Why Ping Pong Serving is Important

Everyone loves to rally and beginners are more than happy to spend hours practicing rallying strokes. But is the rally the most important aspect of the ping pong game?

Many would say that it is not; serving is much more important in ping pong or table tennis. Let’s take a look at why this is so:

Every rally starts with a serve.

I guess this is obvious, but if you think about it, you will spend a lot of time on your serve shots. If you are playing a game of singles, you will be serving half of the time. In a doubles match, you will serve a quarter of the time. So, that could potentially be anywhere from 16 to 50 serves. Even if you only have a bad ping pong serve 25% of the time, you’ll still give your opponent several opportunities for free points; and of course that is a bad thing!

You have total control over your serve.

In ping pong, the serve is the one shot which the other player has no influence over. You have complete control of the ball.

The serve sets up your favorite ping pong shots.

You can utilize the serve to set up play for more of your favored shots in the subsequent ping pong rally. You can also use your serve in such a way as to keep your opponent from using his preferred shots. If backspin strokes are your best shots, then using a short backspin serve will create the opportunity to play backspin rallies. In the same manner, if you are best at hitting the topspin balls, then you could use a short or long topspin serve to produce topspin rallies. In addition, if you struggle with a particular stroke such as the sidespin, then you can avoid it all together in your serve.

A good serve prevents a powerful attack.

A strong opponent will attack a bad serve and put you under pressure right away. A good serve not only prevents a powerful attack, but sets you up to make your own attack. This is an important strategy in ping pong especially when playing tough opponents.

A good serve puts your opponent on defense.

A well executed serve will put the pressure on, since your opponent knows he won’t have an easy rally to look forward to. It will also enable you to score some easy points from his mistakes.

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