ITTF Serving Video

Saw this video on the ITTF website - looking at some of the services demonstrated on an ITTF official video I think it explains some of the problems we are having with getting fault serves called! 

zeio wrote: Elena Semenova: Your service isn't good enough.

Those serves, while ingenious, didn't look quite kosher to me, Greg, despite bearing the ITTF imprimatur.  I did find the various contact points for strong and weak topspin, underspin, sidespin, and reverse sidespin serves interesting, however, though I still find the liha way of just putting the blooming ball into play with a simple forehand topspin more personally to my liking.

Baal wrote: If ITTF says that is a legal serve -- and we can only assume that this what they intend because it is one of their official videos -- then let's just use that is the model and just leave it at that.

Back in the dreamtime of the 21st century, the ITTF said that the change to the 40 mm. ball and the banning of speed glues would encourage defensive play and result in longer rallies.  Well sorta, temporarily.  Joo Se Hyuk made the finals of the Men's World Singles in 2003, and rallies averaged maybe 3/4 or a shot to a shot longer.

Then the ITTF reduced the number of points in a game from 21 points to 11 points, claiming that this would make each point more important and make TT more attractive to advertisers.  In America in the early 2000s. that did actually happen in the Midwest, when Robert Blackwell imported world class TT talent plus the best American players and got them air time in the late afternoon (American Eastern Standard Time).  The only advertiser that I can remember, however, was Killerspin, hardly a household name to American sports fans.  These halcyon days are now but a distant memory.

Then....boosters and tensor rubbers (more expensive) plus more expensive blades became the rage and still are today, though competitive TT is still no more (well an eentsy teentsy bit) popular in the U.S. than it was in the now distant 20th century.  And now we have the 40+ mm. ball, which nobody seems to care for.

I would not put too much stock into what the ITTF says, as its record for improving the sport and insisting that its world class players (forget us plebes of pong) obey the service rules it itself has set down is hardly sterling. 

Baal wrote: If ITTF says that is a legal serve -- and we can only assume that this what they intend because it is one of their official videos -- then let's just use that is the model and just leave it at that.

If i'm the umpire, i would be the first to fault Freitas for tossing the ball backwards into the body.