(By Larry Hodges)

You probably have a regular forehand pendulum serve, or backhand serve, or perhaps a forehand tomahawk serve, or something else. These are all good serves. But if that’s all you use, then it’s pretty much an announcement about what type of sidespin will be on the serve. Your opponent is grateful for making things easier for him!

It’s good to have a few variations of these regular serves as your front-line serves – perhaps side-backspin, pure side, side-topspin, a super-heavy pure backspin, and a no-spin. But why not learn an “off” serve as well, by developing the reverse sidespin version of these serves? Not only do opponents have to learn to handle these serves, but they have to now adjust to your regular serves when you go back and forth. Think of all those close matches you’ve lost, and imagine the outcome if you’d had a few more serving variations to confuse your opponent.

Reverse serves aren’t hard to learn. It’s just a matter of hitting the ball in the opposite direction you normally would, thereby giving the reverse sidespin from what you normally use. While it would be nice to develop these reverse serves as alternate front-line serves – top players do, and it takes a lot of practice – but what’s more important at most levels is just the variation that they have to look out for. You might only be able to do the reverse sidespin with one or two variations – perhaps pure sidespin and side-backspin – but if you develop them and use them sparingly, they become highly effective – often free points.

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