You Need at Least Three Different Serves: Table Tennis Q&A with Former National Players
This is a brand-new, technique-focused column in question-and-answer format. The mystery respondents are two former national players — both now veteran coaches — who prefer to stay anonymous. They just want a peaceful life and a good night’s sleep, not fame.
Sharing these technical insights with readers feels genuinely valuable, and it complements the main content of the channel.
And so, the “Peak Performance” column was born.
When I was young I started with shakehand, but my wrist wasn’t flexible enough and my serves weren’t spinny enough. My coach told me to switch to penhold. Is that a reasonable call?
You don’t need to switch to penhold — find a better method instead.
In terms of difficulty, from hardest to easiest: 1. penhold chopper; 2. shakehand chopper; 3. penhold; 4. shakehand. Shakehand has the lowest barrier to entry. Look at how penhold choppers have basically disappeared from top-level play, shakehand choppers are nearly gone too, professional penhold players are extremely rare — it’s almost all shakehand now.
A side note on why chopping looks simple but is actually the hardest style: the chop relies entirely on body weight transfer to control the contact — the force going forward and the force going downward both come from the body. The hand stays relaxed. That’s how you feel the opponent’s spin and have room to adjust. For both chopping and pushing, keep the paddle close to your head. The feel is much better that way. Don’t reach out with your arm.
I play shakehand with backhand rubber on both sides. In matches I mostly rely on stepping around to the forehand — my backhand sees very little use. But now that I’m meeting slightly stronger players, they control the ball well enough that when I step around and loop with heavy topspin, they’re either counter-looping or driving it back hard. I don’t know how to balance my forehand and backhand use — should I use the backhand more, or keep prioritizing the step-around?
You need to increase your backhand usage. If you’re still young, sure — build primarily around the forehand. But if you’re in your thirties, playing a decent level, facing stronger opponents — if your step-around isn’t perfect and you can’t put the ball away in one shot, your opponent pushes to your forehand and you’re done.
The backhand is different. You can loop it up first, then let the opponent push, turning underspin into topspin — and then your second ball you can really load up. You can pin down their backhand and control the whole table with backhand, because you’re the one attacking and they’re defending. As long as you don’t miss, and your opponent is around your level, your winning percentage climbs.
But that opening backhand loop — watch your angle and spin. Don’t just float it up. It can have modest pace, but it needs angle and spin. Speed on top of that is even better.
For the backhand loop setup on an underspin ball, you don’t need to drop your hand much — just slightly below the ball is enough. Use a whipping acceleration through the swing, with your body braced behind it. The ball you produce won’t be bad at all. If the incoming ball is very spinny, angle the paddle slightly more closed; if it’s not very spinny, just loop normally.
I’m considering dropping my forehand serve entirely. I’ve been working on it for a couple of years, but against stronger players it doesn’t do as much as my backhand serve — it’s not fast enough, not spinny enough, and the variation is too limited. Should I just focus on making my backhand serve richer instead?
You need at least three different serves. Otherwise people get used to one or two of them and you’ve got nothing. Your serve-and-attack game will really suffer.
Your serve doesn’t have to be incredibly spinny or tricky or spectacular — but it has to exist. The goal is to make your opponent uncomfortable. Once you have more serve variety, your opponent has more things to think about; as a result, their receive quality drops.
It’s like how many players defend explosive loops really well, but the moment they face a slow, high loop — their mind goes blank. The main reason is the rhythm changed: less power, more spin. They can’t borrow the pace anymore.