Tomahawk topspin
Table Tennis Serving
Last updated 11 years ago
Peter Habich Asked 11 years ago
Hi Alois,
Some time ago I came across the site of William Henzell. In his match analysis of his own play he always mentiones that his favourite serve is the tomahawk topspin serve. But how does he do the upswing motion to create topspin and why does he use this stroke in comparison to a pendulum topspin serve ? Is there an advantage to use this kind of serve ?
Thanks and regards
peter
Alois Rosario Answered 11 years ago
Hi Peter,
The upswing for the Tomahawk serve comes as you are swinging through you hit the ball early in the swing as the bat is going up. The arc of the swing goes up and then down so an earlier contact will give you the topspin.
We cover this in our Serving Secrets lessons. In it we show you the swing and how to get the topspin on the ball.
Thoughts on this question
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Jeff Plumb from PingSkills Posted 11 years ago
Hi Peter,
I think one big advantage with the tomahawk serve is that it has gone out of favour. The pendulum serve is the most common serve and hence players are used to returning against it. If they haven't played a lot against the tomahawk, it might take them a while to figure out how to return it.
The pendulum used to be even more powerful when you could legally hide the ball. Now with the service rule you can't do that (legally) so it brings back the other serves into consideration more and more.
bertus bertus Posted 11 years ago
I do think a tomahawk serve does have a disadvantage in comperason to a pendulum serve. You need to go very low and therefor it takes longer to recover from that position.