SERVICE AND SERVICE RETURN

                 Service and Service Return

The serve starts the point in table tennis, but not in a comparable sense to tennis.  In table tennis, your looking to perform a serve, that is difficult to handle, so you can take advantage or take control of the point. In table tennis, you do not need a ace serve, to be successful.  Your good serve may lead to a three ball attack.  The three ball attack , is your serve being the first ball, and the second ball is the return of your serve and the third, is your attacking stroke.  Your serve can be a weapon, and cause your opponent to either miss, or make a error of judgement.  Some players have their own pet serves, and are usually served from the same location.  In order to be more successful in your serving, you need to vary your serves in spin, speed and location.  All the aspects of this game is important, but in the advanced game, service and service return is very important.  The more advanced players will have serves, that are effective for their attack strategy or are used to defuse a attack from there opponent.

There are many serves, such as side spin serves, which are the most popular, backspin, topspin, side top, backspin with side spin, as there are several combinations, and ways of its application.  Backhand serves , forehand serves, are from from different parts of the table, and can be in delivered in different motions.

There is another aspect to the service. The movement after the serve is just as important, the movement to recover back to the ready position. This is done, so you can take advantage of a bad service return, or error, by being in position to attack, and out position your opponent. Your serve can test the skill of your opponent, serving all over the table, and finding a weakness in their returns. 

                           Service Return

In my opinion this is the most difficult skill to perform, and learn as a table tennis player. It is difficult because, you need acquire years of experience and knowledge to be able to read and deal with spin.  In coaching a player, you need to spend a lot of time teaching the techniques of service return and what to look for in your opponents application of their serves.  You can push serves, flip serves, attack serves, and even shovel them over, which is a technique I use often.  Positioning yourself for a return is important. When you start to learn where your opponent is serving,  it could be based on your receiving location, or your weakness on a certain part of the table.  You might have a problem with short serves to your forehand, or long serves to your backhand.  And also if you do have trouble in the return game, it could be your standing to close or too far away from the table. 

Service return is a valuable part of the table tennis game, its tough for most because of the lack of knowledge, which could apply to many things in life.