How to Serve in Ping Pong Like a Pro: 13 Tips

Last Updated on May 16, 2024 by Alex Horscroft

Everyone wants to serve like a pro in ping pong. What’s not to like? Winning all the points on your serve means you’re already halfway to winning! 

Yet getting to that level isn’t so easy. Fortunately, for most of you, there really is no need. Simply having a few high-quality serves will win you most points. In aid of this goal, I’ve created 13 strategies to elevate your service game. Let’s dive in!

My 13 Service Tips to Serve Like a Pro in Ping Pong

1. Hold Your Paddle Correctly

Before you even touch a table tennis ball you need to ensure you have a good table tennis grip for serving. While some serves such as the shovel serve don’t require a grip change, many do.

The two most common serves in table tennis are the pendulum and chop serves, and both benefit from a slight grip modification. The way players do this varies, but the idea is to shift your main point of contact further up the paddle.

See the image above. My thumb, index, and middle finger rest on the rubber sheets while my ring and pinkie curl around the handle.

This gives me much more control for particular serves and makes it easier to flick my wrist. 

2. Choose Proven Table Tennis Serves

The quickest way to improve your serves is to adopt proven ones. Beginners tend to come up with their own versions, but these often involve poor technique or are just plain illegal under the ruleset.

There are ten serves in total to choose from:

1. Chop serve
2. Pendulum serve
3. Reverse pendulum serve
4. Corkscrew/backhand serve
5. Shovel serve
6. Tomahawk serve
7. Reverse tomahawk serve
8. Backhand tomahawk serve
9. Ghost serve
10. Float serve

Most players learn the chop serve, pendulum serve, and at least one other. I recommend reading my table tennis serve guide where I cover all serves in depth. I even made infographics to help you out! 

3. Ensure You Are Capable of All Types of Spin 

The age-old argument of mastering one serve vs. learning many is a long one. While both have their advantages, neither is ideal.

What is more important is to be capable of producing all types of spin.

You can achieve this with just two serves! The pendulum and reverse pendulum serve are a great example. While both serves offer you backspin and topspin, the pendulum gives you clockwise sidespin while the reverse pendulum gives you anti-clockwise sidespin. As such, you have backspin, topspin, and both types of sidespin covered!

This is super important as some players will prefer returning one type of sidespin and have trouble with the other. You need access to both to ensure you are well-rounded.

4. Improve Your Consistency

There’s little use in having the best serve in the world if you only get it in less than half the time. Consistency is key. Ideally, you shouldn’t be making service mistakes during a match. If you find yourself consistently faulting multiple types per match, you have a problem. 

Spend more time practicing your serves and identify the root cause of your blunders. Are you striking too close to the edge of your paddle? Is your timing off? Once you know the problem, you can begin to fix it.

5. Increase Your Spin Output

Players with spinny serves are one of the most scary to play against. The natural reaction of most receivers is to play as safe as possible to just get the ball back on the table. The thing is, this often gives the server a free third-ball attack which is a quick route to victory.

Therefore, ramping up the spin on your serves should be high on your priority list. To increase spin, you need to strike the ball faster and with faint contact — this isn’t easy, so it takes time to learn. Remember to flick your wrist with most serves. This helps increase your racket speed at the point of contact while maintaining control.  

6. Practise Varying Your Placement

Placement has a strong bearing on how the rally will play out, so use it to your advantage. If you serve short, your opponent won’t be able to attack the ball as easily. In contrast, an unexpected deep ball can catch your opponent off-guard. 

It’s all about working the table to give your opponent the toughest time. Therefore, you need a high level of accuracy to ensure the ball lands where you want it to. If your precision is lacking, you could end up playing right into their hands!  

7. Select the Appropriate Serve/Spin 

Having a strong arsenal of serves puts you in an advantageous position, but it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll win the points on your serve. This is especially true if you keep choosing the wrong ones.

Be deceptive and determine what types of serves your opponent struggles with. You can then hone this further by modifying the spin, speed, and placement of the ball.

Even if one serve gives your opponent difficulty, I don’t recommend abusing the hell out of it by playing the same serve time after time. You’re begging your opponent to adapt. Instead, throw a few out and then switch. Even small changes are sufficient. For example, you can keep with a pendulum serve, but play it long instead of short or to the backhand instead of forehand.     

8. Become a Master of the Half-Short and Half-Long Serve

Most players are keen to get the first attack in, so they will flick or loop your serve, (provided they think they can read it). Short serves are easy to identify, so most players will flick them. As for long serves, these are usually easy to spot too, so players will move to make a loop.

However, half-short and half-long serves are not so easy to read. Half-short serves bounce very close to the end line, and half-long serves narrowly miss a second bounce. 

The reason these serves are so effective is not only because it is difficult to determine their depth, but also because they require different shots. As mentioned above, it’s flicks for short serves and loops for long ones. 

As such, if a player can’t determine whether the ball is going to go short or long, they often play a much slower attack or a defensive stroke such as a push or chop. 

9. Keep Your Serves Low Over the Net

Keeping the ball low over the net minimizes the bounce height of the ball when it lands on your opponent’s side. This reduces the angle they have to make an attack, meaning they can’t hit the ball as hard.

If you find the ball is bouncing too high over the net on your serves, you have one of two issues. Either you are striking it too early, in which case hit it a little later, or secondly, you are hitting the ball too forcefully into the table. For this, adjust by hitting the ball more forward than downward.  

10. Conceal Your Spin

Spin deception is the main way players win points on their serves at a high level, and it’s not something that beginners can do very well. Even intermediate players tend to be lacking in this area. 

Yet concealing your spin is a very powerful tool and something you should look to be doing as soon as you have a serve with a decent amount of spin. 

There are several ways to conceal your spin. My favorite is to fake topspin for backspin and vice-versa. This causes service returns to go into the net or high in the air for an easy kill. The way you do this is by mimicking the service stroke of the opposite kind of spin you are producing.

For example, if I was hitting a pendulum serve with backspin, I would strike the ball in a downward motion and then quickly raise my paddle and swipe upward, thereby pretending I’d used topspin instead. Sneaky!

11. Use Float Serves

Float serves are the devil’s work and I can’t get enough of them. They’re another way to conceal your spin. However, this time, you are not using heavy spin, you’re trying to use as little spin as possible. 

So why do they work so well?

Because you’re pretending you’re hitting a spinny serve of course! The key with floats is to adopt a serving motion which is very similar to a standard serve. This is the only way it will sell. 

To kill the spin on the ball you have to reduce your paddle speed at contact, but an observant opponent may notice this. Try striking the ball lower on the racket face and stamping your foot at the point of contact to hide the sound of the ball. 

12. Practise Serves Without a Partner

With all the individual serving strategies out of the way, it’s time to put them into practice. I recommend grabbing a box of balls and spending at least 10 minutes refining your technique. 

I’m not going to lie to you, it will get tedious. But it’s the quickest way to get quality serving practice under your belt. 

13. Practise Serves Against a Weaker Partner

Fortunately, it’s not all bad. Another key part of service training is to test your serves out against opponents, and you’ll be pleased to hear that I recommend grabbing someone weaker; a sacrificial lamb if you will. This might sound mean, but you’ll both be better for it.

Why don’t I recommend using someone of your skill level?

Simple. Normal training partners are too familiar with your serves. So even if your serves are exceptional, in time they will learn to return them. For instance, I have one training partner who is well below my level and used to hate my tomahawk serve, but now it doesn’t give him that much trouble.

In retaliation, I’ve started working on a backhand tomahawk and reverse tomahawk serve. I wasn’t sure how good these were as they were pretty brand-spanking new. To my surprise, his returns were going all over the place. This is because he was not familiar with them. 

The takeaway: try spending a little time serving against lower-skilled players to monitor your serving progression.

Closing Thoughts

Everyone has room to improve when it comes to serving. And if you’re a beginner, you’ll notice much quicker progression than us veterans. Put these 13 strategies into practice and you’ll kickstart your journey to serving like a pro in ping pong. 

Don’t get disheartened if you don’t see progress initially. Just stick with it, practice smart, and ultimately, have fun!

*Images of the pros provided by XIAOYU TANG under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license | unedited