March 22, 2011

Heavy Backspin Serves

When I give serve lectures at our clinics, I often demonstrate heavy backspin by serving with an extremely open racket - so open that it actually is aiming backwards, and you contact bottom front of the ball - and serve so the ball jumps back into the net. (It's more easily done with a high toss.) Here's a pair of great videos at TableTennisMaster that demo this - first Chinese star Ma Lin (shirtless) demonstrating the serve (1:18), and then a more detailed demo that shows how it is done (2:10). They call them "ghost serves." 

If you can serve heavy backspin serves and keep them very low and short (i.e. so they'd bounce twice if given the chance), they are almost unattackable. (A key word here is low.) Almost everyone pushes them back. At the higher levels, many players will drop them short. To combat this, and to get some easy balls, learn to both serve heavy backspin and "heavy no-spin," i.e. use the same motion as if serving heavy backspin but contact the ball toward the handle (where it's not moving as fast as the tip, where you contact for heavy spin), and so you get a nearly no-spin ball. Watch your opponents pop them up!

Peter Li Interview

Here's a great interview with Peter Li (and a short one with Marcus Jackson) at the Cary Cup Open. Also shown: the ending of game five where Peter Li defeats Paulo Rocha in the quarterfinals. (6:14)

Pictures from the Cary Cup

Here's a nice photo album. Too bad the pictures aren't captioned. The little kid shown numerous times is Derek Nie, who is about 4' tall and is rated about 1900. (He's from my club, MDTTC.)

Article & Photos of 1979 U.S. Men's Champion Attila Malek

I remember when he first came to the U.S. and started beating nearly everyone, and then pulled off the upset over Dan Seemiller in the final of Men's Singles at the USA Nationals. He was one of the first players in the U.S. who could play a two-winged looping game. Here's a nice article on him from the Orange Country Register, and a series of 13 accompanying photos.

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