Table Tennis Serving Techniques. Generic Advice

Within table tennis there are many types of serves to choose from. Each of these serves has their own benefits but some will be more effective than others, depending on the situation. In this article I will be going into detail of the main table tennis serving techniques. These can be implemented on any type of serve you choose to do! Serving is very important in table tennis as it is the only shot you can have 100% control over. It is the shot that can set you up to win the rally, therefore, it is vital you know how to do an effective serve.

Net Height

The most important aspect of your serve is to make sure it is not six feet in the air. We need to make sure the serves are tight. If we never focus on tight serves, no matter how much spin or variation you use, your serves will be hit past you. You want your serve to be as low as possible when traveling over the net as well as after the bounce. The best way to achieve this is to contact the ball roughly at net height. Making sure we comply with the serving rules by contacting the ball as it is falling. Contacting the ball at net height will help make sure it stays low enough. This could be awkward for someone trying this for the first time. I recommend practicing this by having a tub of balls next to you to constantly serve. Trying to contact the ball lower to work out the timing point for yourself. A way of developing this further is to play a game of chicken, trying to let the ball fall for as long as possible before hitting it.

Symmetrical Bounce

Now we know how to keep the ball low, we need to understand where the ball is going to bounce. As we know from the serving rules, the ball has to bounce on both sides of the table. This leaves the question of where should you make the ball bounce on your own side. Situationally, this changes depending on what type of serve you want to do. When the ball hits the table it will have a symmetrical bounce. Meaning that the first bounce on your opponents side will mirror the bounce on your side using the net as a reflection point. So, if you want to do a short serve, you will try get the ball to hit as close to the net on your side so it is also close to the net on your opponents side. Similarly, if you want a long serve, you will aim to hit the table as close to yourself as you can which should make the ball hit your opponents base line.

Again if this is new for you it will take some practice to get this accurate every time. While practicing it could be helpful to put a towel/jacket on the table. If you are practicing a short serve cover the lower half of your side so it forces you to hit closer to the net. Similarly, for a long serve, you can cover the top half. As you get more confident you can make this area smaller to make it more precise. Another method that you could use, in conjunction to this, is placing cups/paper on other side of the table to aim at. If you are using paper, each time you hit it fold the paper in half to make the exercise progressively more difficult.

Brush The Ball

The next part of improving your serves is producing spin on the ball. For some, this can be the hardest part of serving, so these next few topics will try to help you combat this. However, if you are trying to do a long fast serve or a float (no spin) serve, getting spin on the ball is not relevant.

The first aspect we need to focus on is how we contact the ball on the bat. To get spin on the ball we need to “brush the ball”. The best way to describe this is when you pet a cat, you would not pat it, instead you would stroke it. To help with brushing the ball you will need a light contact. If you contact the ball heavily it is much harder to get the spin. Depending on what serve you are trying to do will determine where you should brush the ball. For example, I am going to use the backspin pendulum serve. To get the backspin we need to brush up the front face of the ball to make it rotate backwards. We could also brush underneath the ball, however, this would not get as much spin. If we use a heavy ‘patting’ contact the ball will go high over the net with little to no spin. You can try this without the use of a table by practicing brushing under the ball. See the differences for yourself when you hit the ball compared to if you brush the ball.

Acceleration

Now we have the brushing action sorted. We can now make some small adjustments to help get more spin on the ball. The first one being using your wrist as you are brushing the ball. When throwing the ball up extend your playing wrist back, then as you make contact with the ball, accelerate your wrist forwards. Using the backspin example you would accelerate the wrist under/up the front face of the ball. The faster you accelerate, the more spin you generate. It is important that as you start practicing this acceleration, you do not lose the brushing action, or the light contact on the ball.

You can start to practice this away from the table, like before, contact up the front face of the ball or under if you can’t quite get up the front face yet. The aim is to have the ball come back to you because of the backspin. While doing this, try using your wrist more, then to get more spin try a faster acceleration. To begin with, the light brushing action you previously used, may disappear. This will come back with practice.

Contact Point

The final aspect of getting more spin on your serves is to understand where the ball should make contact on the bat. To get the most spin we want to maximise the speed of the contact point. This links back to the acceleration section. This contact point, is going to be at the top of the bat – see the area marked out on bat (This area is marked out for a right-handed player, reflect this if you are left-handed). This contact point is due to the end point of the bat moving a bigger distance but in the same amount of time. Therefore, it has to be moving faster. So the best place for us to hit on the bat is at the top. Obviously, if we try hitting the very top, every time, this is going to be very difficult. We will miss more than we hit! Also, the ball needs to have time touching the rubber to create spin. At the tip of the bat there is no rubber to roll onto so we aim slightly lower to allow space for the ball to roll into.

Again, you can now go away using the same practice method from the acceleration section. This time focusing on getting the contact point higher up the bat. To check this you can clean your bat before hitting the ball. This can be done by simply breathing on the rubber then wiping it clean. Once you have hit the ball check your rubber, you will be able to see a mark where the ball made contact. From here you know how to adapt your contact point.

Variation

It is not good to only have one effective serve. You will become very predictable. Even if your one serve is very good, your opponent will find it easy to play against, as they will know what serve you are going to do every single time. This is why you need variation in your serves. Variation can be done in multiple ways. The easiest way would be by doing the same serve but changing the placement. For example if you were doing a short backspin serve to the forehand, you could easily change it by serving to the backhand or middle. Although, once again, this is going to be easy to play against, if your opponent knows you only ever do backspin serves. Therefore, another important way you can include variation, is to change the spin you use. The different types of spin include:

• Backspin
• Topspin
• Sidespin
• Float (no spin)

Being able to do all of these different spins (and combinations of them) while being able to change the placement of them will be a big advantage. The final change you could use is the depth of the serve. Don’t only ever do short serves, change it up by making some long or half long. If you are unsure about the terminology here see this post which explains table tennis terminology.

Disguise

Even if you can vary your serves, they won’t be effective if your opponent knows which serve you are about to do. For example, if you use your forehand to serve topspin and your backhand to serve backspin, your serves are very predictable. This is where the disguise element comes in. If you are able to start your serves in the same way every time while still varying them, this will make it much harder for your opponent to know what you are going to do. The final step to disguise your serves is finishing your serves the same way every time. This is very difficult, so do not worry if you can’t get this straight away, even some players who have been playing for over ten years still struggle with this. The goal of disguising your serves, is to make them look identical to each other, with only a small change as you contact the ball.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are a lot of things you need to focus on to get an effective serve. The best way to include them all is practice them in isolation, then start bringing them all together. You can even start by practicing off the table, using the examples I talked about in earlier sections. Remember, do not exclusively practice serves by yourself! You may think they are good, when in fact, someone may find them very easy to return. Practice your serves against different people and ask them for their honest feedback. You can ask for comments on your spin, variation and disguise.

I understand that this can be a lot to take in, so, if you have any questions feel free to ask below or email me. I will always be happy to help you!

Ebony

ebony@pingpongpye.com