Every Ping Pong Serve (With Pictures)

Last Updated on July 10, 2024 by Alex Horscroft

Want to get better at table tennis? Well, then you’d better invest some time in getting better at your ping pong serves! It’s the only time in a game where you have complete control over the ball, so you have the power to dictate how a rally plays out. 

If you’re really good at serving, you can basically win every point on your serve. That means you only need to win a few on your opponent’s serve and you’ve taken the match! Sounds pretty good, right? 

But first things first, you need to learn about all the different types of serves and how to perform them. Don’t worry, I have you covered! One of my mates called me a “serving dictionary” one time. It’s because I do every serve the sport has to offer which is exceedingly rare. I just love all of the different table tennis serve techniques.

In this article, I will explain a bit about each serve, how to perform it, and ultimately whether you should use it or not. 

The 10 Serves in Table Tennis

Although everyone’s serves appear a bit different, any quality serve is one that other players already use — you don’t see new serves being developed. Rather, people have their own nuanced ping pong serve techniques. This is what makes their serves appear a little different from “the norm.” What this means is one player’s pendulum will look different from another’s. 

As such, there are far fewer ping pong serves than you may think. In total there are just 10, and not all of these are recommended for competitive play. These serves consist of:

• Chop serve
• Pendulum serve
• Reverse pendulum serve
• Backhand/corkscrew serve
• Shovel serve
• Tomahawk serve
• Reverse tomahawk serve
• Backhand tomahawk serve
• Ghost serve
• Float serve

*In the interest of not boring everyone to death by repeating myself, all of the serves are explained from the perspective of a righty. Sorry lefties! Just do the opposite!

All 10 Table Tennis Serves Explained

1. Chop Serve

The chop serve is the first serve you should learn in table tennis. It produces only backspin and is easy to keep short, therefore it is one of the safest serves you can perform.

While you can play chop serves on the backhand or forehand, the forehand is heavily favored. You may also hear the term “high toss serve.” This usually refers to a backspin serve in ping pong with a high initial toss of the ball. Tossing the ball higher slightly increases the amount of spin you can generate.

How to Perform the Chop Serve

Step 1)

• Stand with your left hip next to the left corner of the table
• Your left foot and left shoulder be parallel to the end of the table
• Your right foot should be around 50 cm behind and to the right of your left foot
• Your right foot should be at a 45-90° angle — use what is most comfortable
• Your right shoulder should be back with your elbow bent and touching your ribcage
• Your racket should be roughly to the right of your left shoulder 

Step 2) 

• Throw the ball up 
• Move your right shoulder back and bring your racket outwards away from your body
• Your forehand rubber should be facing the ceiling

Step 3)

• Move your right shoulder and racket back toward the ball and strike it at the bottom  

Step 4)

• Continue your racket motion a little past the ball to ensure you don’t slow down upon contact
  Continue your racket motion a little past the ball to ensure you don’t slow down upon contact

2. Pendulum Serve in Table Tennis

The pendulum serve is the most popular table tennis serve. It produces sidespin with a clockwise rotation and is relatively easy to learn. Almost all players from an intermediate level and up have it in their serving arsenal.

This is true not just for amateurs, but the pros too. Take the current top 10 male players in the world for instance. Every single one of them uses the pendulum as their main serve. As such, it is the best table tennis serve for anyone to learn irrespective of skill level.

How to Perform the Pendulum Serve

Step 1 is the same as for the chop serve, in any case, I’ll list it below for clarity’s sake.

Step 1)

• Stand with your left hip next to the left corner of the table
• Your left foot and left shoulder be parallel to the end of the table
• Your right foot should be around 50 cm behind and to the right of your left foot
• Your right foot should be at a 45-90° angle — use what is most comfortable
• Your right shoulder should be back with your elbow bent and touching your ribcage
• Your racket should be roughly to the right of your left shoulder 

Step 2) 

• Throw the ball up 
• Move your right shoulder back and bring your racket outwards away from your body
• Raise the handle of your paddle to prepare your racket angle for the strike

Step 3)

• Move your right shoulder and racket back toward the ball and strike the ball at the side   

Step 4)

• Continue your racket motion a little past the ball to ensure you don’t slow down upon contact

3. Reverse Pendulum Serve

The reverse pendulum serve is the opposite to the pendulum serve. You initially set up for the serve in the same way but strike the ball in the opposite direction, generating anti-clockwise sidespin.

While it may seem logical to think that the reverse pendulum is easy to perform given the pendulum is, this is not the case. In fact, the reverse pendulum is one of the hardest serves to learn. It feels very awkward to begin with and requires a lot of finesse. 

If you’re a beginner or intermediate player, I definitely recommend investing your time in other serves. I can’t recall ever receiving a quality reverse pendulum serve from anyone below advanced level — spend your time wisely.

How to Perform the Reverse Pendulum Serve

Step 1)

• Stand with your left hip next to the left corner of the table
• Your left foot and left shoulder parallel to the end of the table
• Your right foot should be around 50 cm behind and to the right of your left foot
• Your right foot should be at a 45-90° angle — use what is most comfortable
• Your right shoulder should be back with your elbow bent and touching your ribcage
• Your racket should be roughly to the right of your left shoulder 

Step 2) 

• Throw the ball up 
• Retract your racket and raise your elbow
• Curl your wrist inward so that your racket is next to your armpit

Step 3)

• Use your elbow as a lever and flick your wrist outward
• Strike the back of the ball

Step 4)

• Continue your racket motion a little past the ball to ensure you don’t slow down upon contact

4. Backhand/Corkscrew serve

The backhand serve as it is commonly called, usually refers to a type of serve that produces anti-clockwise spin from the backhand side. However, the vagueness of the word “backhand” leaves the term very open-ended. You may sometimes hear the name corkscrew serve as well, however, this isn’t widely used.

To clear things up, this is the exact serve Dimitrij Ovtcharov uses on his backhand side. He has a rather unique way of performing it where he bends down very low and strikes the ball to the side of his body. It was so eye-catching that it was named in Time Magazine’s list of the best inventions in 2008.

How to Perform the Backhand/Corkscrew Serve

Step 1)

• Stand with your right foot around 10 cm away from the table
• You should be facing around 45° to the left of the table
• Your left foot should be around 50 cm behind and to the left of your right foot
• Your left foot should be around 45-90° angle to your right
• Your right elbow should have a 90° bend with your racket in front of your body

Step 2) 

• Throw the ball up 
• Retract your racket so that it is in front of your left shoulder

Step 3)

• Reverse the movement and strike the ball in a left-to-right motion
• As an optional step, you can flick your elbow and/or wrist for additional spin

Step 4)

• Continue your racket motion a little past the ball to ensure you don’t slow down upon contact

5. Shovel Serve

The shovel serve is very closely linked with the reverse pendulum serve. It produces anti-clockwise sidespin and has a similar serving motion. However, it is much easier to learn. 

The reason for this is you use your arm rather than your wrist to generate spin. As such, it is much easier to control. It’s one of my favorite serves to use and deadly when you start to introduce topspin and backspin into the mix. 

How to Perform the Shovel Serve

Step 1)

• Stand with your left hip next to the left corner of the table
• Your left foot and left shoulder parallel to the end of the table
• Your right foot should be around 50 cm behind and to the right of your left foot
• Your right foot should be at a 45-90° angle — use what is most comfortable
• Your right shoulder should be back with your elbow bent and touching your ribcage
• Your racket should be roughly to the right of your left shoulder 

Step 2) 

• Throw the ball up 
• Retract your racket 
• Turn your racket sideways slightly so that your handle is closer to your body

Step 3)

• Move your right shoulder and racket back toward the ball and strike the back of the ball

Step 4)

• Continue your racket motion a little past the ball to ensure you don’t slow down upon contact

6. Tomahawk Serve in Ping Pong

The tomahawk serve also produces anti-clockwise spin, but it’s very different from the other serves we have looked at thus far. This is because you face the table much more directly and move your racket much further away from your body. 

Not too many players use this serve, but once again, it’s very effective if you become good at it. This serve in particular allowed me to coast through around 80% of the competition in my county when playing as a junior. 

How to Perform the Tomahawk Serve

Step 1)

• Stand with your left foot around 20 cm away from the table
• You should be facing around 45° to the right of the table
• Your right foot should be around 50 cm behind and to the right of your left foot
• Your right shoulder should be back with your elbow bent and a small gap between it and your ribcage
• Your racket should be roughly to the right of your left shoulder with the top edge of your paddle facing the ceiling.

Step 2) 

• Throw the ball up 
• Retract your racket so that it is just in front of your right shoulder
• Raise your right elbow to act as a pivot
• Twist your racket angle inwards

Step 3)

• Use your elbow as a pivot and move your racket forward and strike the back and side of the ball

Step 4)

• Continue your racket motion a little past the ball to ensure you don’t slow down upon contact

7. Reverse Tomahawk Serve

The reverse tomahawk serve is the second-rarest serve on this list (excluding the ghost). Like how the reverse pendulum is the opposite of the pendulum, the same is true for the reverse tomahawk to the tomahawk. 

You strike the ball in the opposite direction from right to left to produce clockwise spin. It’s an awkward serve to use and not one I particularly recommend learning. I only use it maybe once a game. It’s not that versatile and I find it difficult to be precise with.

How to Perform the Reverse Tomahawk Serve

Step 1)

• Stand with your left foot around 20 cm away from the table
• You should be more direct to the table than the tomahawk — less than 45° 
• Your right foot should be around 50 cm behind and to the right of your left foot
• Your right shoulder should be back with your elbow bent with a small gap between it and your ribcage
• Your racket should be either in front of or to the left of your right shoulder with the top edge of your paddle facing the ceiling.

Step 2) 

• Throw the ball up 
• Move your racket back and to the right 
• Raise your right elbow to act as a pivot
• Twist your racket angle outwards

Step 3)

• Use your elbow as a pivot and move your racket forward and to the left, striking the back of the ball

Step 4)

• Continue your racket motion a little past the ball to ensure you don’t slow down upon contact

8. Backhand Tomahawk Serve

In terms of real functional serves, the backhand tomahawk is the rarest in my opinion. The motion is very similar to the tomahawk serve. The main difference is you position your body more to the left to make it easier to strike the ball on your backhand side. This also means it produces the opposite spin to the tomahawk: clockwise spin.

It’s a fairly difficult serve to learn, and once again, not a great serve to learn if you want to become a good player quickly. That being said, if you do want to learn it, I recommend learning the tomahawk serve as well. This way you can mix up both serves to give your opponents trouble. Professional player Ding Ning uses this to expert effect.

How to Perform the Backhand Tomahawk Serve

Step 1)

• Don’t worry too much about footwork. You can set up similar to the tomahawk, reverse tomahawk, or with an extreme stance picture above
• Bend your elbow and keep it tucked at your side
• The top edge of your paddle should be facing the ceiling.

Step 2) 

• Throw the ball up 
• Retract your racket so that it is next to your right shoulder
• Raise your right elbow to act as a pivot
• Twist your racket angle inwards

Step 3)

• Use your elbow as a pivot and move your racket forward and strike the back and side of the ball with your backhand rubber
• To make the motion easier, you can move your body to the left and square up your position more on contact

Step 4)

• Continue your racket motion a little past the ball to ensure you don’t slow down upon contact

9. Ghost Serve in Ping Pong

The ghost serve is a ping pong spin serve that has so much backspin that the ball travels back to the net. While popular with amateurs, it is not an effective serve in competitive table tennis. This is because to kill the forward momentum on the ball to let the backspin takeover, you have to allow the ball to bounce high. This presents an easy attack to your opponent.

Other than for a flashy trick, avoid the ghost serve if you want to improve.

How to Perform the Ghost Serve

It’s almost identical to the chop serve. The key difference is striking the ball with a small upward trajectory.

Step 1)

• Stand with your left hip next to the left corner of the table
• Your left foot and left shoulder should be parallel to the end of the table
• Your right foot should be around 50 cm behind and to the right of your left foot
• Your right foot should be at a 45-90° angle — use what is most comfortable
• Your right shoulder should be back with your elbow bent and touching your ribcage
• Your racket should be roughly to the right of your left shoulder 

Step 2) 

• Throw the ball up 
• Move your right shoulder back and bring your racket outwards away from your body
• Your forehand rubber should be facing the ceiling

Step 3)

• Move your right shoulder and racket back toward the ball and strike it at the bottom  
• Strike the ball with a slight upward trajectory (this will allow spin to dominate over speed permitting the ball to travel back to the net)

Step 4)

• Continue your racket motion a little past the ball to ensure you don’t slow down upon contact

10. Float serve

The float serve isn’t any one serve, rather, it is any of the serves listed above with very little spin. The intention with the float serve is to fake heavy spin and instead produce very light spin. This causes your opponent to overaccount for the spin on the ball, meaning they may put it into the net, off the table, or too high.

How to Perform the Float Serve

To perform the float serve you should follow the exact same motion as you would if you were performing a standard serve. Of course, you have to reduce the speed you strike the ball to produce less spin, but the trick is to make your serving motion look the same as usual. 

How to Serve Like a Pro

Now you know how to serve in table tennis, I’ll provide some more detailed ping pong serve tips. These will help turn your average serves into good ping pong serves. So listen up!

1. Loose Grip

To serve effectively, you should aim to generate as much spin as possible. The easiest way to do this is to have a loose grip. If you have a stiff grip you’ll find it difficult to produce a quality brushing motion.

2. Fast and Faint Contact

Once you’ve got your loose grip, it’s time to strike the ball correctly. What you should aim for is a fast brushing motion with faint contact on the ball. The slower your motion, the less spin you’ll generate. Similarly, as you use harsher contact, you sacrifice spin in place of speed.

My favorite analogy for serving in table tennis is to visualize you’re throwing a frisbee. As we all know, the key to throwing a frisbee is to produce a motion that is fast, fluid, and has plenty of spin. You do this by flicking your wrist. The same is true in table tennis. Focus on that wrist action!

3. Vary spin

While producing the spinniest serves possible is often your goal, equally, producing serves with little spin is also a tactic you should be employing. That’s exactly why I gave float serves their own category. But beyond faking low-spinning serves for high-spinning serves, you should also vary your type of spin. 

For instance, when it comes to pendulum serves, use pure sidespin, a mix of side and back, and also a mix of side and top. 

4. Vary placement 

Just like how varying spin is crucial, so is varying your placement. While it is true you should often try and keep your serves short to prevent your opponent from being able to attack, you shouldn’t do all of your serves short. Vary your placement to prevent your opponent from getting into a rhythm. 

5. Find Your Opponent’s Serving Weakness

Work smart. Not hard. From the moment you start knocking up with your opponent, you should be analyzing their game. Do they lack looping ability? Exploit that with long chop serves. Are they poor at the crossover? A fast-swerving pendulum could bear some fruit. 

The more serves you have, the more likely a serve in your arsenal will give your opponent trouble. However, remember not to spread your efforts too thin! There is certainly an argument to be made to invest your time into a singular serve to become efficient with it. Of course, even with one serve, there are lots of ways that you can vary your serving action.

Official Ping Pong Serving Rules

Performing proper ping pong serves isn’t that difficult, even for a beginner, but many people at that level break the rules. Mostly because they don’t know what the table tennis serve rules are, so we can’t really blame them!

But you need not be one of these individuals any longer! To perform legal ping pong serves, you simply need to abide by the rules outlined by the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF). In simple terms you serves must:

• Throw the ball from an open palm
• Throw the ball near vertically, to a height of at least 16 cm
• Strike the ball as is it descending so that it bounces once on your side and once on your opponent’s side of the table
• The ball must be in full view of your opponent and the umpire at all times. You cannot throw it from beneath the table or in front of the end line

Closing Thoughts

Learning quality ping pong serves is essential to becoming a high-level table tennis player. I recommend you learn at least three serves so that you have some variety. Two of these should be a chop serve and a pendulum serve. As for the other, it’s up to you!

Personally, I recommend a serve with the opposite sidespin to the pendulum. The three most popular anti-clockwise sidespin serves are the reverse pendulum, shovel, and backhand/corkscrew serve. The shovel is my favorite, but you may well vibe with one of the others.  

Frequently Asked Ping Pong Serve Questions

How Do You Serve in Ping Pong?

Throw the ball up from your open palm while behind the table. It must travel at least 16 cm near vertically, and you strike the ball as it is falling. The ball has to bounce once on your side and then once on your opponent’s side of the table. The ball must also be fully visible to your opponent at all times.

What Happens When a Ping Pong Serve Hits the Net?

When a ping pong serve hits the net, a “let” is called if the ball successfully lands on your opponent’s side of the table. If it hits the net and the ball fails to cross over, a fault instead occurs, and the server loses the point. 

What Is the Fastest Ping Pong Serve?

Supposedly, the fastest table tennis serve ever is 70 mph, but there doesn’t seem to be sufficient evidence to validate this claim. What we can say for sure is that the fastest serve must be loaded with topspin as this is what keeps the ball low and kicks it forward.

Does a Ping Pong Serve Have to Go Diagonal?

In singles, you can serve anywhere you like. It is only for doubles play where you must serve diagonally. For these games, you must serve from your right side of the table to your opponent’s right side. 

Can a Ping Pong Serve Go Off the Side?

You can serve anywhere you like in table tennis. You just have to ensure you serve from behind the end line. However, in reality, you shouldn’t aim to serve off of the side too often as these balls are long and give your opponents an easy opportunity to initiate the first attack.

How Many Serves Does Each Player Get in Table Tennis?

Each player gets two consecutive serves. The only time you receive one in place of two is when the score is 10-10. 

How Many Types of Serve Are There in Ping Pong?

There are 10 serves in ping pong. These include:

• Chop serve
• Pendulum serve
• Reverse pendulum serve
• Corkscrew serve
• Shovel serve
• Tomahawk serve
• Reverse tomahawk serve
• Backhand tomahawk serve
• Ghost serve
• Float serve