From the bh corner only, we can go short, semi long (double bounce with the 2nd close to the end line) or long. We can do that in the direction of their fh, bh or elbow. We can apply topspin, underspin or no spin.

That’s 27 serves already. All those serves can be done with 2 different rubbers but I’m stretching it if I go to 54 on that one. Then there is tomahawk, pendulum, reverse pendulum...

Point is from The bh corner, there are enough possibilities to serve the element of surprise and building a whole other framework from the fh corner seems like a huge undertaking and the time to do that could better serve the existing position.

Of course there is room for certain players to make it valid if they want to bh topspin the 3rd ball but that’s a niche playing style protecting a fh that’s less trusted than the bh. 

Something I never worked on too much are Ding Ning, Kenta and Dima’s tomahawk from the middle they make  more sense to be ready quicker and to have one base from which all bh and fh serves can happen.

The argument is clearly parochial.  Lefties (and righties like Ovtcharov or Pitchford or Primorac) serve from there all the time and get return they like.  One could argue that in fact, if you are serving mostly into the short forehand, you are protecting the backhand and exposing the wide forehand.  So the real issue is what you are trying to do with your serve, which is clearly not about imagining what is good and bad about the serve, but about doing whatever you think makes sense for your game.  I suspect that a good high level player could make a living out of implementing this serve strategy consistently (even more than Dima does) as long as he is willing to master playing behind it from early in his career like Dima did.

FdT

You are doing a good job preaching to the choir my man, but simplifying does not always mean tunnel vision; a narrower scope from which all possibilities are enough to create surprise make sense. Useless complexity is as bad a sin as an over simplification. Of course I meant to simplify but I surely kept enough serves to create the element of surprise, I am surprised that flew over your head.

Now that I think about it, the serve from the backhand corner was always the most effective against FH oriented players since they have to pivot to use their favoured FH receive and then it opens up their deep FH corner for attack. And with a sidetopspin serve, it is close to impossible to push it well with the BH so if you invite a weak BH flick it starts the BH diagonal rally which could be to your advantage if you have a better BH. 

I think, my plan now is to serve from the FH corner against ppl with very good BH receive, and from the BH corner against ppl with very good FH receive. 

What's your favourite tactics when you're serving from the FH?

I watch a lot of Seth Pech and he does a backhand serve from the forehand all of the time. He does not do it against lefties, I asked him about it.

He mostly serves short to the forehand. Often he will not even move from his position, expecting a return to the forehand. Depends on what the player is doing he told me. This advice stopped me from always running back to the backhand side in fear of being exposed. Truth is one can just pretty much stay put and wait for the ball much of the time.

Here is a change up, going down the line.

https://youtu.be/FKsA1P6_zTo?t=110" rel="nofollow - https://youtu.be/FKsA1P6_zTo?t=110

It's remarkably effective in club play. I do it all the time with solid success and my long serve is not good - the surprise itself is the key. Just need to sell the idea that it can and likely will go short to the forehand.

In summary, watch his youtube matches and you will learn so much about this serve. If you have a good/great backhand serve it's worth learning. It's like adding a whole new serve to your game with little effort.

Good if you are a rightie serving to a rightie but  I see lot of players even lots of professionals  make the mistake of serving from forehand corner against all opponents lefties & righties) .

  If you are a righty playing against a lefty (& vice-versa) , you want to serve from your backhand corner

Most people are not like Ovtcharov (and even he doesn't actually serve from the corner).

  This whole discussion reminded me of this video...

https://youtu.be/ArCIvp4DDwE" rel="nofollow - https://youtu.be/ArCIvp4DDwE

Holly ...

Who'd expect that surprise serve was coming short 'n opposite to receiver's movement. Did anyone notice watching at normal speed, Vik used black FH rubber. I didn't.

Amazing !  thank you very much NextLevel

I serve from Fh and I go left very fast to make a killer forehand. Usually the opponent receive the serve in the middle of the table

Like this at 1.14

I think this says it all. As Next Level pointed out, "and righties like Ovtcharov or Pitchford or Primorac", These are all players who are very comfortable using their backhands.

Oh to be as young, flexible and fast as you are

All top players are comfortable because they have good backhands.  Xu Xin does it for example and no one would say he is very comfortable in the same sense as Dima.

One of the quickest ways to get a few free points from a "top" player is to do a forehand pendulum serve from the forehand side - they see it so rarely that they have great difficulty the first few times. (After that it loses its effectiveness, so it's sometimes a "trick" serve to be used occasionally.) It's sometimes more effective if the server has a strong backhand, but he can also follow up the serve by stepping to his left. It's rarely done at the world-class level, but below that it can give even strong players fits. I remember watching the 1850 level JJ Hardy, former Orioles shortstop that I coached, give fits to a 2450 player at my club who had never seen forehand pendulum serves from the forehand side, which is what JJ kept doing! 

Kanak Jha is a classic example. He has very good receive, especially with his backhand. Many players make the mistake of serving from their backhand side short to his forehand, which Kanak not only is used to, but gives him the option of either forehand flipping or stepping over and backhand receiving - and this variation can mess up servers. It's better to serve from the forehand side where you have an angle into his short forehand (or a surprise serve deep to the backhand), and so can force him to receive forehand. It's not that his forehand receive isn't good, it's just that relative to his very high level of play and his backhand receive, his forehand receive is a little weaker. 

-Larry Hodges (currently in Berlin)

This of course assumes that the server has practised this enough to have a decent serve and reliable third ball when serving from there .  There's definitely value in being a bit different.

This can be true. But sometimes, the receiver can struggle enough that you don't need a great serve and third ball relative to what you usually practice.

Yes, assuming a righty receiver (which I assume you meant also) This statement is true ONLY if the receiver in general has trouble with any deep side-spins but otherwise , in terms of spin orientation , this statement is MOSTLY incorrect.

Right server & righty receiver assumed for this discussion

Because since the tomahawk side spin serve spins the ball away from the server (towards his right)  but towards inside of receiver, the problem is that the receiver will naturally angle his racket towards the left of the server, because that is where most of the table is located. Thus this racket angling negates (or at least greatly minimizes)  the side side spin direction of tomahawk serve. 

On the other hand a reverse tomahawk would give more trouble because unless the receiver angles the racket towards server's forehand side to negate (minimize)  the side spin.  But if the receiver angles his / her racket towards the most of the table to his right , the side-spin will pull the ball even farther towards sever's left and possibly out of the table,  since most of table is located on the right of the receiver (which is towards the left of the server).

If Larry has trouble understanding this, let me explain a little more.  Let us assume the server serves a tomahawk serve. Let us assume the receiver (does not compensate for any side spin or backspin or topspin) but just blocks the ball with racket angle vertical and also parallel to the sideline (as if the server served with no receiver but the receiver side of table backed against a wall) .

Tell me where the ball will go :- Towards the right of the server or towards his left ?  

Have a nice day

Against a "top" player (per last Larry's comment) the serve is going to have to be reasonably good, and the next ball too.  Otherwise you will fare poorly.  It is worth having it in your tool bag but if it is not a pattern you ever practice it's very risky.

The forehand naturally compensates for reverse tomahawk or pendulum sidespin in practice..  This is why your argument is incomplete. 

Everything is level appropriate.  I consider all strategic musing to assume similar levels of players but with the potential for relative strengths and weaknesses.  What I mean is that even a good player can have a relative weakness that falls below their level sufficiently for you to play against it even if it isn't something you practice playing against on a regular basis.  But it is level relative advice - I would not beat Kanak no matter even if he returned serves badly because the rest of my game has no chance.  But let us take for example a player like Quadri who serves with his backhand from the middle of the table and not so much deom the corner.  Let's say he served from the forehand side with his backhand and got poor returns (level appropriate) from Kanak.  Should Quadri not deploy those serves because he doesn't practice them?

Another example is someone like Harimoto whose forehand transition is slow but is still better than most mortals.  Even if you prefer to rally with the backhand and practice doing this' you would still be advised to play against Harimoto's forehand. Not because it is your best play or what you practice but because it is likely where to find success vs Harimoto.

Actually, I wrote very specifically, "...into a lefty's extreme backhand..."

Many players don't naturally aim their receive "where most of the table is located," but instead naturally go crosscourt, and have to adjust for going down the line. If a righty server serves from the forehand corner and gives a tomahawk serve short to a righty's short forehand, most of the table is located to the server's left, but many receivers have trouble taking this ball down the line as it's more natural going crosscourt, meaning the server often gets a forehand follow. The same is true when serving to a lefty, though it's not as extreme as a higher percentage of players have less difficulty aiming their backhands down the line than on the short forehand side. As I said, it comes down to using what works, and that means having the tactical tools to find those things that work. 

Not everyone is the same. As I wrote in my tactics book, most players have more trouble with serves that break away from them, but some have more trouble with the opposite. This means when you play players who are the opposite, you are handicapping yourself if you haven't developed the basic tactical tools to play into their weaknesses. I used Kanak Jha as an example as I've coached against him a number of times when he was a kid and had players who had not developed the basic serves that would give Kanak trouble. 

-Larry Hodges

I was not questioning your "lefty's extreme backhand"

And I clarified righty to righty as well & I was only referring to your incorrect spin orientation

larrytt wrote: Many players don't naturally aim their receive "where most of the table is located," but instead naturally go crosscourt,

In the first case, you specifically wrote, incorrectly, "Yes, assuming a righty receiver (which I assume you meant also)." This is incorrect since (as I already pointed out), you "assume" something that is not true. The rest of your argument was about something I did not write, since I was writing about serving to a lefty, including your statement, "this statement is MOSTLY incorrect." 

In the second case, you contradicted your own statement, where you wrote, "the receiver will naturally angle his racket towards the left of the server, because that is where most of the table is located." Here you are defining most of the table to be that big area to the server's left (since he's serving from the forehand side), which would be down the line. Now you are redefining it to be going crosscourt. Sorry, you can't have both contradictory definitions. 

You joined this forum less than two hours ago and your only five posts EVER are in response to my tactical posts where you misread what I wrote and contradict your own statements. It's somewhat obvious who you are (so much for the 30 days suspension) and am not interested in wasting time with you again. 

-Larry Hodges

Looks like I touched a nerve & there is no reason to get mad at me.

I was only referring to your incorrect (or lack of understanding) of  spin orientations in case 1

In case 2 , I am not NOT contradicting myself. I am just saying your twisting my words. 

All I said was table will be to your right if you are a righty playing a normal forehand. Playing a cross-court is after the fact. You play cross-court one and only because most of the table is to your right.

Simple as that . Period   

And I pointed out that you are incorrect in your statements above. We could go in circles, but we've already had this trolling game before, and now you are back under a different name. 

-Larry Hodges

Sir,

It perfectly ok if you disagree with me but if it was you I would not disrespect someone you do not know by calling them names and accusing them just because they found some serious logical flaws in your analysis. If you disagree it is Ok but there is no need to call me names.  

Keith Lin, here is the complete text of the posting you responded to: "And I pointed out that you are incorrect in your statements above. We could go in circles, but we've already had this trolling game before, and now you are back under a different name." 

Now, where did I call you names? Answer: You just made that up. Conclusion: You are trolling. (That's not name-calling, that's referring to an action.) 

-Larry Hodges

Accusing someone of trolling is no less than calling them a troll.

Obviously you are hell bent on going in circles and using semantics to play the same game

I will take the high road & ignore you.

Good Bye  

Usually, yes. It's best to practice these things so they are ready when you need them. But sometimes you have to improvise, especially for players below world-class level. The first time I ever did forehand pendulum serves from the forehand side was at the North American Teams, in response to a specific style - and I didn't get a chance to practice it first. Below is an excerpt from my tactics book on this, from the chapter "Tactical Examples." If I hadn't invented this tactic on the spot, I would likely have lost both matches. Just about anybody else in the tournament who played these two players could have done this, but they weren't flexible with their tactical thinking and so played conventional tactics against unconventional players, and so they all lost. 

-Larry Hodges

Actually, Keith Lin/Hunkeelin, they are very different things. If I do something stupid tactically, that doesn't mean I'm stupid; one refers to the action, the other to the person. To use a famous example, Albert Einstein famously did a dumb math mistake early on in his relativity work, which set his work back for a time. Calling his mistake dumb was not calling Einstein dumb, which he definitely was not. In our discussions, I didn't use semantics; I simply responded to what you wrote, where I pointed out the "problems" that I saw in your responses to me. However, I am glad you are taking the high road and will ignore me, and I will do the same from here on. 

-Larry Hodges

I started trying out serving from my FH side (corner is too extreme, slightly beyond the middle line works the best). Most people I played with had huge difficulty receiving serves from that corner as they're just not used to it, it completely changes the game for them. I love it because I no longer need to leap to my FH for the third ball, I'm already there in a position to attack from both wings but particularly on the BH.  

There's a receive to the BH short which is unattackable pretty much but I can step in and do a deep fast push to throw the problem to my opponent. Any other short receive will be met by a dangerous chiquita, with the sideswipe and short push as variation. Long receives will be met by strong BH and FH opening loops (it still feels like I'm attacking in a weird position which I'll have to get used to, there's a lot of moving to the BH corner to attack and attacking with the BH from the middle line). But those opening loops from these weird positions also create weird lines of play which most opponents feel uneasy...

The serve to the FH short corner of the opponent really limits his or her options due to the lack of stable attacking options which makes the follow up quite devastating if trained well. There's also long serves down the line to prevent people from being too comfortable, which has its own follow up patterns. 

Having a primary serve pattern that people are not used to could be a significant advantage in competitions I think...

Just play with your left hand...

Lol if only it was that easy....

I wasn't coaches as a kid.  No video obviously. I made all my serves up. I have odd ones that I can get an odd point off anybody, just because of unorthodoxy. It typically only works once though.

My point is, you are correct - a little variation from the norm can be really effective. Like left handers often enjoy.

Yeah exactly 

I noticed Liu Shiwen and Miu Hirano used FH serves from the FH side too to great effect, see below...