Dimitrij Ovtcharov's Serves

Hello Shaant,

I am from Thailand, now 56 years old and used to be a university level player.  But over the last 30 years I had very few opportunities to play.  I just picked up table tennis again a few months ago because there is a new sports center nearby my home and I have found some descent players to play with there.  I noticed that almost all of the world class players now only do forehand serves.  Ovtcharov is probably the only player with outstanding backhand serves.  Actually I have served these serves almost 40 years ago.  Basically, all of Ovtcharov's backhand serves have heavy side spin.  But on top of the sidespin, you can add either backspin, topspin, or float.  You can also choose to serve short and slow or fast and long, and you can serve diagonally across the table, to the center of the table which is a weak area of your opponent because he has to decide whether to return it with his backhand or forehand stroke, or straight down the line.  And the beauty of these backhand serves is that you can start your serving position either from your backhand side of the table, the center of the table, or the forehand side.  These different serving position will give you the advantage of twisting the angle which makes it more difficult for your opponent to return the serves. The trick of these serves is that you have to execute them with very similar strokes to confuse your opponent.  Last week, I played with a former regional player who is 42 and a higher level player than meself.  I served these backhand serves to him and he admitted that they could fool him.  I won some easy points from these serves.

But I do not exaggerate my serves with the pre-serve movements like Ovtcharov.  First, you have to stand firm with your right foot forward.  When you swing your blade, lift your left leg and then swing with full force from left to right.  You can brush the ball from different areas of the rubber; the upper part, the center, and the lower part which will produce different spins.  If you strike the ball on the downswing motion, you can generate backspin.  If you strike the ball on the upward swing path, you will generate topspin.  This is basically what Ovtcharov does.  But my strokes are a bit different.  I will sometimes brush the ball with the blade face down.  The trick of my brushing is that I can either brush forward or backward which will put either backspin on the ball or make it float.  Actually the float serve is the most difficult for my opponent to return because they often mistaken it as backspin.  But when the ball touches his blade with its face slightly open, then it just floats off the end of the table.  I haven't seen the video produced by Pingskills, therefore, I can't really say anything about it.  But hopefully, you may find this useful in your practice.

By the way, last week while I was practising these serves, I just discovered a new technique to put more spin and more speed on these serves.  They are very effective when I serve very heavy sidespin with backspin fast and long to my opponent.  The ball will reach him in less than half a second.  He does not have enough time to read the spin.  Even if he reads it correctly, he may not have enough time to execute a good topspin to counter my fast backspin.

how DO you do very fast backspn serves?

Hi Jonathan,

The fast backspin serve is done by brushing through fast and under the ball.  Get the ball to bounce close to you on your side of the table and close to the end lone on the opponents side.  Also focus on getting the ball low over the net.