From Greg Letts,
Your Guide to Table Tennis / Ping-Pong.
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To Infinity and Beyond

If you practice your serves often enough, it is surprising how slight variations can lead you to learning entirely new serves. I'm sure everyone would have seen a player serving different to almost everyone else and that their opponents seem to have a lot of trouble making good returns.

A good example today is the 2006 World Junior Boys Champion Kenta Matsudaira from Japan who is an excellent exponent of the backhand tomahawk serve. It is surprising just how many times he catches out opponents when he uses this serve, simply because the opponents do not play against such a serve elsewhere.

Thinking creatively will also allow you to constantly tweak and refine your existing serves. Most players will play the same players many times over the years, so if you can have upgraded or new serves each time you play your opponents, you will make their task much more difficult. It is also advisable to have different varieties of the same service. For example, you can do all of your serves in high toss or low toss, you can create the same spin variations in backhand, forehand, or forehand reverse, you can serve short, mid length, or long etc.

Don't Let it be Your Fault

Virtually all players serve with a technically incorrect motion from time to time, however for 99.9% of players I believe that it is not a deliberate tactic. However, when you are practicing your service, you should always endeavor to adhere to the laws and regulations of the game. In club competitions you can usually get away with the occasional fault service, however when you get to more important competitions that have professional umpires they will be far more capable of calling fault services.

Points are hard enough to win as it is, you don't need to be giving your opponent points for free by serving illegally!!! If you are in any doubt, simply ask a qualified official, or otherwise use discretion and overcompensate on the correct side of the laws to avoid any problems.

Conclusion

Overall, hopefully this will help you to improve your serves and stimulate your thoughts on how you can mesmerize your opponents with top quality serves. Just think how tough it can be playing against someone who has unbelievable serves, hopefully with correct training you can be the one who is giving your opponents grief!!!

Train hard,
Scott Houston.

Other articles by Scott Houston:
Playing in the Chinese Table Tennis Leagues
The ITTF Pro Tour is Booming
Reach for the Stars! Setting Goals for Table Tennis/Ping-Pong
Why Play Table Tennis Overseas?