Serve Disguise
Serving
Indip Niroula Asked 12 years ago
Hey, there's this guy who disguises his serve and it very hard know what spin he is creating how to deal with that and do you need to disguise your own serve
Alois Rosario Answered 12 years ago
Hi Indip,
Returning serve is the most difficult part of the game.
To be able to learn how to recognise what spin is on the ball you need to watch the contact of the ball. This is the most important thing to be able to see. Remember no matter what the disguise they can only hit the ball once and put one spin on it.
It is good to be able to develop this skill. The main thing is to keep the backswing and follow through as similar as possible for all of the variations. This will give your opponent as little information as possible to tell what spin is on the ball.
Thoughts on this question
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Ilia Minkin Posted 9 years ago
If an opponent is really good at disguise, I find it impossible to judge the spin by watching the contact, especially on that sidespin/topspin and sidespin/backspin combination. Some people on the pendulum serve turn their body slightly, so the racket appears out of the blue, making it extremely difficult to see the contact. It is legal, the moment of contact is visible, but it is so hard to judge whether the racket was moving slightly downwards or slightly upwards. To get this information, the brain needs to watch the racket slightly before the contact, and if it appears from nowhere, it is almost impossible.
I find that against this kind of serve, watching trajectory of the ball, or just guessing gives me better chance. I often find myself thinking like "the contact point suggests that is a backspin", then watch the trajectory and change my mind, sometimes correctly.