likely-serve-return
Slicepong asked 6 years ago
Hi Dan and Tom. I enjoyed your “Likely Return” video. Would you say that most returns are crosscourt and wide serves are nealy always crosscourt? As a lefty if I serve a decent sidespin platinum wide serve shouldn’t I stay in my backhand corner anticipating the cross so I can jump on the return with a forehand topspin? Could you talk a little about what serves you like to use to set up a forehand? Thanks.
Dan Academy Coach answered 6 years ago
HI Slicepong,
Glad you liked the video. Yes I would say quite often serves will come crosscourt when you do a pendulum serve. Some players will of course play line shots. To setup your forehand as a lefty, you want to vary your short serve into the middle area of the table with short sidespin/topspin serves and sidespin/backspin serves. With good deception your opponent will likely return weak and you can capitalize with your forehand. Long fast serves are also a great way to setup the weak return for you to pivot and forehand attack.
Overall improving the deception of your serves and variation will make it harder for your opponent to return the serve. This is where you can make use of your forehand and take advantage on the weak return.
Its important to note that you are a left handed player. A lot of right handed players will try to return wide to your forehand which is a traditional tactic for right handed players when they play left handers so you will need to watch out for that from time to time.
Hope this helps, we will be making more videos on this area of the game soon.
SlicepongThanks, Dan. Great advice.I’ll work on that. Yes, I meant pendulum, of course. Maybe sometime it’ll be good enough to go Platinum!
