How to Serve a Forehand Cut in Ping Pong

Video Transcript

"SCOTT BROWDER: So now we've hit just the basic serve. What we want to do now, and we moved it around, what we want to do now is try to put a little bit more spin on the ball. That's going to give us some opportunity to make the ball do some funny things and maybe keep your opponent guessing. And again, that's what you want to do on the service. Keep the guy guessing to where you're going to hit the ball and how you're going to hit it and what type of spin you're going to have on it and what type of speed you're going to have on it. So one of the basic type of spin shot that I usually use is I use a little cut shot. And what that entails is, is again, you're throwing the ball up so that it's being totally visible off of your hand and you're just kind of carving just a little bit, just around the outside, leading with the front edge like that's the hammer. You're leading with that front edge and you're just curling it right as you make contact or right after you're making contact. You're dropping your wrist down over and around. So it's kind of like you're just carving a little semi-circle around the ball. So let's go ahead and give that a try. That one was a little high. So you want to make sure that it's not high above the net. You want to be able to keep it fairly low. And if you practice that, pretty soon you'll see how it told the ball it will break. And once it hits the table on your opponent's side, it'll break even harder to that right hand side. And depending on what type of paddle you're using, you can increase or decrease the amount of spin depending on what you're using. If you're using a nice, professional type of a paddle that might cost a couple of hundred bucks for the rubber on the surface of the paddle, then you're going to be able to put massive amounts of spin on the ball. If you're just using a sandpaper paddle, then you're probably not going to be able to do much with it. But, and that's more of a speed type of a paddle anyway. So anyway, that's what you want to do with that little curl serve, is just be able to throw it up and curve the ball around and keep the ball low."