Try it with the robot (or with a partner who can serve consistently) and find out if it's possible. I don't think it's possible with exactly the same stroke, but you could do it by modifying the blade angle. There's this penholder (the one who uses the bare wood on the back of the blade) who has some pretty spinny side-top/side-back pendulum serves, which he can do in either direction. I've gotten quite good at pushing them back, returning the sidespin, but I don't even know how I do it.. it's become instinctive. I can keep the returns fairly low and short, too, and will occasionally attack them. These serves cause the others in our group quite a bit of trouble. Two others in the group now play with long pips (Robert's fault..
), so long pips bothers everyone a lot less than it ordinarily would for players of this level (fairly low). Those serves are deadly, though, when returned with long pips - not to the opponent but to the player himself or especially his doubles partner.. He hasn't learned to serve less-spinny balls into long pips yet (and no one seems to want to tell him). He himself returns MY serves with the bare wood, so I serve to him accordingly. Long, fast dead serves seem to cause a lot of trouble to those of us who play with long pips. Iskandar