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Pre covid I had some pretty basic serves with not much variation.
The UK lockdowns meant that everyone had plenty of time on their hands to do nothing!!
Having a table in the garage meant I could learn some serves!!
I learnt the following serves
FH pendulum
FH reverse pendulum
FH hook/jab
Looked at my BH serve, which was tweaked so that variation and deception was improved. I also learned a couple of slight ‘form’ changes - differing actions and use of the wrist,
With a standard BH serve (for a RIghty) the ball moves curves right to left, so I learnt to curve the ball left to right (similar to FH pendulum). I did this mainly for fun!! I rarely use it though!!
FH pendulum and FH hook/jab I found to be the easier ones to learn, to start with. Reverse pendulum was harder, to start with.
With the Reverse pendulum it’s the action / form that’s the hard part, but once embedded, I found that learning the spins was as, if not easier than learning the spins for the other 2, especially with deception in mind!!!
So great, when lockdown eased I had a pretty good arsenal of serves and variations at my disposal.
The issue was not knowing what I was going to get back from the receiver and how each serve, variation and placement of the serve would effect my 3rd ball attack and point strategy!!!
This is the real nitty gritty and important part, Knowing what return you will get 80% of the time. Then you can plan better.
This learning phase can take as long, maybe longer than learning a serve!!!
The UK lockdowns meant that everyone had plenty of time on their hands to do nothing!!
Having a table in the garage meant I could learn some serves!!
I learnt the following serves
FH pendulum
FH reverse pendulum
FH hook/jab
Looked at my BH serve, which was tweaked so that variation and deception was improved. I also learned a couple of slight ‘form’ changes - differing actions and use of the wrist,
With a standard BH serve (for a RIghty) the ball moves curves right to left, so I learnt to curve the ball left to right (similar to FH pendulum). I did this mainly for fun!! I rarely use it though!!
FH pendulum and FH hook/jab I found to be the easier ones to learn, to start with. Reverse pendulum was harder, to start with.
With the Reverse pendulum it’s the action / form that’s the hard part, but once embedded, I found that learning the spins was as, if not easier than learning the spins for the other 2, especially with deception in mind!!!
So great, when lockdown eased I had a pretty good arsenal of serves and variations at my disposal.
The issue was not knowing what I was going to get back from the receiver and how each serve, variation and placement of the serve would effect my 3rd ball attack and point strategy!!!
This is the real nitty gritty and important part, Knowing what return you will get 80% of the time. Then you can plan better.
This learning phase can take as long, maybe longer than learning a serve!!!