Receiving fast sidespin serve

hi alois and jeff,

a certain player i faced today in an inter house tourney today used a rather strange serve... because of which i lost 3-0! it has sidespin on it but it neither curves away nor has too much sidespin on it. it comes nice and long and right into my hitting zone but due to the speed i messed up. also whenever i tried to fall back and chop it went into the net and  loop it, way over the table. also he was a lefty who had a rather collosal kill with forehand and only 1 serve(fh). i will be facing him again in a month or so for interschool and as he no longer practices tt i need to make the best i can. can u suggest anything i can do against his serve(preferably attack). plz also suggest a drill where i can minimise my crossover point and develop a good backhand block against his powerful fh. 

Hi Shripathi,

You need to make a topspin off this serve.  It is coming across your forehand but it is long.  Make a topspin with a high safety over the net.  Make a lot of topspin on the ball to give it good clearance over the net and then dip quickly onto the table.  Because the serve is coming fast it will feel like it has more backspin on it.

The key to having a better defense against his forehand is to make it as difficult as possible to make the forehand.  You need to keep the ball low and on his backhand side a lot.

The crossover point is always an issue.  You can practice the crossover point by getting your training partner to hit a lot of balls into this area.  You then need to decide whether to hit it with your forehand or backhand.

One drill I use a lot is to block the ball to anywhere on the backhand 2/3rds of the table.  The player can choose to hit any ball with forehand or backhand.