How to Put Top Spin on a Backhand Serve in Ping Pong

Video Transcript

"SCOTT BROWDER: Now we're going to hit the same type of backhand serve but this time we want to come over it a little bit and hit some just regular shot that I know we talked about. The side spin top spin but we want to be able to come up over and actually put some really heavy top spin on the ball so that when it hits the court on the other or the table on your opponent's side, it will kick up big time on him and again keeping them jump or guessing. So what we want to do is we're going to start low, droppin' our wrist down, not keeping our wrist up cut but dropping our wrist down so that when we start the stroke our shoulder's coming into the table, towards the net, head up, and you're starting with your paddle low, and you're just coming up and over in flopping your wrist, we talked about with the forehand serve how we are flop--opening the jar, flopping our wrist with our thumb down, this is the exact opposite with the wrist. Our wrist is going to be open and our palm up towards the ceiling and our thumb is actually going to drop down again but as with your hand in it completely opposite positioning. So when you follow through, you're making contact first always and that's another thing, when you're putting spin on the ball, you've got to remember that you still have to hit the ball almost in a flat position to start with when you initially make contact with a ball and then be able to hit with a follow through movement the spin. So 'cause a lot of guys will get up there and they're hitting they're putting so much spin on the ball before they're even making contact, ball ends up in the net. You don't want to be able to--you've got to hit the ball flat almost to begin with and then impart the spin with the follow through. It's very important, there's so many people that cannot hit the ball with spin because of that. They think they got to put all the spin on first, you can't do it that way, you gotta hit the ball flat. So when you're starting out with the backhand top spin, again we're starting to low to high, flipping the ball up, and we're coming up finishing high. Start low with your body position and finish high with a flat-open palm and in your thumb coming up high at the end of the stroke. And that will put a lot of top spin on the serve and again don't be afraid to move it around and try to keep it low to the net."