If the server does it well, its almost impossible to read the spin correctly just by reading or hearing about it, especially if you are not used to it.
If he was your practice partner, you would get used to it intuitively get the spin more correctly.
The reason the serve can be so effective is because its rare that someone can do it so well ( as well as some people can do their pendulum serve ), and when you meet someone like that in a match he can get a lot of easy points against you and by the time you figured it out you are already behind in points.
To be able to read the serve well you can either:
1. Practice AGAINST someone who does it often and well
or better and more effective overall
2. Practice the serve yourself, get an understanding for what movement creates what kind of spin, how you can deceive it well etc.
Id recommend to try it out yourself, maybe for a week, and youll definitely be better at reading it and knowing the strengths/weaknesses that the server will have.
It was similar for me with hook/tomahawk serves.
I barely could tell when it was top/underspin and would always lose many points against someone who could do it well.
Until I practiced it myself and developed my own hook serve skills.
I can now implement hook serves into my game to gain an advantage and I can read most tomahawk/hook serves of my opponent well enough to return them the way I want to.
So: Get good at it -> The better you can do it, the better you can read and deal with it