Sidespin serves

Justin O'Toole Asked 12 years ago

Hi Alois how are you.? This is Justin speaking. My question is when i serve backspin, topspin and topspin with sidespin I seem to get enough spin on the ball and usually the placement is good. However when i serve a sidespin i don't feel confident and put very little spin on the ball. Also my control is sometimes not so good.

Why can i serve the other serves very well but not the sidespin, as the other serves usually have enough spin to throw my opponents off and my sidespin hardly any. This makes me not confident in serving sidespin. Please can you help me with this problem. Thank you.

Alois Rosario Answered 12 years ago

Hi Justin,

This is a n interesting one. Not sure of the reason. Perhaps it is just that you don't feel comfortable with the swing so you are not swinging through freely. This will mean that the bat will not move as fast and therefore not generate as much spin. Try forgetting about getting the ball on the table and just swing through fast and see if you can generate more spin.

Let me know if this helps.

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Justin O'Toole Posted 12 years ago

Hi Alois Justin speaking have been practicing my serves and have encorporated your adive on sidespin sereves. I am getting still not much sidespin on my pendulum serves if any at all. But my tomahawk serve i have started to get some results a little bit more sidespin, around about 12-14%, which some not all players, have had trouble with.

My backspin severs i have gained a lot more n about 22% on my chop-backspin serves serves and about 7% on my pendulum. My pendulum sidespin still having a little trouble. My backspin i am very pleased with my results for normal and pendulum serves. Thanks for your time Alois.

Alois Rosario from PingSkills Posted 12 years ago
Thanks for the update Justin. For the Pendulum sidespin, see if you can video a few and watch them back to see what they look like. Perhaps it is the angle of your racket not being more vertical.

You could draw a curve on the other side of the table and try to get the ball to follow the curve. You could do this with a piece of rope or string rather than drawing on the table. As you get better, make the curve sharper.

toby kim Posted 4 years ago

The same thing is happening to me. The tomahawk serve has a lot of topspin and some sidespin, but the pendulum serve has rarely heavy sidespin. Is there a way to go about this?