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

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Hi all,
At that time, I can play quite well both back hand and right hand, but I always encounter a big problem when I receive services from my opponents, it results in my loss. I need you to help me to improve it, thanks.
Hi!!:)

First, the most important thing is that you have to understand about side spin, especially right side and left side. It also needs to know where the ball goes with a course when you hit the side spin ball because the side spin ball has character of the opposit direction when you hit the ball. Backspin will grasp relatively easy.

Second, you look the opponent's serve carefully, you need to catch an angle of arm or wrist when they service their ball.(swing pose also will be changed)

Third, you have to see tha ball after opponent's serve. If you only depend on the opponent's pose, you may not catch totally difference of the ball whether the ball is right side spin, left side spin or no spin. So you need to distinguish what you see. This method will be the main point understanding the ball when you attain high level.

Finally, people who is high level player mix serve with side spin and back spin. It also hard to catch what they service because they service almost same pose but the ball is totally different.(short,long,side,back and mix) They also use only side spin but it is usually used with long serve because it has to be unexpected and fast. It has also hyper spin. They use no spin sometimes because it has same motion with backspin serve, so you should know characteristic of the ball after serve.

Well..I think the fast way how to recive opponent's serve is based in experience. Good luck!:)
 
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For short serves, contact the ball just after the bounce. This reduces the effect of the backspin or sidespin. Never just hit the ball, you will have to add some spin of your own to reduce the effect off the opponent's spin. If the player you are playing against is extremely good and can do corkscrew-spin for their serves (usually only possible after a high toss before the service) then you will have to contact the ball at the top of the bounce.

If your backhand is good, then you can try flicking the ball back (watch matches of Zhang Jike or Fan Zhendong).

If you are facing long spinny serves, then the professional way is to loop the ball back with heavy topspin. If you don't trust your loop then you can try chopping the ball back with backspin but you will face problems doing this with good players unless you are a chopper.
 
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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.
 
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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.
 
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H. Schmidt is telling you the real deal on how to control a short chop serve with high percentage and control, but you gotta know what is going on first, be in a position to move to the ball, and have the will and skills to do the shot.

When we are lacking in ANY of the above, we are going to FAIL. Epically. FAIL. Crash. BURN. You get the idea.

Nothing wrong with that as long as you can recognize what happened, what you need to do, and be in an environment to correct it. Fear of failure can motivate, nothing wrong with that. If I had even a HALF Dollar for every time I failed in life, I would be a billionaire.
 
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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.
 
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I played a guy this week who fed me many Tomahawk style serves heavily loaded with side spin. Most of them were long with top spin as well as side, but the odd one had backspin and side.(and the odd one was short). I found it very difficult to react and return the serves and keep them on the table. I felt like I should be able to attack them with forehand topspin but it was so difficult to react and twist my body in time. Almost all my returns would fly long and to the left missing the table. I was at least equal to him in open play, but just lost almost every point when he served.

Any advice on how to deal with such serves ?
 
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Okay guys, there is a lot of good information on here. Baal's post is really great. I agree with Der_Echte that more of you should press the like button on Baal's post because it gives a real answer.

Here is a way of practicing this stuff with a friend or a coach. DO SERVE AND RECEIVE DRILLS. Even if you intellectually know what to do with a serve, you have to practice doing it a lot so that, in a match you do the right thing without having to think about what the right thing is.

@ SpinQuark, if you are trying to go cross court with a ball whose sidespin is pulling your shot further crosscourt at the outset, and you are contacting the outside of the ball, that is sort of like trying to contact the top of the ball against backspin with the bat closed and expecting it to go forward instead of down. When you learn which side of the ball to contact for that sidespin by practicing it, those serves will start going on the table. But practicing serve and receive is one of the keys here.

@ Tinykin, since you raised the subject, what do you feel is the number one reason for missed serves, at lower levels?
 
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I would be interested to know too (Tinykin) what you think is the number one reason for missed serves at lower level (or at high level, I suppose you mean professional vs non professionally trained players). Are you thinking of the ability to read and react to spin, footwork, stability of basic technique or something else?
 
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LOL, sorry guys I did not mean to start some mystery. I think in editing I must have accidentally deleted the next sentence.

Anyway, this comes from years of watching local league and being an official umpire. I have even had to call a let for it on several occasions as it was so obvious. Lower level players miss serves or do poor returns mostly because they were not ready or in position to receive. Many servers know this, and deliberately serve as soon as they have the ball, or in a non-umpired match will serve as they are calling the score. I sometimes watch as many players screw up more than half their receives as they had not settled into their proper receive position/stance etc.
At higher levels it's far less a problem as most players usually go through a ceremony before they serve thus giving the receiver time to prepare himself. Plus the receivers know this trick, thus you see many hold up their non-playing hand to indicate that they are not ready.
 
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LOL, sorry guys I did not mean to start some mystery. I think in editing I must have accidentally deleted the next sentence.

Anyway, this comes from years of watching local league and being an official umpire. I have even had to call a let for it on several occasions as it was so obvious. Lower level players miss serves or do poor returns mostly because they were not ready or in position to receive. Many servers know this, and deliberately serve as soon as they have the ball, or in a non-umpired match will serve as they are calling the score. I sometimes watch as many players screw up more than half their receives as they had not settled into their proper receive position/stance etc.
At higher levels it's far less a problem as most players usually go through a ceremony before they serve thus giving the receiver time to prepare himself. Plus the receivers know this trick, thus you see many hold up their non-playing hand to indicate that they are not ready.

When I was a 900 USATT I used to blow and wipe my bat every point (people made fun of me for it haha). A lot of people would serve when I was still wiping the dirt of
 

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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.
 
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For short serves, contact the ball just after the bounce. This reduces the effect of the backspin or sidespin. Never just hit the ball, you will have to add some spin of your own to reduce the effect off the opponent's spin. If the player you are playing against is extremely good and can do corkscrew-spin for their serves (usually only possible after a high toss before the service) then you will have to contact the ball at the top of the bounce.

If your backhand is good, then you can try flicking the ball back (watch matches of Zhang Jike or Fan Zhendong).

If you are facing long spinny serves, then the professional way is to loop the ball back with heavy topspin. If you don't trust your loop then you can try chopping the ball back with backspin but you will face problems doing this with good players unless you are a chopper.

Many thanks for your advice, actually my backhand is quite good, so I often use my backhand to react my opponent's services. I like the way that zhang jike plays very much, so I learned his backhand. However, I think that my experience is not enough to tackle, and I need more time to improve by playing with more opponents.
 
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