How do you hit the ball with so much backspin that it comes back to your side?

[delerious]

How does this Pongfinity guy do it? Go to 1:23 in the video.

Is he using a special rubber, or is it just skill?

 

[Hamasaki_Fanz]

he's actually playing with a fan in front of him so the ball goes back!!

 

[brokenball]

That isn't very hard because the ball is hit so high. It also isn't very practical. However, I have seen a video where Adam Bobrow did it once in a real match.

What is more practical is learning how to serve the ball so it goes low over the net and almost goes off the end of the table then spins back to the net.

 

[lVegita]

What is more practical is learning how to serve the ball so it goes low over the net and almost goes off the end of the table then spins back to the net.

Classic

 

[delerious]

he's actually playing with a fan in front of him so the ball goes back!!

They show the front at 1:36 and there's no fan there!

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

Classic

You know ZJK touches that ball. It doesn't just magically reverse directions after passing the end of the table. He just brushed so lightly that he barely touched the ball.

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

A couple of things to understand, because the ball does not have a lot of forward momentum (most of the momentum is up) the spin does not have to overcome the speed of the ball. So it is not too hard for the spin to change the direction of the ball. If the ball was moving forward faster and did not bounce so high, it would be harder. But it is still possible to do.

Some of it is actually just understanding how to spin the ball.

This is a good video for learning how to do some of what is being done in the trick video:

Sent from my NSA SpyPhone from Sector 13D-SR13Z74 Sub Level 29X Fort Meade, Maryland

 

[lVegita]

You know ZJK touches that ball. It doesn't just magically reverse directions after passing the end of the table. He just brushed so lightly that he barely touched the ball.

Stop killing the magic with logic

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

BTW: for the OP: if you will notice, both in the video from PongFinity and the video of the guy showing how to slowly move towards being able to do a serve with heavy backspin, they are both trying to contact the ball from underneath and they are both trying to pull up the front of the ball from underneath.

Think about it for a little while.

 

[ZhouZhekai]

I do not think that Zhang Jike touches the ball.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8advrudYZs Ma Lin does it during serve practice.

 

[vik2000]

This isn't even hard...

 

[UpSideDownCarl]

I do not think that Zhang Jike touches the ball.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8advrudYZs Ma Lin does it during serve practice.

Yeah. But the difference is, these don't go past the end. And these are not very fast. The other is a serve that is decently fast and passes the end of the table. It stops when ZJK swings, and it stops when it is blocked from view by his racket.

But it is true, a ghost serve and getting the ball to come back to the net is not hard to learn and practice. The video of the serve in the match with ZJK just wasn't it.

 

[Lula]

I think that everyone that have learned to understand spin can do this pretty easily if they have trained for a while.

 

[langel]

Its all about the ratio between speed and spin, not speed only or spin only.
Usually most club level players believe that if the ball comes back, it means the spin is incredible. Thats not true. A faster serve may have much more spin and may have much better spin/speed ratio.
The "ghost" serve is not difficult to learn and to make the ball come back to the net. But its difficult to master it to pass low over the net, otherwise it would be attacked severely.
A faster serve with more spin will have much lower second bounce and if the spin is enough the higher deceleration of the underspin can make it bounce twice even it may look like long or half long, and the only answer to this is a push.