Last updated 13 years ago
Hi Andrew,
Yang Yining is not looking at big advantages with her serves but the small advantages.
The small variation of spin is what gives her that advantage. By varying the serves she might get a slightly higher return that will give her the first advantage in the rally. As you can see the Womens rallies are a little longer and more about placement.
Although these serves may look ordinary to the eye, to actually receive them is reasonably difficult. They would be extremely difficult to control for the average club player. That is part of the deception of good serving, to be able to make it look easy. She only uses a few serves but uses a lot of subtle variation with each of those serves. She will be generating heavy backspin on some and less on others which makes keeping the ball low on the return difficult. This will set her up to make a strong first attacking ball. When she is playing someone of equal ability that is what she is looking for.
Of course there are Women who play a more aggressive game. Look at Ding Ning who generates even more spin on her serve.
Generating a lot os spin and keeping the ball short is the difficult task. To do this you need to be able to get your bat moving fast to generate the spin but then you have to get a very fine contact to keep the ball short. This is a very fine motor skill which require a lot of hours of practice to get right. Don't give up on trying to get it. It can improve with time.
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