depends on what type of game you are playing - are you a near table player or mid- or away from table player? a blocker? a spinner? A whacker (means don't care what ball, come only whack)?

But as a beginner, recommend to use Wooden bat, not composite (carbon/titanium/fibreglass etc) bat.
A 5-ply wooden bat will be ideal as an "Over-all" type of bat - can attack, can defend, block etc. Not too fast or too slow.

For beginners, the type of blade is not really a concern until they are strong with the basic skills. A wooden is most suitable to beginners and it is cheap as well.

Continuous multi ball drill of forehand and backhand drives.

Wow!!! Your basic skills is quite solid then.

On serves, you need lots of practice. I spend lots of time practicing serves. In general there are 3 types of serves:

1. Side spin serves (side underspin, side topspin, reverse side underspin, reverse side topspin)
2. Spin and without spin serve
3. Fast serve

I guess you have problems with the first type of serve. This comes with experience when identifying opponent's serve. Also, you must also know how to consistently create side topspin and side underspin serve then only are able to identify those types of serves come from your opponents. Good players tend to serve with the same motion but they hit the ball at different part of the blade or different part of the serving curve generating different type of serves.

To me it has nothing to do with the blade but identifying the opponent's serves. Also, depending on the rubbers you choose. You return the same serve differently with different rubbers i.e. pimple (long, medium and short pimples). anti-spin and inverted rubbers

We play every Wed at KSL Puchong, starting 9pm. Come join us.

Or can play at Avenue K shopping mall Jalan Ampang KL next Monday 23/11/2015 6.30pm onwards.
Just above the KLCC LRT Station.
Do contact me (will PM you my no. shortly)