How to serve with heavy underspin

Originally uploaded by roivee

For ages I couldn’t serve with any underspin at all. No matter how hard I tried to swing, the ball always came up dead, no spin, making it easy for the opponent to flick, putting me on the defensive the whole game.

I tried many things to create heavy underspin serves but the main thing that influenced my serves the most was this: hold your playing elbow still when serving. This service motion is assuming the forehand pendulum. Your elbow should be tucked in your side. This makes your serving motion to only include the forearm and wrist. The addition of moving the elbow, so it shifts out foreward, will dampen the speed the forearm and wrist will generate. Tucking the elbow in and holding it stationary, using your body as a brake for the elbow will mean the bat on contact will be superiorly quick, generating large amounts of underspin.

Here are the other things I learnt in my quest for that spinny underspin serve which you can add to your game:

• Peeling the ball using only the top sheet
• Throwing the ball up high so the greater speed of the ball on impact will penetrate the rubber and sponge more, creating more friction thus spin. One consequence of this that it will take some practice on keeping the ball short.
• Have the ball make contact at the tip of the bat. This is where the bat speed is fastest upon swinging.
• Try having the bat move foreward as quick and violently as possible. To aid this, your wrist should whip foreward congruently with the forearm. This will result in hitting yourself in the ribs which is a consequence of the spinny serve.
• Have the bat flat, parallel to the table upon contact. The foreward motion of the bat will take the ball over the net not you hitting the ball over with a slight angle. This takes a bit of practice to get used to. When I was trying it, I thought I was hitting it with a flat surface but I wasn’t. There was still a bit of down angle as I was afraid that the ball wouldn’t go over the net. Have confidence that the friction of your rubber will pull the ball over.
• Hit the very underneath of the ball. This will be natural if your bat is flat upon impact.
• If you’re shakehanded, hold the bat not on the handle but on the blade face with thumb and index finger. This will allow for greater wrist rotation apparently. This is mostly out of preference. Schlager serves holding the blade, yet produces spinny serves.

I hope these principles can apply to other serves, resulting in a spinny service game overall. Mix in a couple of dead balls and you’ve got a strong service game to lead you to victory.