[zachary]

hi uwe!

I'm not sure what you mean by kick-serves..but here's are some ideas for serve practice which someone taught me:

short serves

The key to a good short underspin serve, she said (ok ok - but she was an ex-Rumanian national player and has a lot of coaching experience), was (1) to get the ball to bounce as close as possible to the net on your side (2) to contact the ball on the bottom or even on the front-side of ball (i.e. the side facing your opponent) with lots of wrist action.

(2) is all timing and just takes practice, but she showed me something very simple for (1). Next time you're practicing short serves, place a long object (a stick, a rolled-up towel, etc) parallel to your end of the table, about half-way to the net. The goal is to serve so that the first bounce of ball is between object and net. Keep moving the object closer to the net as you get better.

long serves

the idea is to place them so that they bounce very deep on the opponents side of table. when practising, you can place your towel spread out so that it covers the last 30cm of the table on the opponent's side, and try to serve long so it bounces on the towel. then as you get better, slowly adjust it so it covers 25cm, then 20cm, 15cm etc.