Improving Serves - Practical Advice

Here's How:

1. Practice with a friend/training partner that wants to work on their serves and serve returns. Have them use serves that you are having trouble with – they get to practice their serve and you get to practice your returning. Then swap around and do some serves for them to practice returning.
2. During a match, if a serve hits the net and comes over to your side, don't catch it. Let it bounce and hit it back, noting the type of spin on the ball. It's like a free preview of your opponent's serve.
3. Note that the ball generally bounces lower on service, since it is mainly contacted fairly close to net height. Make sure that you use your knees to get down to the ball when returning, instead of bending from the waist.
4. A good way to practice telling the difference between long balls and short balls is to have a training partner serve the ball to you, and then play a shadow shot with your empty hand, deliberately missing the ball. Notice how often you would have pushed or flicked balls that were actually going off the end of the table and could be attacked with power instead.
5. When you are not playing at a tournament, watch your opponent's serves against other players, and try to pick what type of serve they are doing. This will help you get familiar with a particular player's favorite serves.
6. Put in the middle of the server's side of the table table a folded towel, or even better a piece of string with blu-tack or low-adhesive sticky tape on the corners to form a square about 15-20 inches wide. Have your training partner serve the ball, and when you return the service try to keep your return out of the square. You should be able to notice that the more often you keep your return out of the square, the harder it is for your training partner to attack strongly.
7. A robot can be handy for learning to deal with different types of spins. The nice thing with robots is that the spin and speed can be set to the same amount over and and over again, until you get master your return technique. A human server will always have some variations in his serve, and may well lose patience with serving the same serve to you over and over again! The downside with a robot is that you do not get to practice watching the service motion.
8. If you are having problems finding a training partner willing to serve to you, why not pay a coach or advanced player to give you some serving practice? You'll probably get some good tips as well – well worth the money!
9. If you do training drills, start more of the drills with a proper serve and server return, rather than the standard easy topspin serve. This can easily increase the amount of serve return practice you get, without taking up any more time.
10. If you are having problems returning a particular serve, try to master the serve yourself. Once you understand all about that serve, you will find it much easier to pick when your opponent is using it on you!
11. From time to time, try using one type of return against every serve. You will make a few mistakes, but you will also find that you will succeed in returning serves that you would not normally have even tried to return with that type of stroke. This method is a very good way of finding out exactly what you can and can't do with a particular type of return – you may be better than you think!