How to Serve in Ping Pong: The Rules and the Basic Serves

The serve is the one stroke where you have the ball entirely to yourself, and it is also the part of ping pong where house rules and official rules differ most. Plenty of casual players bounce the ball on the table and hit it with one hand, or hide the ball behind their body, or toss it sideways. All of that is outside the laws. This sixth post goes through what the ITTF’s Laws of Table Tennis say about a legal serve, what the receiver can expect, what happens in doubles, and the basic spins that Wikipedia describes. The full list of posts is on the guide’s opening page.

Image: A player serving at a tournament at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, January 2025 by Senior Airman Olivia Bithell (U.S. Air Force), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

What a legal serve looks like

I’ve read the service section of the laws in the ITTF Statutes 2026, and here it is in plain order. Each point below is a requirement in the laws:

1. Start with the ball resting freely on the open palm of your stationary free hand. The free hand is the one not holding the racket. Not a fist, not fingers pinching the ball, and the hand has to be still.
2. Toss the ball near vertically upwards, without imparting spin. The ball has to rise at least 16 cm after leaving your palm, and then fall without touching anything before you strike it.
3. Strike it as it falls. The ball must touch your court first, and then touch the receiver’s court directly. In singles, the text I read does not require a particular diagonal, so any part of the receiver’s court counts.
4. Keep the ball visible. From the start of the serve until you hit it, the ball has to be above the level of the playing surface and behind your end line. It must not be hidden from the receiver by you, your doubles partner, or by anything either of you wears or carries.
5. Get your free arm and hand out of the way. As soon as the ball is projected, your free arm and hand must be removed from the space between the ball and the net.

The laws say that it is the server’s responsibility to serve so that the umpire or assistant umpire can be satisfied that it complies. If the umpire is not sure, on the first occasion in a match they may interrupt play and warn the server. After that, any serve that is not clearly legal is considered incorrect. The laws also allow the umpire to relax the requirements where a physical disability prevents compliance.

One more detail. Wikipedia says that in casual games many players do not toss the ball upward, which it describes as technically illegal and an unfair advantage for the server. I’d say the same: if your group plays that way, it’s your game, but it’s good to know it isn’t the official serve.

A note on the toss angle

Wikipedia’s glossary of table tennis describes the toss angle as having a 30-degree tolerance from the vertical. The laws as printed in the 2026 Statutes say only “near vertically upwards,” without a number, so I would not quote the 30-degree figure as the current rule. I did not find where the glossary got it, and it may reflect an older version of the laws, but I can’t confirm that. My own suggestion: toss the ball straight up and you will never have to argue about it.

Lets, faults and the receiver’s side

Not every bad serve loses a point. According to the laws, the rally is a let, meaning it’s replayed, if the ball touches the net assembly in service but the serve is otherwise correct, or if the serve is delivered when the receiver is not ready and the receiver doesn’t try to hit it. There are other let conditions, including a disturbance outside the players’ control and play being interrupted by the umpire.

A point goes to the receiver if the server fails to make a correct service. And the receiver’s job is simple to describe: the ball, having been served or returned, has to be struck so that it touches the opponent’s court, directly or after touching the net assembly. Wikipedia adds that the receiver has to hit the serve before it bounces a second time on their side, and that returning serve is one of the hardest parts of the game, because the server’s first move is often the least predictable. That is its description, not a number from the laws.

Image: A player preparing to return a serve at the same tournament in January 2025 by Senior Airman Olivia Bithell (U.S. Air Force), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Serving in doubles

Doubles adds a diagonal. The laws say that in doubles, the serve must touch successively the right half court of the server and the right half court of the receiver. The centre line on the table, 3 mm wide, is there for this purpose, and it counts as part of each right half-court, as I mentioned in the equipment post.

Wikipedia’s description of doubles says the line’s only purpose is to facilitate the doubles service rule. It also lays out the order of play, which I’ve covered in the scoring post. The picture below is a diagram of the serving zones in doubles. It is small, so zoom in rather than trusting the details at a glance.

Image: A diagram of the serving zones in doubles by FDGO, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The basic spins in a serve

Once you can serve legally, you can start putting spin on the ball. Wikipedia’s article describes the main types, and I’ll summarise what it says and no more.

• Backspin is where the bottom half of the ball rotates away from the player, produced by hitting the base of the ball with a downward movement. The article says it is commonly used in service because it is harder to produce an offensive return from it.
• Topspin is the reverse. The article says it is the least common type in service at the professional level, because a topspin ball that is not moving fast is much easier to attack.
• Sidespin spins on a vertical axis. The article says it is predominantly used in service because the contact angle of the racket can be varied easily, and that it has little effect on the bounce, so the ball loses less spin and is harder to read.
• Corkspin has an axis parallel to the ball’s path. The article says it is used almost exclusively in serving, makes the ball dart left or right on the bounce, and is almost always mixed with another type because it is hard to produce on its own.

It also says that at the professional level most people serve sidespin combined with backspin or topspin. This tells you something useful: the laws demand that you toss the ball without spin, but nothing stops you from spinning it with the racket.

A practice routine for a legal serve

This is my own suggestion, not from a source:

• Toss and catch. Put the ball on your open, flat palm, toss it straight up, comfortably higher than the 16 cm minimum, and catch it. Repeat until the toss is boringly repeatable.
• Serve with no spin. Hit it as it falls, aiming the first bounce on your side near the net and the second on theirs. Check that your free hand is out of the way.
• Ask a friend to watch. Have them check the three things that go wrong most often: hidden ball, toss too low and a moving hand.
• Add one change at a time. Once the plain serve is legal and reliable, try slight brushing contact and see what the ball does. Don’t try to learn four spins at once.

Where to go next

The serve starts the point and the scoring post explains how the points add up, including who serves when. If you’re ready to hit the ball in rallies, the strokes post is next, and the bats post explains why the rubber changes how spin behaves.

Sources

• ITTF: Laws of Table Tennis, in the ITTF Statutes 2026 (PDF)
• Wikipedia: Table tennis
• Wikipedia: Glossary of table tennis