Pendulum serve angles

hi pingskills

I have a question about the pendulum serve. at the basic level, we are told to swing sideways in a pendulum motion to generate the sidespin. an example of this would be in your serving dvd.

Although now I have really noticed the serve done slightly differently, instead of going sideways across the sideback of the ball(for pure sidespin) the player swings strait forward through the side of the ball.

Is there any essential difference in these two serves?, in my opinion the second one is more deceptive as the returner does not see the full face of the rubber so the motion of the serve is deceptive wether its sideback or sidetop as well as dead.

Here is a sample of the serve done by Waldner

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA74UCFmru0 at about 3:37 while at about 3:23 we see Perssons serve the angle of the face is facing the returner more, not much but more.

is there in difference in the spin production in the serve?(angles for sidetop and sideback)

Hi Tevia,

You can do it both ways, they are just variations of the same serve. Coming around the side of the ball will tend to get you a little more sidespin and speed on the ball.  Hitting it at the back can give you a slower serve which relatively will feel like it has a lot of spin because of the relative slow forward momentum.

Both are legitimate ways of doing the pendulum serve. Just work out which feels more comfortable for you.