3rd Ball off sidespin serve

M V Asked 13 years ago

hi Jeff and Alois,

as a right handed player, if i do a regular pendulum serve, a lot of times the return from another right handed player will come towards me, with a ball that is spinning away from me. when i try to do a forehand topspin on that ball, it gets really really awkward as the ball while hitting my bat is spinnig away from me and in a natural course would tend to fly to the middle of the table without any top spin or i end up hitting a very uncontrolled stroke. which is either out or too slow.

pls. suggest the correct way of hitting this ball, how do you get speed on this return...

a video response would be great... 

regards...

Alois Rosario Answered 13 years ago

Hi Manish,

This is an important consideration when working out which serves are good for you.

What you can do to overcome this is to serve with straight backspin on the pendulum serve.  This will mean that your third ball is a little more straightforward.

Alternately, by training 3rd with this, you will start to adjust to this sidespin coming back to you.  You need to allow for the sidespin by getting a little closer to the ball.  I will see if the video votes get up for this one.