How can serve like this be legal?

I´m not sure about this, but when the ball is tossed shouldn´t it fall at the same place (vertical toss)?

TT newbie wrote: I´m not sure about this, but when the ball is tossed shouldn´t it fall at the same place (vertical toss)?

Almost true, not quite.  The ITTF has a document called the Handbook for Match Officials in which they provide guidance for how straight the toss should be.  This version is from 2014, it is the most recent version I could find, although a new one is probably soon due or maybe I missed it. 

http://www.ittf.com/URC/PDF/HMO_15th_edition.pdf

In section 10.3.1 they provide a little diagram for how straight the toss should be.  It is based on angle, so depending on height of toss, you may get more actual lateral movement of the ball.  As you can see, it's not all that precise because in the real world, an umpire would not be able to measure that precisely.  It clearly allows the umpire the latitude to make a judgment.  They do not demand that the toss is perfectly straight.  They want it to be "near vertical".  What is that?  Well, not 45 degrees they are clear about that.  Would 22.5 degrees be ok?  Maybe.    Among top pros, you very rarely see perfectly straight tosses, especially on reverse pendulum serves (actually one of the few players who makes that serve with a straight toss is Timo Boll).  I have almost never seen someone called for this. 

ttTurkey wrote: Those serves may be technically illegal, but I would be happy with his serves as an opponent because contact is nice and clear. Hidden contact disturbs me far more than whether or not the ball was thrown up from below the table or not quite straight enough.

what advantage can the server acquire by dipping the ball below the table surface? I was told a few times that I do it, but honestly, it is completely subconscious. I though about this actually, and I found that ironically, the only time I do it when I toss the ball very high, just to get some extra swing. But if the ball goes up 5 feet in the air and is perfectly visible the whole time, what is wrong with dipping it below the table? I tried not dipping it, and curiously, it disturbs my high toss serve. I have to start higher, and then end the tossing motion too high for my liking. 

I guessing the reason they have this rule is because people used to do things to the ball under the table (like finger spinning it) while the other guy couldn't see.

Baal wrote: VTC makes a good point about dropping the toss hand below the table just before the toss.  No advantage is gained by it.

82-83?? That's pretty late. I thought finger spin when serving was in hard bat era, as inverted/sandwich rubbers make more than enough serve spin themselves.

zeio wrote: The toss above table surface was put into effect '82-83, along with ball must not be struck beyond the rearmost part of the server from the table.  I wonder what led to that change.

I was referring to the later part of video, where Umpire did not call warning or fault.
The red shirt did not toss the ball, but the hand with the ball together goes up, then ball was released sideways.  The ball did not go  6inch up above palm,  that looks strange

Edited by rosecitytt - 04/01/2016 at 4:52pm

Baal wrote: berndt_mann wrote: Nobody simply puts the damn ball into play anymore.  That went out about the same time as the Hudson Hornet. Of course not.  It's a racket sport.  You use the serve to your advantage or you're an idiot. VTC makes a good point about dropping the toss hand below the table just before the toss.  No advantage is gained by it.  But Tim gets called for it because the rules don't allow it, he does it a lot, and I suspect umpires are now clued in that they should look for it.

In the day Baal, when you were but a gleam in your father's eye, we put the ball into play with our rustic weapons, and naturally to our advantage, but a sidespin serve made with a rustic weapon could be returned without a great deal of difficulty to the backhand side of the table or to the middle. Danny Vegh,  my first coach and a student of Hall of Famer Tibor Hazi, understood this.  So did Coleman Clark and Don Siegel, who in a movie short made in 1936 demonstrated (Clark serving, Siegel returning) that it wasn't terribly difficult if you played well to return a sidespin serve.   A hard topspin serve to the backhand or a hard relatively spinless serve deep to the backhand, a la Reisman, whose services were Occam's Razor simple compared to today's contortionists, could elicit a weak block or possibly a backhand chop, which Reisman could open up against with either a forehand or a backhand topspin so as to either end the point immediately or, more to spectators' pleasure, let a point begin to, in his own words, blossom.

In the day three ball or five ball kills were rare.  Who'd watch the bloody sport if they were commonplace?  Now you serve illegally so as to end a point as quickly as possible and you don't serve legally because any miscue could result in demise by humiliation.

In the day when two world class players played one another, particularly in the 1940s, serves were pretty straightforward.  There may be three reasons for this:  a hard rubber racket is not capable of applying ridiculously excessive spin, world class players had no difficulty returning sidespin serves, including Vana's semi-tomahawk, and spectators were more interested in seeing a match where world class table tennis players, like skilled prizefighters, could transition from offense to defense and spectators could understand far more than they can now how and why this could be done.

In the best hard rubber table tennis I have witnessed both in person and on film, players after the serve and the service return used their game to their advantage, to the delight and satisfaction of those who watched them.  Not to have done so would have been idiocy.

What game are you talking about? You mean using speed, spin and placement to score a point, right? Why not try that right off the bat from the 1st shot?

berndt_mann wrote: In the best hard rubber table tennis I have witnessed both in person and on film, players after the serve and the service return used their game to their advantage, to the delight and satisfaction of those who watched them.  Not to have done so would have been idiocy.

Berndt,

Edited by roundrobin - 04/01/2016 at 7:06pm

roundrobin wrote: Berndt, Hardbatters in that period didn't know the possibilities of producing superior serves, even with the hard surface.  They simply didn't know how.  I find it quite amusing that Marty couldn't return Jimmy Butler's legal corkscrew serves done with the hardbat.

At the time of the Reisman/Butler money match in Houston, Texas after the U.S.Open (July 1998) the hidden with the forearm loose grip pendulum serve was legal, even for hardbat vs. hardbat.  I, sitting next to Scott Gordon and John Tannehill, quarterfinalist in the Hardbat Open event, witnessed the entire match.

Jim Butler in 1998 was the 99th ranked player in the world.  He was 28 years old.  Marty Reisman was 40 years his senior.

I charted every one of Jim Butler's serves, forehand and backhand, for that match.  Reisman managed to return successfully approximately 67 percent of Butler's hidden loose grip pendulum serves, and 91 percent of Butler's backhand serves.  Butler had no trouble returning most of Marty's fast backhand topspin serves, but some difficulties once a rally ensued.  I do not recall any three ball kills from either player.

I have seen a 8 mm. video of table tennis play at the U.S. Open in 1958, which Reisman won at Butler's 1998 age--28.  Notable male players in that video included Norbert Van De Walle, Bernard Bukiet, John Somael, Erwin Klein and Dick Miles.  In the video I saw which Scott Gordon gave me, portions of which are available on YouTube, Reisman defeated Houshang Bozorgzadeh and Max Marinko, players of international caliber, to win the 1958 U.S. Open.

Jim Butler is a fine hardbat player, currently ranked, if I'm not mistaken, no. 1 in the United States according to www.hardbat.com.  But had Jim Butler competed nationally in 1958 against Reisman, or for that matter 10 years earlier when both were 18, and Reisman had had an opportunity to return Butler's serves, even the 1998 variety, in national or international competition, I think that I can say with some assurance that the outcome of any hypothetical match between the two of them, or between Jim Butler and any world class hard rubber player of the mid-1940s to early 1950s would have been quite different, corkscrew serves or no, hidden or not.

In my day

roundrobin wrote: berndt_mann wrote: Jim Butler is a fine hardbat player, currently ranked, if I'm not mistaken, no. 1 in the United States according to www.hardbat.com.  But had Jim Butler competed nationally in 1958 against Reisman, or for that matter 10 years earlier when both were 18, and Reisman had had an opportunity to return Butler's serves, even the 1998 variety, in national or international competition, I think that I can say with some assurance that the outcome of any hypothetical match between the two of them, or between Jim Butler and any world class hard rubber player of the mid-1940s to early 1950s would have been quite different, corkscrew serves or no, hidden or not. How the heck would you know that?    Those hardbat players were not only technically MUCH inferior compared to today's standards, their physical conditioning were even worse...

Edited by berndt_mann - 04/02/2016 at 12:22am

And down the rabbit hole we disappear again...

Tassie52 wrote: And down the rabbit hole we disappear again... Berndt, could you please point out to me where I have "disparaged" hardbat?  In my previous posts in this thread, the only thing I have sought to disparage is the rose coloured glasses you wear.  As far as I can see (and have experienced myself), hardbat is a demanding and thoroughly enjoyable enterprise.  If I had to name the "greatest table tennis player of all time", it would be a toss up between Barna and Waldner.  The issue is not whether or not the hb players of yesteryear were great players; nor is the issue whether or not they would beat today's players hb vs hb (of course they would: hb was their bread and butter); nor is the issue whether or not hardbat is easier on the eye (beauty being purely in the eye of the beholder).   The only issue I have is the nonsense that modern table tennis is somehow inferior because it's played at an insane pace.  For crying out loud, it is what it is.  We have two choices: 1. come to accept that the modern game is what modern table tennis players want to play, or 2. whinge.  I choose 1.

Tassie52 Silver Member Joined: 10/09/2010 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 882

Post Options    Thanks(0)    Quote  Reply Posted: 02/21/2016 at 7:00pm

berndt_mann wrote: We must go back to the hardbat days. To the fine old rare old hardbat ways... This, of course, is one opinion.  Another is: In days of old, when knights were bold, slow ping pong was much lamented. We had to play the hardbat way 'til speedy sponge'd been invented. A nice bit of verse, that.  But perhaps ever so slightly disparaging.  Slow ping pong much lamented?  Tell that to the Knight With the Woeful Countenance.  Quixote's forehand smash was once clocked by the equipment of his day, maybe not all that accurate, at around 97 miles per hour. Opinions are opinions.  If I had to go with the two greatest male players, I'd say Barna and Ogimura.  For the women, Angelica Rozeanu, Ruth Aarons, Lily Yip (all hardbatters) and Deng Ya Ping (I'm pretty sure she used sponge). There are hundreds of millions of table tennis players world wide.  How many of them would you guess play with speedy sponge? Good night, Tassie52.  It's 2:09 a.m. here in the American southwest and time to go back to bed. You weren't too complimentary to the late Marty Reisman, in this post, one of the better hardbatters of all time.  Reisman was a gambler:  true.  Did he make sure that he won every match?  No. Did you disparage hardbat in this post?  Actually, no.  Did you write the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about that particular hardbat player?  Actually no either. And did I write that you disparaged hardbat in this particular post? No I did not.

Edited by berndt_mann - 04/02/2016 at 5:32am