By Larry Hodges

During the hardbat era, serving was generally not a major weapon. Service technique simply had not been developed to the degree that it has in the sponge game. This makes sense, since you can’t get as much spin with a hardbat, and so you are more limited in what you can do. However, in the sponge era, service techniques have reached an extremely high level, and these techniques are only now beginning to spread to the hardbat game.

First, a reality check. Unlike the sponge game, you aren’t going to dominate with your serve against players your own level. However, you can use modern serve techniques to both take the initiative when serving against your peers, and to dominate against many weaker players, thereby avoiding upsets.

It’s assumed, for this article, that you know how to serve with spin, and have some knowledge of modern serve techniques. If you don’t … well, you can always emulate the great hardbat masters, and serve just to get the ball in play! However, if you want to use your serve to take the initiative against your peers, and dominate against weaker players, learn some modern serving techniques, and then follow these tips.

Contact: with sponge, the key to spin is to just graze the ball with a grippy surface, knowing that the surface will grab the ball. If you use the same technique with a hardbat, the ball will slide some, and you’ll get less spin. With a hardbat, you need to contact the ball with the racket moving slower – and then accelerate through the ball. It helps to slightly push the rubber into the ball to lengthen contact and increase grippiness so you can maximize the spin.

Spin vs. Deception: Since you really can’t get nearly as much spin with a hardbat as with sponge, it is often more important to be deceptive than to go for pure spin. Right at contact, change directions, so the opponent has trouble figuring, for example, if you are serving light sidespin-backspin or light sidespin-topspin. Hardbat is a game of precision, and it only takes a little to throw the opponent off enough to force a slightly high ball to attack and take the initiative.

Height: Many sponge players have lost the art of flipping short balls, since inverted is not the best surface for doing that. However, hardbat is the best surface for doing this. Therefore, it is extremely important to serve low in hardbat. To do so, contact the ball low to the table. If you contact the ball too high, the ball will bounce high. Many players serve too high and don’t realize it until they find their serve getting attacked in a tournament.

Depth: Very short, low serves are very effective, both with spin and with no-spin, with a fake spin motion. However, many players find fast & deep serves even more effective, especially if mixed in with short ones. Some players can go after fast & deep serves, but not most. By serving deep, you have more time to see the incoming ball, more time to react, and there will be less angle on the return. Plus, you don’t have to worry about inverted loops! By serving fast, you rush the opponent, and force him to return with his weaker side if you choose. Be ready to follow a fast & deep serve with a strong drive or smash.

Look for Weaknesses: In sponge, you can cover for a weakness with other shots. It’s harder to do that in hardbat, which by its very nature forces longer rallies, allowing you to probe for and find opponent’s weaknesses. The same is true of serve return. Most players have at least one type of serve that they aren’t particularly comfortable returning (as well as at least one that they are very comfortable against!), so find what serves give your opponent trouble – and find it as early in the match as possible.

Choppers: Choppers often make the mistake of just serving to get the ball in play. That’s throwing away an advantage. Instead, put pressure on your opponent with tricky serves, and never let him know if you are going to chop or attack. If you can’t react or move fast enough to be able to choose between attacking or chopping depending on the return, decide before serving, and be decisive for that one shot. (Then fall back and chop if you don’t see a quick putaway.)

By Larry Hodges

Everybody has at least one serve that gives them trouble. It might be a certain sidespin, or a deep serve, a short serve, a no-spin serve, an angled serve, etc. The question is what to do against these problem serves?

By Larry Hodges

When receiving, many players are either overly aggressive or too passive. It's important to find the middle range. However, it is even more important to understand that it is consistency, placement and variation that are most important.

By Larry Hodges

We will define a "short" serve as any serve that, given the chance, would bounce at least twice on the receiver's side of the table before going off the end. Any serve that doesn't do this will be considered a "long" serve.

To attack short serves to the forehand, you will need to develop a forehand flip. The shot can be demonstrated by any top player or coach, or you can learn about it in most table tennis books.

By Larry Hodges

Returning serves effectively takes longer to learn to do than any other part of the game. This is due to the incredible variations in spin, speed, direction and depth available to servers. Worse, a good server disguises every aspect of the serve, especially the spin. We're going to focus the most difficult part here - reading spin. (For more info on spin, see my article Everything You Wanted to Know About Spin - But Were Afraid to Ask.)

Ideally, a player should read the spin off the server's racket. No matter how many motions a server goes through, all a receiver has to do is read the direction of the racket at contact, and he will have read the type of spin. This is easier said than done.

The receiver also needs to read the amount of spin. Against a somewhat grippy inverted rubber, this is roughly done by a simple formula: racket speed - ball speed = ball spin. What this means is that a server's racket speed at contact will convert to ball speed and ball spin; if the racket moves fast, but the ball comes out slowly, then most of the energy has been converted to spin. (It's actually a bit more complicated than this. You get more spin if you accelerate into the ball rather than moving the racket at a constant speed, but it's close enough. Plus you have to take into consideration the grippiness of the rubber, as a non-grippy surface will have less spin.) 

A server disguises spin in three major ways. First, his racket may go through a semi-circular motion, with contact at any point on the curve. This way, a server may give different spins with the exact same serve motion - the only difference is where in the serve motion contact is made. At the advanced levels, this semi-circular motion is so short and quick it's very hard to pick up. 

Second, a server may disguise spin by mixing up spin and no-spin serves. (If a receiver thinks there is spin on the ball, and there isn't, it's the same as misreading a spin.) There are two ways the server may do this. A server may contact the ball near the throat of the racket, where the racket travels slower than the tip. Or he may fake a grazing motion, but just pat the ball with the racket straight on. In both cases, the server may use an exaggerated racket snap after contact.

Third, the server may put so much spin on the ball that it is simply difficult to read the amount of spin.

The only way to learn to return serves is to understand them, and to practice against them. So how do you read the spin?

As your opponent is serving, keep your eyes on his racket. (Against a high-toss serve, you may glance up to see when the ball will be coming down - but as it comes down, you should be watching the racket.) Ignore the direction the racket is moving until contact. Then, right at contact - SNAP! Take a flash "video" in your mind of the split second of contact. In this split-second video, you should be able to see the direction and speed the racket was going at contact. From this, you can judge the type of spin. From the racket speed, and the speed of the ball after contact, you can judge the amount of spin. 

What happens if you absolutely cannot read the spin off the racket? Or if contact is hidden? If the contact is hidden (which isn't legal, though it often isn't enforced), you will have to read the spin mostly from the ball alone. The type of sidespin on the ball should be easy to read from the general racket motion - left to right or right to left. It's the reading of topspin vs. backspin that's tricky.

A ball with backspin tends to travel in a line, and slows down when it bounces on the table. A ball with topspin drops quickly, and jumps when it hits the table. A sidespin ball will curve sideways in the air, and jump sideways when it hits the table. If you let the ball come out to you and take the ball late, you will have more time to read this, and make the proper adjustments. However, reading from the ball alone will make your receive more tentative and late, and so less effective.

Eventually, reading spin will become more and more natural, and you won't even think about it so much. Then you can concentrate on what to do with the ball.

By Larry Hodges

Most players know what a third-ball attack is: you serve, the opponent returns, and you attack aggressively, usually with a loop, a smash, a hard-hit drive, or perhaps a quick off-the-bounce drive. It's that simple.

But this means you are relying on your opponent to return your serve in a way that you can attack effectively. While you want to develop your third-ball attack, you also want to develop your five-ball attack, as your fall-back plan.

By Larry Hodges

If you know your opponent's rating before a match, you have several advantages:

1. You can use tactics that will defeat that level;
2. If the opponent is lower rated, you can go in with confidence;
3. If the opponent is higher rated, you can go in feeling you have nothing to lose, and so play better than normal.

On the other hand:

By Larry Hodges

When pushing on the backhand, most players are at one of three levels:

Level One: Get it back!

Level Two: Do something with it! This usually means one of three things: Quick off the bounce and angled; heavy; or short. This is effective at all levels. But there's another level. . . .

Level Three: Do even more!

By Larry Hodges

Are you one of those players with a steady backhand, but unable to really attack or counter-attack with it? Here's a solution: practice temporarily with short pips!

Most players won't want to switch to short pips long term because there are many disadvantages to short pips: can't spin the ball much, difficult to topspin from off the table effectively, and ball doesn't bounce off as lively so you have to generate most of the force on your shots.

By Larry Hodges

Most players serve with a purpose. They are trying to get you to return their serve in a specific way so they can attack it. So . . . don't.

The classic case is the forehand looper who serves backspin to your backhand, anticipating a push to his backhand. He steps around and forehand loops. If he's got good footwork, he'll usually follow that shot with at least one more forehand loop unless you make a great return. So he's getting two forehand loops in a row, exactly what he wants.