QUOTE(tsd @ Apr 29 2019, 07:12 PM)
oh so you join a novice competition

good for you. Did u win ?
Yes, tomahawk serve can do side spin as well, but tomahawk is a very tiring serve to do, especially on the knee. I had a lot of experience with this serve during my younger player years. You can win points right from it or get killed by doing it, if you do not recover fast after serve especially when your knee becomes very tired. Even Ding Ning is reducing her tomahawk serve nowadays. Tomahawk is only good for top sidespin, very hard to do short side bottom spin with tomahawk, even if you managed to do it, it will be a lousy one. So, still the 2 finger grip on shakehand bat, forward pendulum or reversed pendulum can make very good side-spin of any kind.
Well, if you do not believe what I said about those ball flight reader, nevermind. Next time when you encounter them you will understand or when you learn it yourself, you will also understand. Of cos even if someone can read ball flight/bounce, he will still be looking at contact point of the ball because if the contact is too obvious, there is no need to read ball flight, because much easier to read contacts than reading ball flight.
Try watch closely on your youtube video on professional players, they only watch opponent body language during serve, then see how their eyes track the ball after opponent hit the ball, they are reading flight, they will watch it bounce ( you can see how they pause with their eyes fixed on the bounce )... then only move in for it.
ITTF ban hiding of ball during serve is to protect weaker players. Reading ball flight is difficult and even more difficult for older players with poorer eye-sight. Imagine if everyone have to learn to read ball flight in order to play table tennis, the table tennis game will be so unpopular and will be dead.
Heavy spin serve are slow, plenty of time to see ball flight. So for ball flight, learn it and all your troubles with spin and long pimples will be gone. IF you dont believe, next time you go and play again, stay focused and watch the ball closely after they serve. There is a fixed pattern in ball flight, just deal with the pattern. A lot of time people could not be bothered to learn how to read ball flight. Unless you are too old with bad eye-sight, then no choice but to skip this skill.
You totally ignore the fact that it is the initial bat angle, ball contact and the the ball 1st landing position PROs are more interested than flight.
The flight a 15 yo kid who well trained already know by 2nd instinct. a strong sidespin will swerve left or right, but a PRO once they see the contact THEY ALREADY KNOW the serve FLIGHT pattern. even that is obvious to me. From THAT i get to judge where the ball will land on my side and move in to position.
Obviously you have never seen fast and wobbly flight serve before. Those are 'transition' spin top-sidespin, if you look at the flight you are too late. All has to determine even before ball take flight, server position, bat ball contact, 1st landing point, ball bounce....You speak of flight is just a general observation, there is no substance in your analysis at all.
LOL what a full load of bollocks when you says ITTF ban body block to protect weaker players. come on la, to this day the super PRO are still doing their best to confuse opponent with extra 'magic' show hand movement. You'd think they do it for fun? Watching flight is already too late, PROs generally serve according to their 3balls/5balls tactics, and i can tell you they dont serve short strong sidespin to let you 'admire' your so call 'flight'.
I dont know where you get the idea real PRO look at flight path. The flight path and landing point is for the receiver to 'JUDGE' beforehand. waiting to watch it flies is already too damn late.
This post has been edited by cede1975: Apr 30 2019, 02:16 PM