service strategy

Do your serves complement your playing style?

Do your serves complement your playing style?

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I have a player I coach who has very strong drives. He can hit the ball hard and with good ball placement with both his forehand and his backhand. However, this player has a service problem. Yes, his serves are decent and spinny, and sometimes win him points outright. But in general his serves do not complement his playing style. He often gets stuck in pushing rallies and loses the point. In this blog post, I explain how you can use your serves to set up the type of rally you want and win more points. Keep reading

How to destroy opponents with long serves

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If you play table tennis at an amateur level, especially at lower levels, you can dominate your opponents with long serves. These are serves which land very deep on your opponent’s side of the table, ideally with a lot of speed and spin. In this blog post, I explain why long serves are effective (especially at lower amateur levels) and how to do devilish long serves which can give your opponents nightmares. Keep reading

Service tactics to win cheap points

Service tactics to win cheap points

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One of the benefits of having a table tennis table in my garage, is that I get to practise my serves a lot. I spend time practising my favourite serves – the ones I always use in matches. I also spend some time experimenting with different service actions and spin. As a result of all this practice, my service game is quite strong. I usually win lots of points on my serve and my service tactics get me out of trouble when other parts of my game aren’t working quite so well. In this blog post I share some of the service tactics which help me win cheap points. Keep reading

How to make an existing serve even better

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When coaching a player for a first time, they will often ask me to teach them new serves. They want serves which will bamboozle their opponents and win them lots of cheap points. But before I reveal my serving secrets, I ask them to show me their existing serves. And you know what? In most cases, the player already has a couple of decent serves, but they use them in a very predictable way. So before teaching any news serves, I always try to improve the serves they already use. In this blog post I reveal some of the things we work on (and you should do too)… Keep reading