Serve and ball tracking
Serving
Valerio Di Gregorio Asked 8 years ago
Hi Alois,
I am a beginner and I was wondering how to track the ball during serve. Should I track the ball until I hit it with the bat? I realised I don't do it but I can still make good spinny serves. If I track the ball I miss the ball or the serve is wrong. When I track it I feel like I am in the wrong position, I need to watch the net and the opponent to have reference points. This way I can serve exactly like I wanted. The contact is usually fine but I don't hit the ball with the fastest part of the bat which would be ideal. Also looking at the opponent and the table I am afraid I could give him information on what I want to do. Can you tell me what's the proper way to track the ball during serve? And how to fix any bad habit I described?
Thanks!
Alois Rosario Answered 8 years ago
Hi Valerio,
Tracking the ball all the way to the bat is difficult. I tend to watch it till it gets close to the contact but Jeff watches it most of the way to the bat.
I think it is worth trying to watch it all the way as this allows you to track the ball better and will help you to track the ball better during the rally as well.
Do a bit of practice with this. Spend 10 minutes at least where you are tracking the ball all the way to your bat for the serve and see how it feels. It will take some time to get used to it because it does fell disorienting at first.
Thoughts on this question
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Valerio Di Gregorio Posted 8 years ago
I'll definitely spend hours on that. I think after few hundreds of attempts I should be able to find the way to reproduce my usual backspin serve and hopefully use the end of the racquet to get even more spin.
Thanks Alois for the precious help!
Ilia Minkin Posted 8 years ago
I like this kind of pictures :)
Alois Rosario from PingSkills Posted 8 years ago
Me too Ilia. The next thing is does she watch the ball as it falls and contacts her bat?
Valerio Di Gregorio Posted 8 years ago
Today 1 hour and half, now I watch the ball. Sometimes I can see the touch and sometimes I can't. I realized it gets trickier with higher toss because the speed is much higher. However I can't keep the ball as low as when I watch the net. Also if I focus on tracking I can't focus on anything else :P It's gonna be tough :)
Alois Rosario from PingSkills Posted 8 years ago
It will be good Valerio. Keep working on it. In a match you don't need or want to focus on anything else except watching the ball.
Ilia Minkin Posted 8 years ago
>The next thing is does she watch the ball as it falls and contacts her bat?
I don't know :) But for myself I noticed two things:
1) In case of a high toss it is extremely difficult to track the ball all the way to the racket
2) When I watch the contact I usually can make it finer and generate more spin if aim to
Ilia Minkin Posted 8 years ago
In this video there is an interesting fragment starting at around 5:29. You can see there that Ovtcharov tracks the ball almost to the paddle, but he probably doesn't see the contact.
Alois Rosario from PingSkills Posted 8 years ago
Hi Ilia,
Yes that does show it clearly. He watches the ball a long way but doesn't see it hit the bat.