What Makes a Quality "Chinese-Style" Serve?
This is a technique-focused column in a question-and-answer format. The mystery figures answering are former national team members, now veteran coaches, who would rather keep a quiet, peaceful life and a good night’s sleep than become famous. So the “Reaching the Summit” column was born.
(Heima-tuned PLC.)
Seiko Iseki, Worlds and Olympic men’s doubles champion (partnered with Chen Longcan), and Lin Yun-Ju’s former private coach, shared with Tabletennis Kingdom the three conditions of a quality Chinese-style serve.
Chinese players have always used strongly spinny tacky rubber, plus serving masters like Liu Guoliang and Ma Lin, so many have a deep impression of Chinese players’ serves as strongly spinny and varied. However, what Chinese players value most is not being strongly received, or it is hard to regain control of the match.
(Heima’s aside: especially with the prevalence of the flick, how to effectively restrain the opponent’s flick is crucial. And these two years, the effective use of the backhand serve also shows the importance of not being strongly received. For examples, see the 2024 Macau World Cup, Ma Long reversing Lin Gaoyuan; and this month’s China Smash, Wang Manyu breaking through Sun Yingsha.)
Iseki mentioned that the first condition of Chinese players’ quality serves is to be low. When serving, the height of the ball crossing the net needs to be controlled to around one and a half balls; if over two balls high, it is regarded as a failure. Chinese players, from a young age, deeply grasp the key of serving as low as possible.
The second condition is rich line variation — left-right placement, long-short — well coordinated with your subsequent scoring. For example, Hugo’s forehand-side over-the-net receive is fairly ordinary. Whatever the player, there are spots he is good and bad at receiving. On one hand, when serving, you should scatter placement well; on the other, the serve line should target where the opponent is weak, then combine with your own scoring.
The third condition of a quality serve is letting the opponent misjudge the spin. If you make a motion behind the ball, like a hook serve, the opponent struggles to read the spin amount; or if you add some fakes after contact, the opponent struggles to understand the bat angle at contact, so cannot receive effectively.
Besides these three, Chinese athletes also value serve speed. Not a slow boom-boom flight, but a low whoosh-whoosh, giving the opponent no time to spare, harder to judge the spin. Due to the heavy use of the flick, Japanese players now value the serve more too. Before, they overemphasized spin amount, but too-strong spin easily pops up, the second bounce easily goes off the table, and you are easily strongly received.
(Heima’s aside: so the national veteran told me, when I face professional teams in matches, the important thing is not to serve very spinny, but to serve as no-spin as possible.)
In the plastic ball era now, the ball’s spin is declining, and especially with the Hawk-Eye system introduced, serve scoring rates will drop. But the three conditions above still form important components of a quality serve.
The opponent serves a heavy, no-spin ball pressed over with the center of gravity, to my backhand. How do I receive this ball?
What he presses over is just heavy, fast, not very spinny. Two ways to receive. One: on the rising phase, push, punch or rip — all fine. The other: step back half a step, wait for the descending phase, and loop a high hang. The core of receiving is when to fire and when to borrow pace, especially noting whether to receive on the rising or descending phase.
Ma Long, Aruna, An Jaehyun and Xiang Peng are all forehand-dominant players — why does Ma Long’s backhand seem so much more comfortable?
Ma Long’s backhand produces inherently odd balls; sometimes it looks powerful, but is hard for the opponent to borrow pace from. His backhand has much variation, with nearly every technique, and he often uses side-slices and the like. His backhand is not the oppressive type like Fan Zhendong’s or Zhang Jike’s, but has very much variation. A bit like Ma Lin’s backhand — though penhold and shakehand differ, in essence it does not play by the book, not to your familiar rhythm.