.

I am going to use a general short or long backspin/sidespin serve in this scenario:

- Always expect the ball long when your receiving serves. if the serve has drifted long, it's much easier to topspin the ball because you are in the right position. if you move in to early, you can get stuck between the two shots (push shot or a topspin shot) which can force you to give a weak return. So on the receive if the ball is long, topspin it. If the ball is short, then step in and play the shot either short of aggressive long dig.
- Select a shot in your mind and commit to it. It is much better to learn from active/positive shots on the receive of serve.
- Keep it simple, don't play to hard or try to win the point on the receive of serve. Take your time, go from some placement.
- If someone is doing a crazy type of serve t(such as tomahawk) that your struggling with, it is most likely drifting long, so wait and topspin it.
- Play a lot of practice matches where your opponent serves the whole set/match.

Which particular serves are you struggling against? As suggested by some members here, it would be good if you could submit a video on here for us.

Thanks for your helpful advice, beside I am lack of experience, I know another I have another problems now, that is I always want to win my opponent right after they serve.
 

Dan

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Dan

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Thanks for your helpful advice, beside I am lack of experience, I know another I have another problems now, that is I always want to win my opponent right after they serve.

That's okay. I think it's important to return the serve in a good placement to set yourself up for the next ball. Don't try and win outright unless you have a good opportunity. Be patient buddy. Vary your return mixing the receive up.

Good luck.
 
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That's okay. I think it's important to return the serve in a good placement to set yourself up for the next ball. Don't try and win outright unless you have a good opportunity. Be patient buddy. Vary your return mixing the receive up.

Good luck.
Hi Dan, It's nice to meet you, and It seems to me that you are a positive member of forum, I find out your name in many comments in forum and other websites of table tennis. You know table tennis is my cup of tea now even though I've just played around three years ago after I got a serious trouble with my back. For sake of loving table tennis, I've collected a lot of videos and try to imitate the way of professional ones, especially Zhang Jike and Timo Boll, actually my backhand is quite good now, and I often use my backhand to cope with my opponent's serves. Nevertheless, it doesn't work sometimes. I am trying to improve my skills in returning services and loop, and I think it's enough for an amateur like me.
 
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Dan

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Hi Dan, It's nice to meet you, and It seems to me that you are a positive member of forum, I find out your name in many comments in forum and other websites of table tennis. You know table tennis is my cup of tea now even though I've just played around three years ago after I got a serious trouble with my back. For sake of loving table tennis, I've collected a lot of videos and try to imitate the way of professional ones, especially Zhang Jike and Timo Boll, actually my backhand is quite good now, and I often use my backhand to cope with my opponent's serves. Nevertheless, it doesn't work sometimes. I am trying to improve my skills in returning services and loop, and I think it's enough for an amateur like me.

Hey @LuckyMan it's nice to meet you to. You will meet a lot of enthusiastic table tennis players here om TTD :)

Yeah these are good players to watch and learn from. Cool 3 years playing, you'll soon click with your game and find things a lot easier once you've gone through the stage of working hard to get your basics very good and consistent.
 
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Hi Dan, It's nice to meet you, and It seems to me that you are a positive member of forum, I find out your name in many comments in forum and other websites of table tennis. You know table tennis is my cup of tea now even though I've just played around three years ago after I got a serious trouble with my back. For sake of loving table tennis, I've collected a lot of videos and try to imitate the way of professional ones, especially Zhang Jike and Timo Boll, actually my backhand is quite good now, and I often use my backhand to cope with my opponent's serves. Nevertheless, it doesn't work sometimes. I am trying to improve my skills in returning services and loop, and I think it's enough for an amateur like me.

You will need to triple authenticate Urself and show 15 vids of Urself before anyone believes you... NOT.

TTD members only ask that for dubious situations.

We have many Vietnamese on this forum. At TTD, we all like to tell stories if you read only 1 percent of the forum... you will quickly see it.

Most will accept you as you are and enjoy it.
 
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Nice clip, article above from coach Tom. I think anytime you face really good server, or even a new serve for me there is potential to net a few more balls. The problem with new or unfamiliar is that I often get caught in the looking, examining phases which can leads to a later response more passive returns.

Fore instance I don't get to see good backhand or reverse pendulum serves that often and it always seems to take a bit before I react with an optimal return when seeing them again.

I would not say serve return this is a strong point, but a few things that has really helped me improve here has been working hard at backhflips. some times committing to this stroke can cover slight misreads still getting the ball on in a pretty good position, raise confidence. And for some reason I find people more willing to drill flips and get your reps.

Of course There's no substitute to training a full range serve return game but Personally i have at times found this kind of hard thing to train at times for different reasons. It's kind of silly but I've found Sometimes people don't want to give more than a generic serve. And two people may not be able to do the serves you need work with. I do have a few guys to work on this with me and it's the best by far but I may not get to see them that often.


Would love to here other opinions on this, but A next best thing for me annyway Something I can do by myself) has been to just messing around on my own trying do every type of serve with every type of possible spin variations and contact point etc. I actually find this pretty fun and this is just me horsing around really and Some times I've been pretty suprized with the results and what's happening with the ball. everyone may not enjoy this but if your inclined, by doing this I feel like I've developed a better idea of what the ball is doing, how it's being contacted, how they are hiding the contact, and able to still to get there ball results. This is really been helpful especially when your facing a player that hides the contact really well when making in game adjustments. I may not be seeing the contact point at first but understanding the results and The probable contact, gives me confidence to make the adjustments.


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