Efficacy of Reverse Pendulum Serve

Abubakar Mehmood Asked 7 years ago

Hello, Alois and Jeff.

Abubakar (pronounced ub-boo-buh-ker) here. Firstly, thank you so much for all your posts and videos that have helped me tremendously. I play a JPen-ish penhold and naturally my pendulum serve is reasonably good and I can vary the length of the ball and the type/intensity of spin on it well. However, my reverse pendulum serve is difficult only for beginners. With the more advanced players, the sidespin reverse pendulum serve is a piece of cake. They simply counter the sidespin and the return is usually too quick (, away, and low) for me to do a 3rd ball attack. The backspin reverse pendulum serve is relatively more effective but still not much.

Now I see that there *is* significant spin on the ball and the ball is quite low as well (when there's backspin). But the opponent told me that this serve is, by definition, to be used against beginners only. : 

Is there something fundamental that I'm missing? Maybe my serve is too slow, because I try to impart too much spin? Should I use reverse pendulum serve less frequently and only as a surprise tactic (I do have four other types of serve up my sleeve)?

Finally, my rubber is quite old now and lost quite a bit of its tackiness (so, maybe the spin doesn't have enough zip on it?). I have ordered Donic Slice 40 CD. Maybe that would help?

Sorry for my verbosity.

Cheers.

Alois Rosario Answered 7 years ago

Hi Abhubakar,

Glad you are liking the videos.

You can definitely develop and use the Reverse Pendulum serve to a higher level. In fact I would recommend it.  Players are very used to returning Pendulum serves.

The new rubber may make a difference.  Also focus on how fast you are able to bring your wrist through the ball on contact when you are making the serve.  This will be the critical factor to generating more spin.