OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I am unusually poor at reading serves considering my overall ability. This is due to having a learning disability. I am familiar with the usual advice on how to read serves. I often have difficulty processing what I'm seeing, and may not be sure of what the bat was doing at the point of contact. A lot of the time I do see how the ball was struck but don't process the information fast enough to know the spin in time.

In case I never get good at reading serves from watching the action, maybe a better avenue is to try and read the spin from watching what happens to the ball after it is served. How reliably can the spin of serves be read not from watching the stroke but from watching the ball after the stroke? Most of the time I get it wrong the serve includes sidespin. I can tell if the ball has sidespin and don't need education in which direction the sidespin is. What I'd like to know is how to tell from watching the ball after it is served if it is backspin (may have sidespin also, but I can already tell if it has sidespin), no spin/pure sidespin or topspin (may have sidespin also, but I can tell). My team is in the semi-finals next week, and think whether we win is likely to come down to how well I read serves. If you can help me out it could make the difference for the team!

If you can see how the ball was struck but don't process the information fast enough to know the spin in time, I'm not sure how reading the spin after the ball has been struck will help because you'll actually have less time to process the information than when you watch the bat making contact with it.

However, I usually find if a ball has backspin on it will be a flatter ball flight and will tend to skid more on contact with the table. If it's top spin, there will be more of an arch in the flight of the ball and it will tend to kick up off the table. The good thing with serves is that the ball has to bounce twice, so you get two goes at trying to check the ball flight and bounce action out.

For me though, I suffer from a similar problem, my mind tends to wander during games, back to work or some other situation and I don't concentrate mentally properly on what my opponent is doing or the ball flight. That's probably one of the reasons I've turned in to a counter hitter - I get lazy and just try and hit through what ever spin is there and chose equipment which can help me do that but that's more a recognition of my limitations than a peace of advice.

you can do it on your own: serve with side-backspin, watch how it bounces. serve with side-topspin, watch how it bounces. then apply it when you receive.

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Take a ball, paint half of it with a black pen so that you get a pattern on the ball that makes it more easy to read how it is rotating. Just be careful, the ball may leave some ink on your bat (use a spare rubber or a better pen). Then start practicing on returning serves and trying to read spin from how the ball bounces and moves. But how the ball moves may be altered by the ink on the ball.

Good luck!

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A reasonable rule of thumb for deciding underspin vs topspin being served is to look at what downward force the opponent puts the ball into the table at his end with and the trajectory it takes from there. Its pretty hard to hit the ball down into the table hard and produce topspin. Its easier to disguise between underspin and topspin by not putting much downward force on the ball into the table and choosing where on the ball to hit to choose what spin to apply, but this generally comes into the realm of very good servers.

As MNNB said you leave yourself little time to read spin by the time it is bouncing on your side. However, if you can think of the serve in stages you can get a reasonable idea to start with and build on it. So, Stage 1, take some hints from the servers action (let's say you guess he applied underspin). Stage 2, there is some confirmation of this as the ball has bounced somewhat sharply upward. Stage 3, ball is coming over the net and you can see the label on the ball going over the top of the ball as it spins, meaning it will try to spin backwards when it lands, but forward momentum will keep it coming, but contacting your rubber will send it diving. By standing half a step back from the table you can observe these things. In general, the underspin will need stronger forward motion with more open blade to combat. Topspin will need a more closed angle with a stopping type motion on your bat, or you can use the friction on an inverted rubber for either situation and overcome the spin with force as Debater described.

Over time I think you develop a sense of what is on the ball, but some servers are very good at disguising it, or even just putting so much spin on it that it can be hard to combat even though you know whats on it.

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Other options is be positive , move to the ball, be ready, aim for the middle of thier side

also being positive with your own serving ie give them trouble

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My problem: I recently played against a player I'd never seen before - older guy playing single sided C-pen. He served primarily side spin, which I had absolutely no problem whatsoever reading. But... they were nigh on impossible to return! They had so much side spin that I had to aim for the opposite corner to where I wanted the ball to land, and even then half the time they still went wide. As in: if he served from his forehand swinging into my forehand, I had to aim diagonally across the table back to his FH in order to land the return down the line on his backhand!

I've never seen or played against anything like it. No problems reading the spin, just too much spin to control.

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So sad that it should come to this" Sung by the dolphins in The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

Maybe this video helps. It helped me a lot!

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I'm insulted!!! I'm not really. It is kind of funny though to be called a "noob" when I'm 58 and started playing in the 1960s.

I hear what you're saying about becoming "scared", and you're quite right. We were playing doubles and my partner was also having trouble, but nowhere near as much as I was. Your advice and the video from van_doorn gratefully received and I'll work on it. Now the problem is trying to find someone who can deliver side spin serves that are even remotely as spinny as the first guy.

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"So long, and thanks for all the fish
So sad that it should come to this" Sung by the dolphins in The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

With all due respect, get a Robot. Works for me

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when returning serves the best rule i find is,if it bounces only once on my side of table attack it.

if you try and control say heavy sidespin or topspin with passive return push,likely outcome ball will fly everywhere.

so be aggresive on return of serve and you can win points outright and dictate point.

we have a English guy who plays infrequent competition here in West Australia,he is the best player but only cause his serves are close to genius level.

he has this dead/heavy underspin serve that is scary.

I can read most serve but have a hard time returning serves with heavy spin. My first option is to push, 2nd is to wait for its spin to settle down and chop. 3rd option is to attack the serve with a loop.

Pushing works most of the time. What a crazy world of ping pong! Most of the time, better serves win points.

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Enjoy the game. It is a never ending learning experience once you play and keep the ball on that 45 sq ft of space or should I say half of that space.

Yes. Serving and receiving of serves have great impact on the result. If you can't even read your opponent's serve, then you are gone and vice versa, if your opponent can totally read your serve, you are also gone

Someone mentioned, adding spin when receiving balls that you are uncertain, yes, it a good way, try adding full power side spin of the opposite direction of the income ball, I don't think anyone has problem reading side spin here unless really just started table tennis. However, to really good strong player, that's not a good idea because side spin would not have downspin and you will just wait for your opponent to loop really hard, but at least you can receive it to your opponent's court. If his skills are unstable and only good at servings, let's keep our fingers crossed, lol.

So only concern is, whether the ball has downspin on it.

1) Never judge a ball on whether it has downspin with it's speed. A good server will only rub the ball when the ball is near table height and once it hitted on his court, the ball will start jerking it's way towards our court, so a heavy downspin ball can also be decently fast.

2) Never judge a ball to have downspin when your opponent chopped hard down on the ball. If you are a shakehand player, imagine you hold your blade and the forehand rubber facing you, segregate the blade into four sections by drawing a cross on your blade. Chopping a ball with these four different section will generate different spin levels. For different spins, it depends which portion of the ball is chopped. Imagine the ball as a clock, so the top of the ball is 12 o'clock and the bottom is 6 o'clock. If a ball is chopped on the position between 4 - 6 o'clock, it has downspin, but if you chopped a ball at the 3 o'clock position, there won't be downspin generated. If you push a ball that is chopped on 3 o'clock position, it will pop up real high. For those who have not tried, please give it a try.

3) Reading whether it's with or without downspin in insufficient, you have to read the spin level. If you handle a 60rps downspin as a 40rps downspin and receive it, it will go under the net and if you turn it around, a high pop up will occurred.

IMHO, these are for sharing with my experience.

A non spin ball will travel at constant speed when travelling.
A downspin ball will look faster when the ball is rubbed on your opponent's bat and will slow down once it hit on his court. And because a downspin is against it's forward movement, it will cause some friction with the table and hence will looked more sticky on the table and some floating.
A topspin ball will travel faster once it hit on your opponent's court.

To judge whether it's a long or short serve.
A good short serve will land on your opponent's court on the 3/3 of the table near the endline.
A good long serve will land on your opponent's court on the 1/3 of the table near the endline.
If someone try to serve a short ball and the first landing point is on the 1/3 or 2/3 of the table near the endline, loop it, it will bounce towards you, giving you an easy attack.

Next time when you faced such problem again, never adjust the position you are trying to receive to, adjust your blade angle with your wrist. Actually if the ball is a short ball, it can never be difficult to handle for side spin, when it's long, such strong side spin ball will not have strong downspin, loop it to your opponent's face lol.

CYHO, your posts are interesting and apart from having a little bit of difficulty deciphering your English, seem to have quite some knowledge and merit. However, I am very interested to hear how you can judge a difference of 20rps on a ball coming at you. I agree that the difference between heavy and light underspin will cause a big difference in how the ball should be treated, but to read such a difference accurately like this generally escapes me. How do you determine this difference?

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I'm always in the dark, but the Dark sheds lights upon everything!! Beauty is only pimple deep! Beauty is in the eye of the pipholder!
S/U 1: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Andro Rasant 2.1 . BH Red Tibhar Grass Dtecs
S/U 2: Blade: Bty Gergely . FH Black Hexer+ 2.1 . BH Red GD Talon
S/U 3: Blade: Bty Gergely . No rubbers...thinking of adding Red Dtecs and Black Rasant
Aussie Table Tennis Shop / Aussie Table Tennis Facebook Page / Equipment Review Index / Read my Reb Report Blog: click here.