Confusing and conflicting advice about the serve

Yesterday I was doing another round of service practice in the club and one of our coaches, who happened to observe me from the bar, came correcting me. She said I should be lower and have a greater amplitude, then brush with the wrist very fast. All of that makes sense but I was trying to keep the ball short, which is more difficult with a great amplitude. OK, she said, in that case you make a fast contact underneath and then pull back the bat in the opposite direction. She demonstrated, as if she was brushing the ball in both directions at the same time. This is of course physically impossible. I can understand you make such a move to disguise the spin and use backspin or topspin one time or the other, but not both at the same time.

Before that, my regular coach also stressed the importance of getting a low contact, almost at net level and urged me to practice this, attempting to even hit a "let" net.

But you guys (and also some other instructors online) seem to favor a higher contact point for more safety and I don't see a particular major backswing at top level either. The female coach said I should start at the shoulder!

The rest of the players are kind of mocking my practice or at least are bemused at it: they said in the dressing room that serving is an individual kind of thing and you need to "get a feel for it". I know that I get the wrong feel if I don't pay attention, "feeling" lots of spin which isn't really there.

So, many questions at the same time:

1. how do you cope with conflicting advice (my solution: ask the coach!)
2. where's the contact height for a good low backspin serve
3. what's the right amplitude for a backspin

Whichever you decide to treat of these, if any at all, I'm grateful to you

Hi Dieter,

Firstly you can only brush the ball in one direction.  What the coach was talking about is flicking the wrist which leads to a spring back of the wrist at the end.  The ball has already gone so you are not hitting the ball again.  The flicking gives you more speed on the contact which in turn leads to more spin which is what you are after.  Get as much speed on the racket as you possibly can.  This will lead to more spin.  When the bat is moving that fast, you have to have a very fine contact to keep the ball short though.

As far as the height, the safer option is to hit the ball from a little higher.  We give this advice often because a lot of players tend to hit the ball from too low before they have touch and accuracy leading to many balls going into the net.  You can hit the ball from lower as she was saying which will lead to an even lower trajectory of the ball.  Try it out, get down really low with your legs and serve and see what happens.

I think often conflicting advice comes from a slight variation in what people are talking about.  It may all be the same advice just put in slightly different ways or relating to slightly different things.