This How The "Tomahawk" Goes...

Forehand Tomahawk Serve One of the serves that can be done with the shakehands grip is the forehand tomahawk serve. The main ideas of this serve are: It generates the same sidespin as a backhand serve (counter-clockwise for a right handed player). Sidespin is the most natural spin for this type of serve, so you will usually have at least a little sidespin when executing a tomahawk serve. It is possible to do this serve effectively from both the left corner of the table or the middle of the table. It is important to bend low when doing this serve. This extra expenditure of energy is part of what makes the tomahawk serve less popular than the forehand pendulum. The main serve motion is similar to throwing a tomahawk (trivially). Tomahawk serves can be either fast/long or short. Here is a picture of how you move your paddle to execute a TOPSPIN tomahawk serve: Topspin Tomahawk Serve Comments: It is important to note that you have to initially bend your wrist back counter-clockwise and then brush up, forward, and around the ball (counter-clockwise motion). To generate top/side spin you want to initially brush towards the front face of the ball (and also to the side a little) [ Forehand Tomahawk Picture shown below ]

Now let us know how to Here to execute an UNDERSPIN tomahawk serve: Underspin Tomahawk Serve Actually, this was pretty hard to draw. The idea is to chop forward (like a karate chop) and hit the ball between the 4 O'Clock and 6 O'Clock positions. This means you are contacting somewhere between the bottom and side of the ball. If you contact at the 3 O'Clock position then you'll add sidespin by itself, which is also good if that is what you are trying to do. If you want to create extra deception, you should to make a full semicircular motion, so that it is difficult to tell where you are contacting the ball. If you do this, the motion is more or less the same in both the topspin and underspin versions - the contact point is what varies. Finally, it is important to note that the sidespin in this serve helps to disguise whether or not you are putting underspin or topspin.