Looping Long Serves

[schrodingerskoalabear]

I was watching this rather fantastic video on serve receive which gives some fantastic theory on returning serves. This is how I understood it

1. you want to hit the same side of the ball as the opponent does when they serve. I like to simplify this for myself and think if the ball is spinning to my left/right, I contact on the left/right side of the ball

2. Barring deception, if the opponent's motion of the racket is upwards, most likely topspin and you want to push down on the ball. If the motion is downwards, it is underspin and you'd want to push up/forward in your return

Am I getting it correctly?

I also have a question regarding loops. Most of these serves seemed in the demonstration seemed long-ish and so I want to loop them:

Question: how does the above information apply to looping such serves? It should apply the same way, yes? Or is looping simply a method which allows for over-powering the spin/going against the spin?

For example, I am thinking, a right handed player facing an underspin-left spinning serve would have to pivot to FH loop on the same side or go against the spin on their BH.

 

[Brozi]

Yeah, you understood it correctly as far as I know.

Regarding looping, what works for me is contacting the ball with a fading motion on the FH as well as the BH against left spinning serves, and using the hooking motion for the right spinning serves.

 

[Lazer]

I was watching this rather fantastic video on serve receive which gives some fantastic theory on returning serves. This is how I understood it

1. you want to hit the same side of the ball as the opponent does when they serve. I like to simplify this for myself and think if the ball is spinning to my left/right, I contact on the left/right side of the ball

2. Barring deception, if the opponent's motion of the racket is upwards, most likely topspin and you want to push down on the ball. If the motion is downwards, it is underspin and you'd want to push up/forward in your return

Am I getting it correctly?

I also have a question regarding loops. Most of these serves seemed in the demonstration seemed long-ish and so I want to loop them:

Question: how does the above information apply to looping such serves? It should apply the same way, yes? Or is looping simply a method which allows for over-powering the spin/going against the spin?

For example, I am thinking, a right handed player facing an underspin-left spinning serve would have to pivot to FH loop on the same side or go against the spin on their BH.

The hard part is when you can’t tell the spin…

Cheers
L-zr