Part of how you serve to these types of receivers comes down to your own playing style. But if you want to be an advanced player, then you need to learn to follow up your serve with an attack. That’s relatively easy against a passive receiver – except that those players are generally better at handling your attack. It’s harder to serve and attack against someone who is aggressive against your serve – but they will make more mistakes. So, what should you do?

Against a passive receiver who will usually push, you can serve mostly long, which gives you more time to react to the receiver’s return. If you can get away with deep backspin serves that they push back, and you have a good loop against backspin, then you can do that over and over – though remember to mix up your serves, varying your spin so that you’ll get some misses or pop-ups. Throw in no-spin serves where you fake backspin, and watch them pop them up. You can also serve deep breaking serves to a passive receiver, and follow up against a likely soft return, whether it’s soft topspin or backspin. While you don’t need to serve short, some passive receivers have trouble with short serves to the forehand, so you might try that. Some also have trouble with a simple short no-spin serve, which they may push back high. Test them out and see what works.

Against an aggressive receiver who mostly attacks your serve, you mostly serve short or half-long. This keeps them from looping your serve. They may still loop the half-long serve, but because the table is in the way, they’ll often topspin weakly. (Half-long means the second bounce, given the chance, is right around the table edge.) Of course, some players attack short balls but have trouble attacking some deep serves – if so, then figure out which deep ones give them trouble and give it to them! Pips-out players often are in this category. If they are going to attack your serve no matter what, then your goal is to force them to pay for this by forcing them into mistakes. Focus on serving very low, with lots of spin and variation. Find out which serves they attack more easily. (For example, in my heyday I was very good at attacking short backspin, but surprisingly, had more trouble with short no-spin.) You may also find serves that they cannot attack, and so you’ll be able to serve and attack with that serve. If they lean over the table to attack short serves, serve long; if they hang back to attack the deep serve, then serve shorter.

But always remember that you need to serve in a way that fits your style. If you like to get into fast, counter-hitting rallies, then you’ll likely welcome an aggressive receiver, who will make mistakes attacking your serve, all for the privilege of getting into the very rallies you want to get into. If you like to serve and attack, then you’ll likely welcome a passive receiver, who will give you a steady diet of returns you can attack.

But remember – this works both ways. Whatever the receiver does to you, you can do it right back when he’s serving! That’s why the game is so tactical as your tactics are based on both your game and your opponents. It’s a game of yin and yang – or more specifically, of ping and pong!