says
Spin and more spin.
says
Spin and more spin.
Well-Known Member
Super Moderator
I will give a try at this. I am not sure if this is right but this is how I understood it.
In American football you can see a quarterback throw the ball and it spins. With a football you can see the axis of the spin because the ball has points at the front and back. When a quarterback throws a good, tight spiral, the ball is spinning well on that axis that goes from the front to the back of the ball. That would be a similar spin to one version of side spin in table tennis. Now the ball sometimes wobbles as it spins. It is spinning around an axis, and the axis is changing position/angle. With a corkscrew spin, I believe that the ball is spinning on an axis and the axis is changing position, I think it is usually in a small circular pattern like that wobbling spiral on the poorly thrown football. So at one point in the movement of the ball, it could be sidespin with backspin, and at another point it could be sidespin with topspin and if the axis moves enough the sidespin could, theoretically, change directions; ie: clockwise to counterclockwise or vice versa; like from pendulum to reverse pendulum sidespin.
I don't personally know how to create that effect. But the theory sounds cool to me.
Again, I could be wrong but I think that is what a corkscrew spin is: the ball is spinning and the axis of the spin is also changing.
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