High toss topspin serve
Serving
Shripathi ramakrishnan Asked 12 years ago
hi alois and jeff,
i am currently trying to implement the hgh toss serve into my arsenal. i can unleash "lethal"(going by results) sidespin-backspin serves. but variation being a key, i find it very hard to make pure sidespin and side top serves.how do i do this? where do i brush the ball and how do i make it convincing? (ps. i have a suspicion that my stroke is wrong. can u suggest a good player to copy from)
thanks a lot.
Alois Rosario Answered 12 years ago
Hi Shripathi,
That is great that you have incorporated the HIgh Toss serve. I think it is a under utilised serve at the moment.
The best player to copy is Samsonov. To get the topspin you need to hit the ball later in your swing as the racket is coming up. This will generate the topspin. For pure sidespin work on getting the contact right on the side of the ball. I find a good way to change things like this is to focus on the result. So watch the ball and try to get it to curve as mush as possible. It may sound simplistic but I have had good results with this principle.
Thoughts on this question
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rajiv gollerkeri Posted 12 years ago
also sripathi, as alois rightly mentions in his serving secrets dvd, have a high elbow action .. it definetly helps.
Shripathi ramakrishnan Posted 12 years ago
does the racket have to be perpendicular tot eh ground ? because i usually get mild backspin and sidepsin (lots) when i try to play topspin. maybe im angling my racket to the roof too much?
Shripathi ramakrishnan Posted 12 years ago
also how do i play the fast serve off the high toss ? i see schlager using a rather different way about it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD02s8uTSzw.
and thanks rajiv ill keep it in mind =)
Atanas Atanasov Posted 12 years ago
Ovtcharov also plays high toss pendulum serve sometimes.
Alois Rosario from PingSkills Posted 12 years ago
Shripathi,
You need to angle the racket so that on the follow through it is going upwards. The angle on the downswing doesn't matter. That is why Everyone has a different looking serve. It is really only the contact point that determines what the ball does. Schlager still gets the same contact even with different starts and finishes. You can see at the point of contact his bat goes upwards to get the topspin.
Shripathi ramakrishnan Posted 12 years ago
i also am a bit confused bout the toss... to get variation on different parts of the swing do i need to toss the ball differently( like for backspin little closer to me and for topspin further away) or do i just take little more backswing? i never had this problem for my standard pendlum serve....
Alois Rosario from PingSkills Posted 12 years ago
Hi Shripathi,
You need to make sure the ball toss is the same for all your high toss serves otherwise it would be too easy for your opponent to tell which serve you are going to do just by watching the toss.