Sandy Farquharson explains how slice, topspin, and sidespin are created on a tennis serve. Slice comes from an open racket face brushing down, topspin from a closed face brushing up. Mixing slice and sidespin works, but slice and topspin cancel each other out.
Chapters
So before we look at the return, let's look at the mechanics of the spin first so we can actually understand the spin. There are 3 types of spin that a player can put on the ball. They can put the slice on the ball, which means the racket comes from above the ball. It is a slightly open racket face and they brush down, creating the revolutions that keeps it low at the other end. And that affects the height of the ball. You can have topspin, which is brushing up the back of the ball. And that means it comes from the other angle, essentially, of slice, in that the racket face is slightly closed, they brush up the top of the ball, and it creates revolutions in order to create a higher rebound at the other end. And then the other spin that you will likely see is sidespin. Sidespin. And this is when the ball is passing across the side of the racket. The racket face goes across the ball, and therefore, the revolutions are creating a sidespin on the ball. So if I was going to hit the 3 of these, I would hit my slice with the racket starting above the ball and I would come down creating slice on that ball. My topspin would go low to high and I would brush up the back of the ball and my sidespin would come across the ball to create those revolutions going around the side. Now, without wanting to complicate it more, you can have combinations combinations of spin. So a good serve will have a slice and a little bit of sidespin, so it's brushing down but coming around the ball slightly. You can't mix spins like slice and topspin because slice is down the back of the ball, topspin is over the top, and if you were to mix them, that would actually end up just being a flat serve. But you can mix slice and sidespin, and that is often a very tricky serve to deal with.
