spin in my pendulum serve.

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Hi there. I know you have asked questions about serves and spin in different variants earlier on. I just got one tip for you, spend a lot of time on getting the contact/brushing right, you can progress form there on getting the right acceleration and working on getting the ball low. There really is no shortcut, you need to practice, practice and practice. Either on the table, 5-10 min serve practice EVERY time you have a practice session or off the table, by throwing the ball up in the air and learning to brush it and feeling the spin.

Btw, spin on serves is overrated. Being able to vary the serves, deception, placement, keeping the ball low matters more, IMHO.
 
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If you can apply heavy and light spin on serves you have a bigger arsenal.

Hi there. I know you have asked questions about serves and spin in different variants earlier on. I just got one tip for you, spend a lot of time on getting the contact/brushing right, you can progress form there on getting the right acceleration and working on getting the ball low. There really is no shortcut, you need to practice, practice and practice. Either on the table, 5-10 min serve practice EVERY time you have a practice session or off the table, by throwing the ball up in the air and learning to brush it and feeling the spin.

Btw, spin on serves is overrated. Being able to vary the serves, deception, placement, keeping the ball low matters more, IMHO.
 
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If your opponent notice after the first set that he received no heavy spin whatsoever he will flip or loop kill everything. Not much variation then except placement and speed. You need heavy spin in your arsenal to make the opponent guess even more and get some weak returns.

That's the variation part.
 
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If your opponent notice after the first set that he received no heavy spin whatsoever he will flip or loop kill everything. Not much variation then except placement and speed. You need heavy spin in your arsenal to make the opponent guess even more and get some weak returns.
Since you did not understand, I will try to be clear, the variation part is ALSO about varying the amount of spin. You can flip this around if you want, if you ONLY serve heavy spin it will not help you much and you will make it quite easy for your opponent.

And btw, you forgot the height of the serve in your variation. And arguably, I will rather go with less spin on my serves on worry much more about that the serves are easy to read and possibly too high or too long. So, I still think that a lot of spin on serves is overrated, though an important skill.
 
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It became clearer now, good :) And since this is a forum for discussion I'm just gonna say that even if your serves are very low and packed with all kinds of magic, good players will find a way to flip/flick it. Before serving a plan is needed what's gonna happen, how the server want this to play out, where to get the receive etc.
 
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Since you did not understand, I will try to be clear, the variation part is ALSO about varying the amount of spin. You can flip this around if you want, if you ONLY serve heavy spin it will not help you much and you will make it quite easy for your opponent.

And btw, you forgot the height of the serve in your variation. And arguably, I will rather go with less spin on my serves on worry much more about that the serves are easy to read and possibly too high or too long. So, I still think that a lot of spin on serves is overrated, though an important skill.

It became clearer now, good :) And since this is a forum for discussion I'm just gonna say that even if your serves are very low and packed with all kinds of magic, good players will find a way to flip/flick it. Before serving a plan is needed what's gonna happen, how the server want this to play out, where to get the receive etc.

Forigive me. But I think you may not have understood RTK's initial comment. Showing variations of spin without showing HEAVY spin does not do that much. The key here is being able to show heavy heavy spin. Once you show it, varying the amount of spin you put on the ball becomes much more effective, particularly if it is hard to see the difference between your motions when you put heavy spin and when you use less spin.

But the key to RTK's comment is, if the OP does not know how to create heavy spin, then he still has to work on creating heavy spin. With mediocre spin, varying the amount is sort of like the difference between little and little. :)

So that point that the OP would still need to know how to create heavy spin is totally valid in my book. And it doesn't sound like the OP needs to learn how to create mediocre spin. He has that under control already. :)

And RTK's point about having a plan and knowing how and why you are using your serves and what you want to get back is important as well.

But this quote is exactly how to help improve your serves:

Serve is all about practice and Imagination. Need to invest time to get better serves.

That is great information. You need to practice serves enough to have a feel for them and be able to be creative with them. Because some of this is about reading your opponent during a match and testing out what works against your opponent. Which means you have to have the creativity and the imagination part in your serving skills.

With people getting ready to serve, you see all sorts of pre-serve rituals. For years I would toss the ball up like the toss for a serve and, parallel to the end of the table, do a few backspins so that the ball would go towards the side of the table and bounce back to me. Thin brush from under the ball. So, before every serve, I got to practice the motion and touch of heavy backspin a few times before actually serving. I also had the habit of just doing this over and over if I was waiting for someone; or simply biding my time. It is interesting how, if that action and the touch of the contact becomes so habitual and so relaxed that you don't even think about it, it works a lot better when you need more precision and control of it while you are serving in a match and being creative while reading how your opponent is receiving your serves.

So, yes, all sorts of variations: long, short, backspin, sidespin, topspin, (should I add sideback and sidetop :) ?); and serving low and fast even when the serve is short is always helpful; learning how to get the ball to skid because of the speed, spin and trajectory of the ball (low) is REALLY useful. If you can get the ball to skid, it makes it much harder to read the spin, because, then, all your serves can have a similar trajectory to a heavy backspin serve.

So, all kinds of variation: of course. But you don't have much variation if you don't have the ability to make your opponent have the NEED TO respect your heavy spin serves.
 
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Yes! Thanks, I'm working at the same time, some words got lost in translation :D

Forigive me. But I think you may not have understood RTK's initial comment. Showing variations of spin without showing HEAVY spin does not do that much. The key here is being able to show heavy heavy spin. Once you show it, varying the amount of spin you put on the ball becomes much more effective, particularly if it is hard to see the difference between your motions when you put heavy spin and when you use less spin.

But the key to RTK's comment is, if the OP does not know how to create heavy spin, then he still has to work on creating heavy spin. With mediocre spin, varying the amount is sort of like the difference between little and little. :)

So that point that the OP would still need to know how to create heavy spin is totally valid in my book. And it doesn't sound like the OP needs to learn how to create mediocre spin. He has that under control already.

And RTK's point about having a plan and knowing how and why you are using your serves and what you want to get back is important as well.

But this quote is exactly how to get there:



That is great information. You need to practice serves enough to have a feel for them and be able to be creative with them. Because some of this is about reading your opponent during a match and testing out what works against your opponent. Which means you have to have the creativity and the imagination part in your serving skills.

With people getting ready to serve, you see all sorts of pre-serve rituals. For years I would toss the ball up like the toss for a serve and, parallel to the end of the table, do a few backspins so that the ball would go towards the side of the table and bounce back to me. Thin brush from under the ball. So, before every serve, I got to practice the motion and touch of heavy backspin a few times before actually serving. I also had the habit of just doing this over and over if I was waiting for someone; or simply biding my time. It is interesting how, if that action and the touch of the contact becomes so habitual and so relaxed that you don't even think about it, it works a lot better when you need more precision and control of it while you are serving in a match and being creative while reading how your opponent is receiving your serves.

So, yes, all sorts of variations: long, short, backspin, sidespin, topspin, (should I add sideback and sidetop :) ?); and serving low and fast even when the serve is short is always helpful; learning how to get the ball to skid because of the speed, spin and trajectory of the ball (low) is REALLY useful. If you can get the ball to skid, it makes it much harder to read the spin.

So, all kinds of variation: of course. But you don't have much variation if you don't have the ability to make your opponent HAVE TO respect your heavy spin serves.
 
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Yes! Thanks, I'm working at the same time, some words got lost in translation :D

I knew exactly what you meant from the first post. Even though it was short. So I figured, maybe flush out the info. Hopefully that is helpful information to the OP.
 
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Being able to switch between heavy and mediocre (what I normally achieve) spin is probably the best way of winning quite a few easy points for beginners (like myself). My dream scenario is that the opponent nets my first back spin serve (happens quite often when playing a new player). Then doing the same serve a bit worse which quite often leads to a "pop up" that can be killed. The movement is the same so you get the deception for free. A quite basic but effective tactic for a guy like me without an imagination when it comes to serves:D
 
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Forigive me. But I think you may not have understood RTK's initial comment. Showing variations of spin without showing HEAVY spin does not do that much. The key here is being able to show heavy heavy spin. Once you show it, varying the amount of spin you put on the ball becomes much more effective, particularly if it is hard to see the difference between your motions when you put heavy spin and when you use less spin.
If you had to choose between varying between HEAVY spin and no spin vs. different spins, placement, keeping the serve low and deception, what would you choose?
 
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If you had to choose between varying between HEAVY spin and no spin vs. different spins, placement, keeping the serve low and deception, what would you choose?

In the end you want every version of variation you can get. But spin/no spin is an amazing tool. Ma Lin used spin/no spin (we could say heavy/light) for a huge percentage of his serves and he was an amazing server.

If you can show heavy, then a serve with very light spin that looks very much the same, that is a great weapon.

On the top levels, if you can do the no spin with a fairly high toss after showing heavy with the same high toss, that actually helps sell the deception on the no spin. (or, really, no spin is actually light spin).
 
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That was never the question. And I would never exclude anything of what you mention since it gives me range to act = more tools to confuse and disrupt the opponent.

If you had to choose between varying between HEAVY spin and no spin vs. different spins, placement, keeping the serve low and deception, what would you choose?
 
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In the end you want every version of variation you can get. But spin/no spin is an amazing tool. Ma Lin used spin/no spin (we could say heavy/light) for a huge percentage of his serves and he was an amazing server.

If you can show heavy, then a serve with very light spin that looks very much the same, that is a great weapon.

On the top levels, if you can do the no spin with a fairly high toss after showing heavy with the same high toss, that actually helps sell the deception on the no spin. (or, really, no spin is actually light spin).
Sure thing, but you can do amazing things with just a few different spin variations, a little deception and with excellent placement (but fine, good spin can also help you with placement). All these skills I notice in good players. In the end, every serve can be flipped, heavy spin or not. I never expect to win a point outright on the serve. Sometimes you do want your serves to be flipped though. Even such a "simple" thing as keeping the ball low is interesting if you watch yourself on video and compare with a good player. Suddenly your serve is not that low anyway.

So yes, I stand by that heavy spin is overrated. But I am done with this discussion, feel free to help the original poster with pointers on how to develop heavy spin. Hopefully other parts of the service game will be developed too.
 
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I guess, the heavy spin or just varying spins issue also depends on level. At certain levels people won't read the difference between sideback and sidetop. But a level or two up and those become easier to see. That all depends on your ability to read the bounce and trajectory of the ball rather than trying to read the blade's contact with the ball. And at a certain level, you are not going to see the opponent's racket until a fraction of a second before contact. So, at higher levels, you cannot just rely on watching the angle of the racket. It is easy to add deception to things like angle of racket. But a good player also reads the trajectory of the bounce on the ball to read the spin on a serve.

Which is also why, doing the exact same motion, creating the same basic spin, having everything else look exactly the same, but having one serve have massive spin, another moderate spin and another very light spin (almost no spin), and really, any amount between massive and almost none, actually gives more deception; particularly if you can get the ball to skid from the speed and low profile of the arc. That makes it very hard to see the difference between spin and no spin.

And, at least in my opinion, a huge part of the value of the massive spin serve is, that when you give slightly lighter spin, you get a ball that is a little looser, a little higher. All you need is an extra inch. So, if the opponent over compensates for the massive backspin, and you give, just a little less than massive, you get an excellent ball to kill and it has pretty good backspin on it to give your opening loop lots of spin with the pace you can put on it from that extra inch higher of a return.

So, how do you serve short and fast? :) That is also a very good skill to try to develop.
 
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