Serving
Hi
What exactly is a corkscrew serve and how do you serve it?
Thanks
Ji-Soo
Good question. It is not a term I use. After extensive research (On YouTube) I think all it is is a sidespin serve which makes the ball move around like a corkscrew. The idea then is to get lots of sidespin on the serve.
Maybe someone that uses the term can set me straight.
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Ji-Soo Woo Posted 16 years ago
Back when I used to be a decent player in the mid 80s I played in a tournament against this guy who had the most impressive serve I have ever seen. Interestingly he only seemed to serve this serve exactly ONCE a match (not even once a set). I can't remember what his service motion looked like but it started off like a very spinny and slow backspun ball. Then, as it crossed the net, it mysteriously became a fast topspin. It completely aced me. I didn't even get a racquet on it. He won our match and I watched him play the next round, and he repeated the same serve and aced his next opponent as well! When I described this serve on oneofakindtrading.com forum people were saying this was a 'corkscrew serve' - hence my question.
Gerard McCarthy Unknown Posted 16 years ago
Ji-Soo Woo Posted 16 years ago
Debo : Posted 12 years ago
DHS Lover Posted 11 years ago
Alois Rosario from PingSkills Posted 11 years ago
You are brushing under the ball from left to right.
DHS Lover Posted 11 years ago
DHS Lover Posted 11 years ago
Alois Rosario from PingSkills Posted 11 years ago
You need a little forward momentum as well to get the ball going forward rather than too high.
Jasper Low Posted 1 week ago
Is the corkscrew serve the same thing as sidespin? I heard the sidespin serve spins the ball horizontally while the corkscrew serve spins the ball vertically. There's really not many videos online that explain this
Alois Rosario from PingSkills Posted 1 week ago
Yes pretty much the same just more across the bottom of the ball rather than across the back or side of the ball.
D K Posted 6 days ago
Jasper is in fact right.
Sidespin is a horizontal rotation around a vertical axis.
Corkscrew spin is a "drill" spin,and rotates around the ball's flight path.
As far as serve,He Zhi Wen can perform this type of serve.
I have seen some slowmotions of him.
Notice that his ball not only curves,but it accelerates sideways,which a normal sidespin is incapable of,because a strictly pure sidespin hits the table with the top of its rotation axis.
In practise,the reasons of why sidespin balls bounce sideways on the table is that it is rarely physically possible to produce a 100% purely orthogonal rotation direction,and also a physical laws called Magnus effect. Pure sidespin would still bounce sideways,but solely due to Magnus effect. But it would also slow down in the process.
Corkscrew spin,in contrary,rotates around horizontal axis and thus the most quickly rotating part of the ball would touch the table,accelrating it in different direction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdt5YBY_82E
Here is the slowmotion of that serve.