I have been playing Table Tennis, a remarkable game, also called Ping Pong, for many years now, and I’ve been using topspin to propel my shots even farther and with greater spin. A lot of beginning ping pong players don’t understand how to hit this way, and never grasp the concept of ‘spin’ on a ping pong ball, thus failing to catch one of the most important ‘tricks’ of the game of ping pong. There are many types of pingpong spin shots, but the topspin shot is one of the most popular, alongside the chop, a backspin shot.
To successfully hit topspin while playing Table Tennis, first grip the ball (if serving), and hold your ping pong paddle with the face tilted closed. If this sounds confusing, picture a ping pong paddle, first with the face pointed flat (directly at your opponent across the table), then tilted with the face down (making the face appear in a ” manner). This way, your ping pong paddle will be used to strike the ball so that it hits it from an angle, and pulls away. To do this, basically strike at the ball from this tilted angle, generating force that spins the balls forward, hence the term ‘topspin’, and you’ll have a basic topspin shot. When you serve, toss the ball up (the legal table tennis way to serve), and then hit it in this manner. To return a ball with topspin, do this as well, just without the tossing the ball up part (of course!), and instead hitting the ball coming at you with this method. You are simply hitting the ball with a ‘brushing up’ action, basically striking the ball and pulling the paddle over the top. This gets the ping pong ball to roll forward, spinning, thanks to this ‘pulling over the top’ action. At first, it may be too easy to over apply topspin, and send the ball dropping into the net before it can hit the other side, but with practice this may be overcome. The whole process is much easier to figure out if you just spend some time thinking about it, and how the shot happens. It is really quite simple once you have hit a few in the correct manner.
This shot is very useful in table tennis, and is great for hard and fast rallies. It put a lot of spin on the ping pong ball, and also makes it much harder for an opponent to return the ping pong ball shot, as he must counter the spin. Beginners are often overwhelmed by this shot, as trying to counter it with a basic return often does not work, leaving the ball spinning off in a random direction. It is important to master this shot, as it is a very widely used return and serve in table tennis. Topspin is also used in other ball and racket games, like tennis, and provides a powerful, fast shot with a lot of spin. Learn the shot, and start changing the style of your ping pong games with some wicked spins and fast dropping shots onto the table tennis court!
