Serving Combinations

Hi Alois and Jeff!

I've been doing quite a lot of serving practice for a while because my partner is out for the week. I need advice on serving combinations that can give me opportunities to have the offensive side when serving. I normally mix side top and side back spin serves and sometimes backspin and no spin serves which I've been experimenting for a while. Even though I haven't bought your DVD yet, I know how to produce this kinds of spin. I have no problems with deception because I already have a unique serving style that allows me to confuse the opponent without hiding the ball.

I need to know what other combinations should I try to make my service games with me on offensive or do I need to develop my own serving combinations? I do know that the serving combinations I'm using are already used by lots of people in the world. It's very hard to think of combinations since there's so many things you can do. Table Tennis is really a unique & fantastic sport.

Hi Carlo,

You are exactly right, Table Tennis is a unique and fantastic sport and serving and spin are the two most fascinating parts of it.

The key to having a good advanced serve is deception.  This comes with subtlety. It is easy to see the difference between a straight topspin and straight backspin serve.  The effectiveness of your serve comes form making them look the same.  So go for subtle changes.  Even a change between less backspin and more backspin is very effective.  This applies to all the other types of spin as well.

From the serve you eventually will be looking at small advantages.  That is you want them to hit the ball a little higher so that you can attack.  It is not really matter of trying to serve it so your opponent misses the return completely because this becomes more and more difficult the higher the level you achieve.