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weird serve? (1)

weird serve?
by basement creature 19 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by zany bunny 19 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by basement creature 19 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by Kevin 19 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by zany bunny 19 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by basement creature 19 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by fff 19 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by zany bunny 19 years ago
 Tackfire C
by Karthik 19 years ago
 Re: Tackfire C
by Björn 18 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by cole 19 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by Dave 19 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by Robin 19 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by rolly 19 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by basement creature 19 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by Dave 19 years ago
 Re: weird serve?
by basement creature 19 years ago


The following message (subject: weird serve?) was posted by basement creature, on 5/31/2005 1:51:26 PM:
I recently bought a new equipment. Sriver L, Sriver El, both 2.1, Steger blade. I've been pretty amazed by the amount of spin those babies can put on the ball by barely touching it. Even though our basement season ended back in April, I had to go back and test a couple of serves. After some practice, I came up with something weird. Well, at least it looks weird to me, being just a dusty basement player 'n' all ;)

I guess I start up with a normal righthanded forehand service action, which would usually produce a variation of back/sidespin, but just before the contact, I lift the handle up and quickly rise the racket. That way I hit the ball at the side in an upwards fashion. This seems to produce a slight top-spin with lots of side spin. (Or is it lots of top-spin and slight side? Orientation? Anyway - the axis of rotation is nearly horizontal and pointing towards the net.)

The ball starts off moving straight to the net. After the first bounce, it deflects a bit and crosses the net at a slight angle, but after the second bounce it starts moving practically parallel to the back edge of the table! The opponent would see it moving fast from right to left, with a wicked top spin.

I sure hope those descriptions were good enough, so that at least some of you will be able to visualize or at least understand what I'm trying to say. And I'm pretty sure that is quite a normal serve for anyone who has ever practiced table tennis.

Here's what I'd like to know - how difficult would it be for someone to return such a serve? I would test it myself, but my friends are useless as they can't even return any of my normal serves, and I don't have the nerve to ask any of my usual opponents for a test game, since our season is officially over until November and they're all twice of even three times my age. And I've never met anyone with a serve that would even remotely look like this.

Am I right in an assessment that such a serve would be difficult to return by pushing? If the opponent tried to push the ball at the bottom, it would just fly off to his left, because of the spin, would it not? On the other hand, it would probably be easy to just kill the ball by hitting it at the back, if it was too high or too long, right? The only problem from a reciever's point of view would then be the ball's awkward movement right across the table.

I'm sure none of the guys I play with has ever seen anything like it, but some of them still pack a nasty kill, so the plan is to mix this serve in my usual backspin variants to get a direct point or an easy to kill pop-up.

Is my theorising correct?

P.S.: sorry for a lenghty post. I'll shut up now.
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