Serves used by Chinese women players

Andrew Pape Asked 13 years ago

Hi,

Chinese shake-hands players, like Zhang Yining and Gue Yue, almost always seem to serve conservatively  with no-spin or some degree of backspin, and maybe a bit of sidespin. These serves look unremarkable. After watching the women's matches at the last Olympics, members at the table tennis club were commenting on how pedestrian the Chinese women's serves were, and that they all seemed the same. I can see that although the serves look similar, they have varied spin. And I also note that the servers still have the advantage. So, it seems that the Chinese women have safe serves which still set up a third ball attack. That's how I'd like to serve.

Watching the European women play, some of them serve with topspin-and- sidespin pendulum serves, more like how the men play. Watching Zhang Yining 10 years ago at the World Championships, she also served with pendulum top/side spin and that set her up to attack. For some reason, she's now serving the unremarkable serves that I mentioned.

I know that short serves are important, but when I try them I can't get the heavy spin I can with a deep serve. My practice partner attacks my short serves. So, how do the Chinese women gain advantage from their short serves? How many different serves would you say they had, how much variety of spin, and what amount of spin? I think this question is a bit like "how long is a piece of string?" but hope you can give some insight!

Cheers,

Andrew.

Alois Rosario Answered 13 years ago

Hi Andrew,

Yang Yining is not looking at big advantages with her serves but the small advantages.

The small variation of spin is what gives her that advantage.  By varying the serves she might get a slightly higher return that will give her the first advantage in the rally.  As you can see the Womens rallies are a little longer and more about placement.

Although these serves may look ordinary to the eye, to actually receive them is reasonably difficult.  They would be extremely difficult to control for the average club player.  That is part of the deception of good serving, to be able to make it look easy.  She only uses a few serves but uses a lot of subtle variation with each of those serves.  She will be generating heavy backspin on some and less on others which makes keeping the ball low on the return difficult.  This will set her up to make a strong first attacking ball.  When she is playing someone of equal ability that is what she is looking for.

Of course there are Women who play a more aggressive game.  Look at Ding Ning who generates even more spin on her serve.

Generating a lot os spin and keeping the ball short is the difficult task.  To do this you need to be able to get your bat moving fast to generate the spin but then you have to get a very fine contact to keep the ball short. This is a very fine motor skill which require a lot of hours of practice to get right. Don't give up on trying to get it.  It can improve with time.