par-gerell-serve
maurice101 asked 6 years ago
Since Par Gerell is left handed do you see his pro success at his serve is partly due to the fact that his serve is more hidden compared to doing the same type of serve from someone who is right handed?
Dan Academy Coach answered 6 years ago
Hey Maurice,
It may help a bit yes as right handers naturally struggle more so with left handed serves than right handed. However the key thing being is Par Gerell has developed his own unique way of serving which very few players serve like. Wang Hao, Xu Xin and Werner Schlager were the other top players that spring to mind who serve like this. This means this type of serve players are not use to facing it often so its hard for players to adapt to. By learning the serve it gives you an advantage over your opponent if they havent seen this type of serve before.
How are you finding the course?
maurice101The course is very good and I am making progress but i find it hard to do a double bounce topspin serve. Mine usually just go long. The wrist movement is the hardest thing for me to learn too. Any suggestions?
Dipak1974Hi Guys
I to subscribed to the course and used it in a local competition after practising it for couple days. I played against guys in my league and it worked successfully as it was a new serve they hadn’t faced from me in the past.
Just like Maurice I too struggle to make ball bounce twice specially if I’m going for more spin. With the top spin version I’m hoping my opponent will pop ball up if not hit it out and for this I need to impart more spin but attempting to put more spin it’s difficult to make it bounce twice. Guess like Par Gerrell said it will take a month or two.
Cheers
Deep
DanHey Maurice and Deep,
We’re glad you are both finding the course helpful and that you are progressing well with the serves. Getting the topspin serve to bounce twice as you both mentioned you were having difficulty with is probably the most difficult part to master of the whole course in my opinion and does take time to get to grips with. I’ve found myself with continued practice it becomes easier and it’s a lot to do with improving the contact so it’s very fine and soft to keep the ball short however keeping the fast acceleration Par talks about.
Also Maurice you mentioned the wrist movement too, I think one of the key things to help improve this is being relaxed, as Par mentions during the course but also to try to really think about bringing the wrist through quickly and accelerating into the ball as you contact. Again it does take time to really get comfortable with these harder elements to the serves but keep going with it and you’ll find it does make progress.
Hope that makes sense,
Cheers guys,
Dan
I was told by another good coach that this serve is one of the hardest to learn of all the serve types. I will keep at it!!! Having a fast wrist action and being fine and soft is hard!
So is the key for the wrist action is to accelerate into the ball. So if you do this the wrist action naturally just happens if it is relaxed. Is this correct? I think I have been trying to do the wrist action if that makes sense.
TomI agree it’s definitely not an easy serve to learn by any means. It’s takes time but when you can grasp it, the benefits are huge! For the wrist action the acceleration is key for sure to generate spin.
Yes if you can be relaxed with the wrist and accelerate into the ball I think you will get the desired affect. I know exactly what you mean, I had the same problem before, I was trying to “do” the wrist action and it made the serves too mechanical and not natural like when you see Pär doing them. The serves need to flow and all the body parts work together.
Hope that makes sense and keep up the practice!
It also seems to me to get wrist snap you need to decelerate the wrist after the good acceleration for the bat hand to snap forward. Is this correct? This is not so easy to see on the video but I think at 4 minutes on the topspin video he does a shadow swing and you can see this deceleration and the wrist snapping forward. Due to the rotation of the body the hand continues forward for the after motion so it makes the deceleration harder to see???
