Pendulum serve return

Hi guys!

I have a question that's really bothering my game and gets me to losing lots of matches which I should probably win.

It's about my serve. I struggled for some time in order to learn the pendulum serve correctly. I have a table at my place and I started playing table tennis with my twin brother from scratch (absolute no knowldege). We did quite some research, got lucky to find you guys and managed to improve quite a bit in a short time span (we are 19 and have begun playing about 2 years ago maybe). Of course, the rivarly between me and my brother has always been big and victories were shared btw each other. We recently updated our gear and bought our first serious bats and of course our level of play increased significantly.

My issue is that lately I get beaten quite often by my brother. I reckon he may be a bit more talented than I am (since he can beat quite anyone that he plays against), but surely he has had the most trouble against me. I managed to learn the pendulum serve (he did not and refuses to do it) and discovered it did give me quite some good advantages over my overall game (including a lot of confidence). However, I lose many times due to it. I only know the sidespin and backspin serves (I execute them pretty decently) and I know that my problem is in the length of my balls, as I struggle a bit when I want to hit the balls really short. Another problem is the fact that he's lefty (which has not been a problem since now as I am acustomed to playing more lefty guys) and he has got a blistering and unforgiving forehand. Every serve I get on his forehand side, he tries to play it decisively and he does it many times per match. This way he adds pressure (mentally speaking) to my serve and I do more mistakes (trying to serve it extra long/short or extra spinny).

My final question is, what should I do to improve my serve, especially when serving on his backhand side (since it is clearly his weakes part of the game). I would like to serve more consistently on that side (I find it more challenging than serving on his forehand). Also, I tried to learn the reverse pendulum serve, but found it to be a really tricky shot to learn, although I believe that it could prove very useful.

Sorry for the long story, but I felt that these were important aspects regarding the question.

Thanks, I really appreciate your teaching skills, it definitely got me and my brother into loving this sport. 

Hi Muresan,

It is great to hear that we have been able to help you get into Table Tennis.

Now for your problem... I think there is a simple solution.  Just try taking a step over towards your forehand side and serve the pendulum serve from there to his backhand side.  At first you can take some of the spin off the serve and just look at placing it better to make him hit it with his backhand.  As you feel more comfortable serving from that position, you can increase the spin.

The other thing is to keep practicing your serve so that you get better at serving it short.  This will come with some good concentrated service practice.

Goo luck with it all.