Reverse pendulum serve: swing arm forward or backward ?

[der Stift]

There seems to be two schools of thought on RPS.

There are Forward swingers:
Matilda:

Timo Boll:

There are Backward swingers:
Togami: See recent ATTU
Fan Zhendong:

孙浩泓:

in 5:43, he emphasizes backward swing for better spin production

Zhang Jike:

hard to tell, he has the least post contact swing.

What are your thoughts, in terms of speed & spin productions ?

 

[Lazer]

The first variant seems to be better for lonf serves and the second for short…

Cheers
L-zr

 

[blahness]

I feel like it is easier to keep my serves short if I aim my force towards the sides and upwards, maybe even a little backwards post contact.

But it also depends on your setup. I play on a bouncy af setup so this is required for me to rob forward momentum sufficiently to serve short. For ppl on slower setups it is possible to followthrough forward and have a reliably short serve too. For me, it is also easy for me to distinguish between fast long serves (where I followthrough forwards) and short serves (where I try to rob momentum to the sides, upwards and even a bit backwards at times). Say if I followthrough forward for both fast long and short serves it becomes quite difficult in my mind to precisely control the force. It is easier for me to use almost the same force of brushing except with different followthroughs. Of course the backswing has to be the same in order to fool the opponent.

 

[olive-nguyen]

I personally do the pendulum serve based on the style of the second videos of Zhang Ji Ke and Fan Zhen Dong. the first stroke swings to the backhand and then after motion to forehand. As a righthander the serve then will move right. the pendulum serve goes left. But, I have done and fond others do a variant that is instead of brushiin the ball in the first stroke and after motion, you do not brush the ball on the first stroke and hit on the second motion, blade moving right. This makes it look like a reverse pendulum going right, but spins left.