Time To Learn a New Serve?

you might wanna practise serving short to the middle and to forehand instead when doing reversed pendulum serve, since its much much easier to return it with backhand than forehand.

You need to make the ball hit the table closer to the net if you want to get it sort. It actually takes at least one hour every day a week for five weeks to get a real good serve.

Thanks guys - don't worry I will take your advice as I get better - at the moment I'm still working on getting a consistent contact of the ball. Then I'll start working on the placement too. Still a long way to go!

Greg

all the comments are good...

Greg,

Great video.  I enjoyed reading the articles you put on about.com site.  I hope you master that serve soon and do well in the Australian Open.  Good luck.

phamster wrote: all the comments are good...   i love the about TT videos..   that room you are in... is it the tt studio?  or is it just a pratice place?  or is your private dwelling and you made it into a TT place?  anyways it totally awesome.. sort looks like a racket ball room converted to a tt room..   as to the serve.. once you get it.. it can be very nice to use.. because you will keep the good playerss on their toes.. you know on the return, the split step just before the server contacts the ball, you have that bounce, then you come close to the table.. and watch the ball to see how deep it is.. now the person "server' can sling it both ways right to left, or left to right.. that will make me think about how to return the ball better..   summary.. get that serve down... i know you can put even more underspin on it.. and some times can put heavy top on it.. all from the same deliver..   keep it up.. because it will give you and advantage, purely form an arselnal standpoint...   phamster

The room is the main court at my state table tennis centre, which used to be an old warehouse. I usually shoot the videos after I've been down doing some training during the day, so it's nice and quiet. You can see the rest of the centre at  http://www.gregsttpages.com/WATTA/WATTA.html , in the second photo the edge of centre court is just visible on the right.

Don't worry, I'll keep working on the serve until I can perform it correctly - it just might take a while is all!

jeeezz no respect for greg, I can garuntee you mr.letts would pretty much rape 90% of the people on this forum, he is a top level senior player from australia

Greg, you have any videos of you playing tournament matches?

There are extremely few top class players who are fooled by a no spin service. Of course you can vary the spin from a lot of spin to not so much, but no spin serivce is suicide against a really good player.

Looking forward to see some videos of the serve once you are satisfied with it. Won't even try to give you any advices but it must feel good to read that the serve only works as a deceptive serve against lower level players as people above USATT 1500 will kill it=)

Greg, have you by any chance played against Simon Gerada? If so, any vids of that?

Good luck on the serve and the forthcoming championship!

Speedplay wrote: Looking forward to see some videos of the serve once you are satisfied with it. Won't even try to give you any advices but it must feel good to read that the serve only works as a deceptive serve against lower level players as people above USATT 1500 will kill it=) Greg, have you by any chance played against Simon Gerada? If so, any vids of that? Good luck on the serve and the forthcoming championship!

You are in luck - I've added the video of my match against Simon Gerada from last year's 2006 Aussie Open (see the link below). He was coasting for a lot of the time, he's definitely a level or two above me, but I wasn't totally disgraced I think. He's a good bloke too!

http://www.gregsttpages.com/videos/freevideos.html

Cheers,
Greg

Hi *JC* - not a bad effort - can you do it the other way as well?  Plus it looked a bit high and I would just kill it to to corners. 

Seriously though, I think it's nice that people take the trouble to comment - at least they were trying to be helpful, not nasty (but yes, I did chuckle once or twice ) It's also funny that although I'm pretty good at serving in general, I reallly do feel like a complete beginner trying this serve - it's very unfamiliar and difficult to repeat the same motion twice. Takes me back twenty years to when I was first trying to learn to loop the ball.

Anyway, I've got to go and finish my serving practice for the day - got interrupted by one of my students and I've got another 220 serves to do!

Greg

rustyfo wrote: you might wanna practise serving short to the middle and to forehand instead when doing reversed pendulum serve, since its much much easier to return it with backhand than forehand.

I also think so . I am also learning the reverse pendulum serve and found that whenever I give it on backhand it is picked easily . Also If you give it on fh it comes back to your side on the middle or on fh which I always love to get .

rustyfo wrote: There are extremely few top class players who are fooled by a no spin service. Of course you can vary the spin from a lot of spin to not so much, but no spin serivce is suicide against a really good player.

Speedplay wrote: Thanks for the link Greg, I'm about to watch it now! [Edit] Page not found... Just my luck! Some typo or should I try it later? Also forgott, @BH-MAN, looking forward to the visit, hoping that my semi advanced serves will keep me in the game will I destroy every serve thrown at me with my SB!

Hi Speedplay - the link works OK for me - you might want to try again.

BTW, I've posted an update to the article, detailing my progress over the week and giving a new video to show how things are going.

You can find the update at http://tabletennis.about.com/od/howtoserve/a/learn_a_serve.htm, under the introduction.

Greg