Today, we'll discuss common serving mistakes made by amateur players. There are three main issues: First, poor short serves. Second, poor power synchronization—your timing and rhythm are off. Third, while deep backhand serves are generally okay, wide and middle placements are poor. Middle serves are actually highly effective. Today, we'll focus on solving these three issues. Let's address them one by one. First, why are your wide serves ineffective? Many players use a long-serve technique to try and serve wide, which is why it fails. To serve wide, you must have a short-serve mindset and maximize the friction on the ball. You need to brush the ball rather than hit it flat. A flat contact significantly reduces the threat of a wide serve. Second, at contact, your racket angle shouldn't face forward. It must face sideways, applying force towards the short corner. Look at my racket angle. If it faces the deep baseline, it will just result in a standard long serve. Look at my racket angle. If it faces the deep baseline, it will just result in a standard long serve. To execute a good wide serve, your racket face must point toward the sideline, combined with a short-serve mindset. Now I can serve directly to the sideline without even looking. Some serves are spinny, but the return makes your third-ball attack difficult. The wide placement is the absolute best spot to set up your attack. Next, let's discuss the deep middle placement. A side-backspin serve here is incredibly effective. If you serve deep to the backhand, the opponent can simply push if they can't loop. But when serving to the middle, we can add a bit of waist rotation. Normally, you contact the ball at a specific point for a backhand serve. For a middle serve, shift the contact point slightly to your left and use your waist rotation. If you contact the ball too far right or in the center, a middle serve is tough. Shift your contact point slightly to the left to make it natural. Also, remember that the first bounce placement differs between crosscourt and down-the-line serves. For a crosscourt serve, the sharper the angle, the closer the first bounce should be to your body. When serving down the line or to the middle, place the first bounce slightly further forward on your side of the table. If the first bounce is too close to your body, it's very hard for amateurs to control a down-the-line or middle serve. Therefore, when I want to serve to the middle or the forehand side, I move the first bounce forward. This makes the down-the-line trajectory easier. Conversely, a contact point closer to the body makes it easier to serve crosscourt. When serving to the middle, closely observe how your opponent handles it. Some players prefer using their forehand to receive middle balls. If they receive with their forehand, serve more left sidespin, aiming right at their right leg. This placement will jam them. Depending on their stance, this spot becomes their true middle. This placement will jam them. Depending on their stance, this spot becomes their true middle. If they prefer using their backhand for middle balls, serve directly at their playing elbow. This is the most awkward spot for a backhand loop. Whether you use left or right sidespin, always aim to jam their elbow. This yields maximum results. The backhand easily handles balls on the wide left, as a standard drawing-the-sword motion naturally covers it. If you think middle serves are useless, it's because you aren't observing whether they use their forehand or backhand, and you're serving where they don't have to move to receive. Therefore, you must practice serving to both the inside and outside of the center line to precisely target their weak spot. The second key issue is why you fail to synchronize your power. I'll serve three balls; see which one has the right timing. The first. The second. The third. Which of these three serves had the correct synchronization? The problem with the first serve is that the contact point is too low. Let me show you in slow motion. On the second serve, the contact point is too high. The third serve had the perfect contact point, properly synchronizing the power. For example, when serving long, waiting for the ball to drop too low before contact will severely reduce your speed. However, the advantage of a low contact point is that it's easier to generate heavy spin. The second case—contacting the ball too high— is the biggest and most common mistake among amateur players. Its only advantage is safety; it's an easy serve to execute without missing. The fatal flaw is that the ball speed is slow and the trajectory is too high. In the third case, the ball drops exactly to my navel height. I simply swing and sync the power, even without using body weight. Let me share my secret to power synchronization: the speed of your ball toss and the speed of your racket swing must perfectly match. If you use a high toss, the ball drops slowly. If you swing too fast and hit the ball near the end of your swing, your racket arm started too early. Conversely, some players use a low toss and hesitate on their backswing. By the time they swing, the ball has already dropped, resulting in a total disconnect. This causes major inconsistency. To fix it, your backswing and forward swing must be fully synchronized with the ball's flight. The height of your toss dictates the size of your backswing. Match the height of your toss with the height of your backswing. Another issue: many players use a high toss but rush the shot, failing to wait for the ball to drop into the optimal strike zone. I believe the optimal contact point is exactly at navel height after you've lowered your center of gravity. Whether you're serving side-backspin or side-topspin, the contact height remains the same. The only difference is whether your racket brushes downward or upward after contact. Many amateurs contact the ball way too high, while others rely too much on scooping the bottom of the ball, which kills all forward speed. When is scooping the bottom appropriate? Only when serving pure backspin, or you can add a slight scoop when serving sidespin. This slight adjustment allows you to maintain a good balance of spin and speed. Thirdly, proper synchronization requires matching the rhythm of both hands. For instance, a slow toss requires a slow backswing. If you use a quick, abrupt toss, you must use a quick backswing. I recommend keeping your toss relaxed and gentle. A slow, soft toss allows your backswing to stay completely relaxed, making your sudden acceleration upon contact much more explosive. This massive contrast in speed between your relaxed backswing and explosive contact will completely catch your opponent off guard. Do you stomp your foot when serving? Stomping is absolutely essential. Stomping serves two main purposes: First, it helps transfer power from your lower body to your upper body, improving your overall synchronization. Second, it masks the sound of the ball's first bounce on the table. If your opponent can clearly hear the first bounce, it gives them a timing cue to prepare their return. By stomping, I perfectly sync the sound of my foot with the sound of the ball's first bounce. They will only hear the second bounce on their side of the table. Without the auditory cue of the first bounce, the ball seems to cross the net instantly, destroying their receiving rhythm and causing hesitation. This creates immense psychological pressure, simply because the auditory cue of the first bounce is erased. I highly advise all amateur players to learn to stomp. But when exactly should you stomp? As you toss the ball, your weight should be on your left leg. Only when the ball begins its descent should you lift your right foot. Regardless of toss height, the trigger to lift your foot is the ball dropping. Once it falls, lift your foot slightly. Then, stomp downward. You don't need a huge leg lift—just a slight raise, focusing on a sharp, downward stepping force. Another major reason amateurs fail to synchronize power is a fundamentally flawed ball toss. Never grip the ball with your fingers. It must rest flat in your palm, and you should "lift" or push it upwards. Never grip the ball with your fingers. It must rest flat in your palm, and you should "lift" or push it upwards. Your priority is a perfectly vertical toss; only then should you use your racket to find the ball. Many of my followers toss the ball backward toward their body. I strongly advise against this. While every toss has a slight natural arc, you must never intentionally toss it backward. Look at me now—I’m looking straight at the screen, completely trusting my free hand to execute the toss. I don't need to look at the ball because my vertical toss is perfectly consistent, allowing my playing hand to naturally find it. A crooked toss forces you to micro-adjust your swing and power every single time, which ruins consistency. Once you lock in a solid serving motion and contact point, you must relentlessly drill that exact mechanic and power level to produce high-quality serves in matches. Therefore, keep the ball flat in your palm and execute a clean, lifting toss. A stable toss is critical. Notice how my center of gravity moves during the toss: ready, toss, ready, toss. There is a dynamic weight shift involved. I know many of you want to learn the high-toss serve. During my pro career, 80% of my serves were high-toss, but it's incredibly difficult and requires massive amounts of practice. If you're already struggling to synchronize power on a low toss, a high toss will be a nightmare. Let's move to the third key issue: the short serve. Amateurs hate serving short and over-rely on long serves because long serves force cheap errors. However, because your short serves lack spin quality, opponents can easily push deep or flick aggressively. A short serve relies entirely on heavy brush friction for its quality. Without a tight short serve, you have absolutely no way to contain an aggressive attacker. Secondly, without the threat of a short serve to keep the opponent close to the table, your long serves lose all their surprise factor and effectiveness. In high-level matches, a heavy short serve is the hardest ball to return with quality. Mastering the short serve will dramatically improve your long serves too, because it teaches you how to generate maximum friction. Let me teach you how to execute a left sidespin short serve. Short serves are actually the easiest to synchronize with your toss. Watch closely—am I serving side-backspin or side-topspin here? That was backspin. If your motion scoops under the ball and then pulls up the side, it becomes topspin. A pure backspin serve brushes exclusively the bottom-half of the ball. This scooping motion generates extremely heavy backspin. So, why do your short serves lack spin? Because you are chopping straight down from top to bottom, whereas professional players scoop under the ball. Using this technique, we can push both backspin and topspin to their absolute extremes. If you don't scoop, and merely chop downward at the side-bottom of the ball, applying power will cause the ball to pop long, with zero spin. Therefore, you must scoop under the ball, sometimes even adding a slight backward-pulling motion upon contact, to achieve the desired heavy spin. As the ball drops, my racket sweeps upward, creating perfect opposing forces for maximum friction. Keep the racket face relatively flat to brush underneath—that's your backspin. When serving topspin, penholders use this motion to brush the ball. For us shakehand players, we open the racket vertically for topspin, and scoop under the bottom for backspin. Just that slight scooping action is what generates massive spin. The reason your serves lack spin is your downward chopping motion. Too soft, and there's no spin; too hard, and the serve goes long. Why do our short sidespin serves force weak returns? Because after the first bounce, the ball kicks sideways or even spins backward instead of kicking forward, completely destroying the receiver's timing. It's exactly like looping against a long-pips block—the ball stops moving forward, making it awful to attack. Fast, deep balls are easy to loop, whereas a soft, half-high ball with heavy backspin is a nightmare. Back in the day, to maximize spin, we would scoop under the ball and immediately pull the racket backwards. This creates terrifying spin. So, for short serves, be patient. Let the ball drop deeply, and focus on scooping the bottom. Scooping doesn't work for long serves because it sacrifices speed; you need to incorporate a bit of forward driving force. Honestly, penholders have it easy with left sidespin because their wrist flexibility allows them to wrap around the ball for topspin. It's just a matter of changing the contact point: brush here for side-backspin, and brush there for side-topspin. This is backspin. This is topspin. To completely deceive your opponent, your overall service motion must look identical for both spins. Contacting the ball during the first half of this motion produces backspin, while contacting it during the second half produces topspin. Once your wrist action becomes fast enough, your opponent will have no idea whether it’s topspin or backspin. Unfortunately, shakehand grips don't have that wrist mobility. Penholders can flip their wrist easily; if we shakehanders try that exact motion, the ball pops up, and everyone can read the spin. So what is the solution for shakehanders? To execute a left side-topspin, we must keep the racket face vertical and brush the pure side of the ball. Avoid brushing the bottom. Keep the racket face fairly vertical, and "pull" the ball upwards from bottom to top. It's this upward "pulling" motion that generates the side-topspin. This is exactly why a shakehander's left sidespin isn't as deceptive as a penholder's. A penholder can micro-adjust the contact point at the last millisecond; a shakehander physically cannot. For a shakehand side-topspin, you must stand the racket up, bite into the ball, and use your forearm and wrist to "lift" it. To keep it deceptive, execute the upward "lift," but immediately follow through with a violent downward fake motion. This destroys their ability to read the spin. They might miss the brief upward lift and only see your exaggerated downward follow-through, completely misjudging the spin. That's why shakehanders absolutely cannot copy penhold service techniques— it simply won't work mechanically. We have to rely on snapping our forearm and lifting our wrist to generate that side-topspin. Consequently, as shakehanders serving left sidespin, we must rely heavily on fake follow-throughs to deceive the opponent. Generally, there are two primary service philosophies. The first is absolute spin quality. Your side-backspin is so heavy they dump it in the net, and your side-topspin kicks so aggressively it jams them. This is playing your cards face-up. The second philosophy is perfect deception. Side-backspin. Side-topspin. Record a video of yourself and analyze if your backspin and topspin motions look absolutely identical. Identify the visual tells and drill rigorously to eliminate them, making both motions indistinguishable. If your motions look identical, the sheer deception will force your opponent into errors. If you naturally lack the power to generate massive spin, there is a third philosophy: sheer element of surprise. For example, from your ready stance, you suddenly fire a fast-long serve, or drop a quick short serve to the forehand. Or you suddenly switch to a hook serve. It's all about catching them off guard. Keep the opponent completely guessing. You defeat them using unpredictable rhythms and sharp placement variations. To summarize: your serve must have overwhelming spin, perfect deception, or highly unpredictable variations. Only by mastering these elements will your serves truly become a weapon in competitive matches.