Where should you position yourself after serving? It depends on your playing style, footspeed, and the opponent.

If, for example, you favor your forehand, then you might position yourself toward your backhand side, so as to cover as much of the table as possible with the forehand. There are two things to take into account on this.

The first is obvious: how fast are you? If you are pretty fast, then you can favor the forehand even more.

Second, against any given serve, how big a threat is the receiver to return it aggressively to your wide forehand? If he can do that, then you have to be able to cover that shot, and so can’t favor the forehand as much. However, if he’s only going to push the serve back passively, then you can position yourself even more toward the backhand side. If you are in decent shape, you should be able to serve and attack every passively pushed receive with your forehand.

Note that I referred to passive pushes. Stronger players can push quick and aggressively, and so you have less time to get to them – and against them, you’d have to stay more in position or they are liable to get you with a quick push to a wide corner. (They might also be able to push short, but that’s another issue.)

The above used the example of a player who favors his forehand (like me). However, all of this applies equally to a player who favors the backhand. I’ve seen and played players with dominating backhands – and some of them will even backhand loop from the forehand side!

One final thing to remember – if you go out of position to favor your stronger side, recover quickly back into position! (See Positioning Part 4: Recovery, which will come up in three weeks.)