Long and fast backspin serve

I find long fast backspin serves are REALLY effective in club competition.  I think partly because it is harder to do than a long topspin serve, but also, when receivers see that fast serve coming, their natural reaction is to try and keep the ball down.

Hi Alois,

I have developed a fast backspin serve, but the problem is that it fires back at me :) At my level, when I serve it from my backhand corner cross-court, 99% of the players push it back to my backhand. In theory I should be able to follow it up with a forehand pivot kill and the game is over. In practice some players adjust by pushing it back ridiculously fast. It is easy to do so because the serve is quite fast itself. As the result by the time I pivot I get jammed at the table and cannot attack well. How can I fix this if I want to stick to pivoting?

P.S. I usually have no trouble attacking with my forehand returns of short or half-long serves to my backhand because the ball is slower. But short serves gives my opponent angles that I hate.

Hi Ilia,

Go for the half long serves if that gives you a better ball.  The other thing is to slow down your short serves so you are not giving your opponent any speed to work with on their return.  Also mix it up with some no spin and topspin serves to upset their rhythm of the fast pushes.

I can also recomend something to help you with the third ball attack when you serve long and fast, when you serve long and fast and with backspin, still think you will get a fast ball, so maybe you cant do a topspin because you are closer to the table (perfect for half long balls, but not for long floating balls)

> Also mix it up with some no spin and topspin serves to upset their rhythm of the fast pushes.

Yeah, I do this, I also like pendulum long sidespin + backspin/topspin serve that breaks away from backhand. 

> when you serve long and fast and with backspin, still think you will get a fast ball,

I do try to adjust my anticipation: against some opponents I know that it will be 100% fast push to my backhand. The only question is to recover fast after the serve.

It would be great to see a tutorial of how to execute fast backspin serve like this one: https://youtu.be/Ux-eP9dbrRc?t=69

Hi Viktar,

Here is one that might interest our Premium members Jan Ove Waldner's Fast Serve Down the Line.

Hi Alois,

Yeah, I saw it but it's not a backspin serve. The hardest part is to serve fast and create a backspin at the same time. So it doesn't look like a backspin serve: slow and soaring.

Yes, the difference wit the backspin is to come down on contact a little more.  You have to slow it a little as the backspin will make the ball fly off the end if you hit it too hard.  Also make sure you are keeping the ball low.  That will help when you are hitting the ball faster.