serving is similar in principle as drops, cutting it is nice but one has to retain variation so to deceive your opponents. Your opponents will get accustom to one particular serve even if they are spinning/cutting serves
Very true. This is one reason that I do not spin my low serves now -- I find it much harder to perform the service variations with the same action. Also I find the spinning serve too difficult to make consistent.
I learnt the game in the 70s, they only taught us the forehand serve for everything at that time. I injured my knee and haven't played in a long time and just started playing again about a month ago. I find my forehand serve is still effective and I can do a low spin serve easily and accurately. I find I have better control on the trajectory when I spin it. Is it easier to do a spin serve using the forehand serve? Whats the reason for everyone doing the low serve with backhand now? I haven't followed the game for a while, so I don't know what happened in the game for the last 20 yrs or so. Thanks.
Ahhhhh, the forehand serve, that's different. I was referring to backhand serves only. Yes, the forehand spin serve is no problem to perform, assuming you know it. I do not. And yes, if you are skilled in it, it can be quite effective, very accurate and hard to read. When I play against someone with a good forehand serve (rare these days), I usually take an extra step back from the service line and "play honest" because more times than not, if I try to press, I will get beat on the serve.
My dad told me about this serve. He said that he made up the forehand slice low serve. It is more common than I thought. Spinning serves must be nasty! The serve is bizarre and my dad told me he only attempted it occasionally to surprise. I may try to learn how he does it.
I thought this post might be more useful here, but I have a question about a service that I recently developed. Look at Kwun's post (#10 in this thread) for the diagram. It's a bit hard to explain this technique so if anyone recognizes what i'm trying to describe, please help out! Its a method of backhand service. Basically, before hitting the shuttle in a non-moving position, the racket face is is almost parallel to the ground. As I perform the stroke, I 'spin' the racket face slightly so that at the point of impact, the racket is in the position of the second part of Kwun's diagram, tapping/slicing the bird upwards for short serves to go over the tape and land on the line. The stroke is not straight forward, it is sort of hyperbolically upward, and the spin 'follows through' even after the contact with the shuttle. Almost no arm movevement is involved for short serves, though it can be added in for long serves at the last moment. The difference between what i'm describing and what kwun mentioned is the introduction of spinning the face of ther racket... it doesn't make much of a difference for the short serves, but I find that if timed correctly the spin of the racket face actually generates a much stronger flick for long serves with less apparent movement (thus, it's easier to mask a long serve as a short serve motion). I say this in comparison to using the traditional method of flick-serving for longer serves. The main thing is that I had tried previously to acquire long backhand services... and I can generate the speed and power to send it to the doubles back service line, but I can't make the stroke similar enough to the short servce to be a real threat. The 'spin' method (not spinning the shuttle, but the racket face) gave me the extra range without the telegraphicness of movement. The racket face is still below my wrist, the stroke is one fluid motion (no fast-slow-fast or anything) the contact point is still below my lowest ribs, the cork does hit first... yet, last weekend, some visiting players from another club said that this type of service was illegal. I was wondering, has anyone else seen this serve used, and, does it in fact have an illegal status? I don't know of any section of service rules that makes it illegal.
Jinryu, It's neither the usual backhand serve where the face of the racket is or almost parallel to the net during contact, nor the slice serve whereby one slices the bottom of the shuttlecock? from your description it seems to me that you are describing hitting something like a topspin version of the backhand serve. I am also reminded of the table tennis kind of smash (but from the backhand side), the face of the bat is more parallel to the table/ground, therefore more perpendicular to the net, but because it's a short service you're talking about, so the follow through is less than the table tennis smash.
there is not much serve variation... after all its either a low serve close to the front or a high one to the back, cause if you dont wanna give your opponent chances to smash by serving to the middle at medium height its risky unless you are ready to return smashes
I can already do the kind of serve that i'm describing... what i'm wondering is if anyone knows if there's a special rule against it?
There are no special rules against variant serves. From what you described, the serve is legal. Often players will complain that a stroke is "illegal" because they've never seen anyone do it that way before
