Service
From TableTennisTraining
Service is one of the most important parts of the game and players should regularly practice their serve technique. Just as important as service is the ability to return serves well. Every point begins with a serve and a serve return and the serve and serve return typically set the flow for the rest of the point. It's no exageration to say that these two skills combined dictate who wins and who loses in many matches. One of the fastest ways to quickly improve in table tennis is to develop better serves and improve one's service return skills.
The best way to improve your service return skills is to play against a large variety of opponents with good serves. If your goal is to be a strong offensive player, one of your primary goals in service return is to learn to consistently attack all long serves. You will also need to learn how to return short serves so that they are difficult for your opponent to attack.
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Depth of serve
Serves are generally categorized based on the serve depth (how deep the serve lands in the receiver's court), the type of spin on the serve, and the horizontal placement.
#Short balls are slow, but hard to attack with much force unless they are served too high. #Long serves are fast, but the receiver can use his entire body in his attack stroke. #Half-long serves leave the receiver guessing as to whether a ball is loopable or not. #Medium serves are easily attackable serves and experienced players only serve them by mistake.
Short
A short ball is ball that bounces twice on the receiver's court. Since these balls never clear the table, it's difficult to attack them with entire body. In fact, these balls are practically impossible to loop unless they are somewhat high. For this reason, they are the preferred serves at the top levels of play. At world class level, ~80% of serves are intended to be short or half-long serves.
Short serves are much harder to serve than you might first expect. Most players can serve nospin short serves within about 30 minutes of practice, but it generally takes a while to develop short serves with reasonable amounts of spin (e.g. several months of practice) and even longer to be able to disguise the spin well!
Returning short serves
Half-long
Half long serves are served much like short serves, but these balls just barely clear the table so that they only bounce once on the receiver's court and then drop below the table within an inch or three beyond the end of the table.
Returning half-long serves
Half-long balls can be looped, but it's difficult to use full force against them since the table gets in the way of a forward loop stroke, so the stroke must be more upwards with less body and more arm muscle (e.g. Spin Loop). It's difficult to judge whether a half-long serve will be half-long or short, so the receiver has to make a last minute decision whether to attack the ball with a moderate speed loop or perform a defensive return. For this reason, half-long serves are very effective against attack players.
Half-long serves are sometimes referred to as "knucklebusters" because it is an easy mistake for an aggressive looper to strike the table while attempting to loop a ball so close to the table's edge. A good knucklebuster can win a match outright when this happens, because looping into the table is quite painful.
Medium
Medium depth serves bounce somewhere in the middle of the receiver's court and start to drop below table level within a feet of the table's end. Medium serves should always be avoided as they are not very fast and they allow the opponent to use their entire body to attack the ball. Better players will typically only serve a medium serve by mistake when trying to serve a ball short.
Returning medium serves
Unless you are a defensive player, you should always attack a medium serve, generally with a strong loop. Since these balls are not fast, take your time to position your body for the return, place your loop well, and use plenty of force. This is a good time to score an outright winner!
Long
A long serve is one that bounces on the opponent's side very near his end line (within 12 inches at least). A good long serve should land within the last 6 inches or less (with practice, you should be able to achieve this 9 out of 10 times when serving long). 95% of long serves are fast serves that first strike the able within the first 24" inches of the serves side of the table and just clear the net. The intent of fast long serves is catch your opponent off guard and give them little time to react during their service return.
Long serves are commonly used by and against players under around 1800 (this is just a rough figure) and are generally the most effective serves against attackers up to about 1500. At higher levels of play, it is generally unsafe to serve too many long balls, since advanced players will generally be able to loop any but the best long serve if they are ready for it, so the long serve must be slipped in deceptively amidst a bunch of short serves.
Long serves are not only much faster than short serves, they can also be much spinnier, since the ball can be hit a lot harder. One of the easiest ways to win service points against beginning players is to serve long serves with lots of sidespin which will pull their return shot off the side of the table.
Long High and Wild
A long, high, and wild serve is a special form of long serve that is somewhat slower and bounces higher than a standard long serve. These serves should not be served very often, but they can be very effective when they catch the receiver off guard. In practical play, these are generally served accidentally. If the receiver is not surprised by the serve, he will generally return the ball with a smash.
Returning long serves
Long serves should generally be attacked with a loop, but if you are caught off guard or out-of-position (as is generally the intent of the server), you may be forced to counter or block a long serve. Since long serves are very fast, fast blocking the serve with some placement control is often sufficient to prevent too strong a return attack from the server.
Primary Serve Spin (top or under)
The most important spin on a serve is the amount of underspin or topspin because it is easy to disguise. Misreading this will easily cause the receiver to fail to return the serve at all, especially if the receiver thinks a topspin ball is underspin, or vice versa.
Sidespin
The amount of sidespin on a serve is also important, but it's much more difficult to disguise sidespin and there is more room for error in the misread of a sidespin. However, against players who are not experienced at reading spin and don't know how to oppose the sidespin, heavy sidespin serves can be quite devastating. Just by observing the general class of serve being used by your opponent, you can accurately guess which type of sidespin he can generate (not that he will necessarily put sidespin on the ball, but if he does, the spin direction should be easy to tell). Forehand tomahawk serves generate hook sidepsin. Standard forehand pendulum serves generate fade sidespin (although it is possible to perform the rather difficult "reverse-sidespin" pendulum serve which generates a hook sidespin). There are also some less standard forehands service techniques such as "windshield wiper" serves that can generate either hook or fade sidespin, depending on which direction sideways the bat is moving when it contacts the ball. Almost all backhand serves generate hook sidepsin.
Downwards Velocity
In addition to spin, it's also possible to vary the speed at which the ball hits the table. The minimum downwards velocity is generated by hitting ball very lightly upwards and letting gravity pull it down to the table. This is an especially technique useful technique when you want to generate a short spinny server. Alternatively, you can hit the ball downwards slightly so that it strikes the table faster than if it was pulled down only by gravity. This has a couple of effects: 1) some spin is lost because of the harder contact, 2) spin has less effect on the bounce trajectory as the spin has less time to "kick-in", and 3) the resulting bounce is, naturally enough, higher.
Most people learn to hit serves downwards into the table first, as it's easier to make a legal serve this way, but as you advance in skill, learning to perform serves that fall only under gravity becomes very important (primarily to generate high-quality short serves). On the other hand, any true long serve (one where the first bounce on the opponent's court is very deep) has to be performed by hitting the ball into the table to achieve the necessary combination of forward velocity and bounce height to clear the net. Hence, one way to convert an apparent short spin serve into a long one is to snap the wrist when you make contact with the ball, driving the ball hard into the table.
Placement
Opponent's elbow
When serving a fast long serve, targeting the player's elbow will force him to make a quick decision about whether to return with his forehand or backhand. This is also a moderately effective place to target for short and half-long serves, since it will force the receiver to move before he can stroke the ball.
Opponent's backhand
This is one of the most common places to serve because it forces the receiver to step around if they want to attack the ball with their forehand. Long serves are particularly hard to step around and attack because of extreme footwork speed required, so these can be very handy against a receiver who doesn't have a strong backhand attack. One way to "cheat" this requirement if you are a such a receiver is to use an Inside Loop instead. Unlike a regular loop which is struck to the side and somewhat away from the body, an inside loop is struck closer to the body and often slighly in front of the body. This means less footwork is required to get into proper position to attack balls in the backhand court. Another advantage of using an inside loop against these balls is the fade sidespin imparted by an inside loop is handy for making a cross-court loop that cuts the opponent's sideline.
Opponent's forehand
Opponent's backhand sideline
Opponent's forehand sideline
This is an excellent place to place serves, since it tends to draw the receiver far to the forehand side of the table, leaving him forced to return the next shot with his backhand. It takes some practice to consistently to cut the forehand sideline, but heavy sidespin will usually do the trick, especially for short and half-long serves. But be careful, it's easy to serve a medium serve by mistake when cutting the sidelines, since the distance from the table is how far before it starts to drop on the sideline, not the endline. Even a medium serve to the extreme forehand corner can be effective against receivers with weak footwork, but advanced players should be able to consistently attack such serves with good power and placement.
Spin deception
Placement deception
Service styles
Forehand pendulum serves
With a pendulum serve, the bat is raised high and away from the body, then brought downwards towards the body in a curving motion. Once the bat has dropped close to the table height, it is then lifted again (while continuing to bring the bat closer to the body). The bat moves through an approximate pendulum motion (actually closer to a parabolic curve, for the math geeks out there), hence the name of this family of serves.
This movement in two directions (up and down) allows the server to disguise the topspin or backspin on the ball. By striking near the bottom of the ball close to the point at which the bat switches directions, he can put backspin on the ball by grazing it on the way down, or topspin by grazing it on the way back up.
The amount of fade sidespin placed on the ball can be varied by the speed at which the bat is accelerated towards the body after making contact.
Wrist snap
Wrist snap is one of the most effective ways to add suprising spin and speed to pendulum serves. A serve that would otherwise be short can be turned into a long serve by a firm snap of the wrist when contacting the ball to add momentum. You can also change the angle of the bat with the wrist at the point of contact to produce a variety of spins (including a hook sidespin instead of a fade sidespin). Hook sidespin IS more difficult to produce in a forehand pendulum serve (unless you're a left-handed player, of course, in which case it's the opposite), so these serves are often referred to as "reverse-sidespin pendulum serves" because fade is the more natural spin. 90% of the pendulum serves you receive from a right-handed player will probably have fade sidespin.
A flat wrist tap or hard snap to the back of the ball near the bottom of the pendulum can also be used to deliver a surprise dead ball either short or long and fast.
Note: need to add some tutorial videos to demonstrate different pendulum serves.
Experimental variation notes
I'm experimenting with a variation on the pendulum where the parabola is more in the horizontal plane than the vertical plane (at least near the point of contact). The idea is to better disguise which sidespin is used. Contacting early in the horizontal parabola can be used to put hook sidespin, late to introduce fade.
Tomahawk serves
Forehand tomahawk serves get their name because the motion is similar to that used when throwing a tomahawk. The serve begins with the bat tip pointed upwards with the edge rather than the face shown to your opponent and with the elbow bent. The bat is brought down and forward as you straighten your arm, making a brushing contact with the side of the ball. The primary spin of a tomahawk serve is hook sidespin, but top and bottom spin can also be generated on the ball depending on whether you contact the upper or lower side of the ball.
