Why Did Ma Long Switch to the Reverse Pendulum Serve Against Wang Chuqin?
This is a new, technique-focused Q&A column. The expert answering is a retired national-team player and senior coach who prefers to stay anonymous — they just want a quiet life and a good night’s sleep, not fame. Sharing these insights felt genuinely valuable, so this “Reaching the Summit” column was born.
At the 2024 Macao World Cup men’s singles semifinal, why did Ma Long mostly serve the reverse pendulum against Wang Chuqin? How is it different from a regular pendulum serve?
Wang Chuqin is left-handed. If Ma Long serves a short reverse-pendulum ball to Wang’s forehand, Wang doesn’t dare flick it with full power — because his flick generates power moving to the left, and the reverse-pendulum spin also flies left, so committing to power is risky. To do it anyway, he’d have to move much further left to find the ball’s back-left point. Once he travels that far to the forehand corner and then flicks, Ma Long can push a quick line down the other side, and Wang is left very uncomfortable and passive.
In short, after the reverse-pendulum serve the left-handed Wang doesn’t dare commit power and has to add a lot of arc to be safe, so his return tends to go to Ma Long’s backhand. If it goes to Ma Long’s forehand, the ball — which Wang couldn’t power up — arrives with weak pace and speed, basically handing Ma Long a forehand point. With a regular pendulum serve, the ball flies right; as a lefty, Wang flicks to the left, so he can power it more easily by borrowing the spin.
An opponent like Ma Long has all kinds of unfathomable ideas — he’s a slippery player. Against Liang Jingkun he twiddles the blade forehand-to-backhand and it looks like chaos; against Lin Gaoyuan, if he can’t win, his deliberate slow-down can get mistaken for a lack of fight, or even match-throwing in the crowd’s eyes.
When you can’t read the spin clearly on serve receive, is there a safe, two-birds-with-one-stone option?
If you can’t read the spin, wait until the ball is in its descent before dealing with it. Pure backspin is easy to read; for weak backspin, no-spin or weak topspin, you can place the blade under the ball at roughly 80 degrees and then accelerate, pushing the ball forward with the blade backing it. This largely cancels the opponent’s spin, and you can try to angle the push. If your touch is good enough, add a little “wiping” motion as you push and you can put some of your own spin on it.
When a child first learns the game, what’s the key to a good start?
The key is not to use force. Find the feel of your center of gravity — sense your core, learn to borrow power, and develop ball feel. Don’t swing hard before you can even play, because that power comes from the arm rather than the body’s core, and it’s a real pain to fix later.