I was playing my mens doubles partner in a game of singles tonight and he came up with an annoyong tactic to distract me. When he was serving he was throwing the shuttle up to head height and then when it came down he was hitting it. I believe he was still striking the shuttle low enough (under lowest rib), not lifting feet or doing a double motion. It seemed to make it easier for him to disguise his serve as i had to concentrate on the shuttle and his racket. So is this a legal service?
haha... you should watch how they serve in pro table tennis, when they throw the ball up like 10 ft up in the air to serve
legal. in the old days, before low backhand service in singles became popular, that's how many of the single players serve.
legal no rule stating it can't go in an upward direction first before striking it I've seen some professional womens singles players actually do that with their forehand high services
Thanks for the replies. I think I will try doing this occasionally to confuse players and catch them off guard by driving the shuttle at them or lifting it.
Quite frankly it probably does more harm to you than the person you're serving to. I don't see how you think it gives such an advantage.
Just doing once in a while may catch people out. If you did it from midcourt you should be able a fast under arm drive. Anyway I certainly found it distracting when my opponent did it to me and it certainly counted towards myself losing the game. When he first did it I wondered what on earth he was doing.
Just to filled on my previous reply you would lose control as it would be hard to throw the shuttle up uniformly each time but this would add to unpredictability making it harder for your opponent too.
I think Eriko Hirose gives her shuttle quite a toss before blasting her uber-high serve, no? Anyway, I can understand it was a distraction if he totally changed the way he served from nowhere. But it shouldn't have to make it harder for you. After all, it's not like you have to follow both the shuttle and his racket. You only need to watch his racket, right?
With this extra amount of time, one could walk a couple of steps forward in order to get more power in to the service stroke. eg. (right handers) step : right, left, hit.
to illustrate it, watch this old match between veteran Han Aping against a young Susi Susanti. watch Han Aiping's service. not bad a match either. Han Aiping came back from a deficit showing her experience against the young Susi. [video=youtube;jtTn0IZyO3M]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtTn0IZyO3M[/video]
Thanks for the video her service technique may have allowed here to generate power easier as the body is more stretched out. Come to think of it proffesionals do seem to hold the shuttle higher when they serve than most of people i play against. My partners technique was just to distract me. I thought he was going to do an overhead squash serve at first.