Help! I Can't Return My Opponent's Serve! What Should I Do?

G'day Greg:

My compliments on your fantastic webwork. I run a table tennis club at my high school and I'm feeling the heat from my Chinese students.

How the heck do you return a reverse pendulum serve from a penholder that jumps off my feint-soft pimples on the backhand? The serve motion looking at the RH server is from left to right and the ball really spins off my RH backhand to my left side.

God knows I've tried compensating by holding the bat at different angles (I'm a physics teacher BTW). The serve is not a simple side/back spin, which I could slice or chop back. If I position my bat face perpendicular to the table, and parallel to the net, the ball hits the bat, spins on the rubber, and flies off to the left.

The only thing that I did not try was a a sweeping motion to my right to cancel out his spin.

Thank you for your time and patience,
Alan

PS Thanks to you, I'm a proud owner of a Matsushita Pro paddle!

Hi Alan,

Returning serve is one of the toughest parts of table tennis, without a doubt. It's not always possible to just say 'do this to fix your problem', because the server will often change the serve a little the next time he does it, in order to make it tougher to return well.

Here are some general tips that I hope will help:

1. Reading the type of spin. The ball is jumping to your left on his reverse pendulum serve, which is expected. Whichever way his bat is going at contact, is exactly the same way the ball will tend to go when it hits your bat. If his bat is going to your left and up a bit, the ball will also fly to your left and up a bit when it hits your bat. The main difficulty here is guessing how much it will move to the left, and how much upwards. This will depend on how much your opponent brushes the ball as opposed to hitting it.

2. How do you know how much spin? Listening to the sound can help - the more spin, generally the softer the sound, since the ball is being skimmed, not solidly hit. Another way to tell is if there is a difference between the speed of the bat and the speed of the ball. If the bat is moving much faster than the ball comes off the bat, the bat speed has been turned into extra spin instead of ball speed. Also, sometimes the amount and direction of the kick the ball takes when it hits the table can also help give you a clue about how much spin is on the ball. Topspin will kick forward, backspin will hold up, and sidespin will kick in the opposite direction to the direction it will come off your bat!

3. Adjusting for the spin. It's toughest to just hold the bat still and try to angle the bat to compensate for the spin. Even with your pimples, you have to get that bat angle correct in order to send the ball where you want. It's even harder with normal rubber. I find it's best to angle the bat to help return the ball, but use some brushing motion of your own to help you control the ball. You can brush with the spin, or against the spin. Brushing with the spin usually is easiest to control, but the problem is that most players naturally like to move their bats from left to right when receiving with the backhand, and right to left when receiving with the forehand (for a right hander). Sometimes this works OK (such as when your opponent gives you a normal pendulum serve to your backhand, or a backhand serve to your forehand), but when your opponent gives you a reverse pendulum serve to your backhand long pips, your natural motion of left to right actually makes things harder to control.

Next time you face this serve, instead of moving your bat from your left to your right, try this - point the tip of your racket head right at the ball (so the bat is almost perpendicular to the net), and push the bat forward, trying to increase the existing spin on the ball a little. Your bat should basically be moving tip-first towards the ball, moving from a little to the right of the ball before contact, to a little to the left of the ball after contact. The ball should fly forward instead of to your left. If the ball flies up, hit the top of the ball a little more, and if it goes down, hit the bottom of the ball a bit more. This technique works well with smooth rubber as well - I use it with both sides of my racket.

Anyway, I hope this helps. I also hope you are enjoying the Matsushita blade - I know I am getting very attached to mine!

Regards,
Greg