The Serve
As someone once said, "the serve stands for 50% of the point itself", I must disagree on that, but I agree surely that the serve is a very important aspect of the game. I would say that the serve influences 30% of all points in world class competition. A good set of serves is very important for one's game.Let's focus on two aspects of the Serve:
The Serve itself (execution)
(1) Top-spin Serves (2) Side-Spin Serves (3) BackSpin (UnderSpin) Serves (4) No spin Serves
(1) These are quite hard to do without the opponent understanding... Use them to set a different pace to the game, by sending long, speedy, top-spinned balls to your opponent's weak spots...
(2) Very useful, especially if used in this way:
When sending a right side spin ball (the ball goes to your right when it hits the opponents racket), try to send it to the right of the table, and the opposite for the left side spin ball, as it increases the chances of your opponent missing the table...
(3) Very useful against attacking players and against less experienced ones as well... A very heavy backspin has great chances of becoming a lost point by the opponent. These serves are also very difficult to attack.
(4) No-Spin serves can be very useful. After a couple of spined serves, a No-Spin one can be quite confusing to the opponent. Also a very fast, long, no spinned serve can be usefull when your adversary is too far from a certain side of the table.
Reception of the Serve
The reception of the opponent's serve is quite important, as a good reception can throw your opponent off balance, and a bad reception can seriously injure your chances of winning the point.
A good reception is the one who will allow you to attack the next ball. In these days, the service reception is quite difficult, since the serves are getting more and more complex.
World class players spend nearly as much time training the execution as the reception of the serves.
How to return the opponent's serves?
(1) Top-spin Serves (2) Side-Spin Serves (3) BackSpin (UnderSpin) Serves (4) No spin Serves
(1) These serves are a problem If they are very quick and long (70% or so of the times). You should be careful and not be caught off balance, you should close the angle of your racket(facing down) (as you should do to a normal top-spinned ball) and try to return it as low and fast as possible. Or you can try to attack it right away if the ball is slow and/or high.
(2) These are very difficult serves to receive... You should always look to your opponent's racket contact with the ball. You should normally understand what kind of side-spin he did and compensate it by aiming the racket a bit to the left (if he did right side spin) or to the right (if he did left side spin). The nightmare of all players is not knowing what kind of side spin the ball has... in those cases, aim to the middle of the table, preferably trying to gently back-side-spin-it as well. Or try to guess if you fell lucky. :o)
(3) UnderSpin serves are very common. You should open your racket angle (facing up) (as you should do to a normal under-spinned ball) and return it with the same underspin to the opponent, the lower the better.
(4) You may think... No spin balls are so easy to return... But what if you confuse these balls with any of the others above? Then you really have a problem, as said before, take real attention on your opponents to understand what kind of spin he gave the ball.
P.S. - Some balls have a brand logo or the ITTF mark, those can be helpful in letting you know what kind of spin the balls have... Look carefully... (But only at low ball speeds)
(c) Pedro V
posted by Pedro V. @ 2:34 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home