New Service

I go for pendulum serves most of the time but I resolve to backhand serves when I notice my opponent getting used to it. However, as always, Alois is right. With the same preparatory movement you can send the ball short to three places and long to three places. Then there's pendulmum backspin (plus sidespin) and pendulum topspin (plus sidespin). That gives you 12 serves to start with.

I learned a lot about long serves from a video by Christophe Legout. It's in French though so you must have a basic grasp of that language.

Dieter,

What were the main items, that you learned from Christophe Legout on long serves?

1. Although long serves are only occasionally seen in high pro games, they can be really effective at the amateur level.
2. Just like short serves, long serves can come in wide varieties of placement and spin
3. You can even send a long serve towards the side. Legout calls this one somewhat inappropriately a "girl's serve" because it can be effective in a women's game where players (according to him) don't move too well laterally. Whatever the gender connotation, I've used it as a surprise serve. The opponents who reach it, at best get it back with slow topspins and are usually off balance.
4. A long serve which doesn't have a short equivalent is what Legout calls a "bomb serve" (service de bombe). Instead of whipping the ball's back to produce a fast flat serve, one sends it down with a vertical downward bat action. The ball will propell fast forward but with a small amount of backspin or having no spin. The opponent will have the impression that it comes with some forward spin and blocks it into the net. This serve too I have been very successful with.
5. The basic technique is to strike the ball really low, fast and direct the first bounce close to you.

But the major point is to not neglect long serves. As a server you will surprise many opponents, even at national sub-top level. I have been able to score direct points with long serves in our club's friendly competition against our top players. I have never scored a direct point with short serves against that level. It's only at the international level that a long serve will be attacked with 95% confidence and hence is used only very rarely.

As a receiver you learn to expect long serves. Our club's top player says "I always expect long, even if it's only a small minority". You can always step in for a short serve but stepping out for a long serve is very hard. When you practice long serves, you learn to think about how to receive them, because you know what a long serve aims to do.

Hope this helps!

Thanks Dieter !

Lots of usefull information.

I'll add the bomb service on my to-do list.

Thanks for sharing that Dieter. It reminds me of a blog I wrote a while back titled Serve Long.

I'd just like to add that serving long to the backhand is one of the easiest and most effective long serves if you have a standard pendulum and similar serves' starting point in your backhand corner. The reason is that topspinning with the backhand requires much more precise timing than with the forehand as you don't have as big a hitting area (unless your opponent has an extremely backhand oriented stance, perhaps). As long as they're caught by surprise, your chances are really good. That's the one I'd recommend throwing in every now and then if someone is starting to experiment with serving long 

>I have done the pendulum serve for quite a long time and now my opponent is getting used to it. I am an attacker and want to know another serve I could use in game play.

There is one thing that really puzzles me. The most common serve is pendulum, even at the highest level. Any top player should have seen these serves in many variants zillion times in their career. But at that level the deception is so good, that even the best players in the world misread spin from time to time and pop up the ball or send it to the net.

I guess this shows that it is an effective type of serve Ilia. And everybody hits the ball slightly differently and has their own style for generating more or less spin. Plus there are so many ways you can vary the serve through spin, speed, and placement.