How to Serve in Tennis: For a consistent & reliable serve {serving rules included}
How to Serve in Tennis for Beginners
So here you are learning how to play tennis and you’ve reached the serve. You’ve heard ALL about the difficulties & importance of the serve. And it really IS an important tennis shot. What makes it difficult for beginners is using the continental grip. Most beginners try to pull a fast one & revert back to the forehand eastern grip. Don’t do it! You’ll put yourself in a straight jacket from the start! If you use the wrong grip you’ll have zero variety, lack power and won’t have as much fun! Why? Because all the hype around how hard the serve is will come true. Build your beginner serve using the continental grip, simple progressions, a dose of patience, and you’ll do great! And please take your ball toss seriously! 🙏
If you’re going to play tennis with other people you’re going to have to serve. Put the idea of power aside for now & let’s get you comfortable building a consistent, reliable serve.
The serve in tennis is one of the core foundational tennis strokes. The server in singles or doubles is considered to have the advantage of the moment. Learn to serve using a continental grip, a ball toss out in front and apply simple progressions to help coordinate your hitting arm & toss to have a consistent serve.
Pro Tip: 🌅
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How to Serve in Tennis: In a Nutshell
How to Serve for Beginners
Toss the ball higher than you can reach with the racket high above your head. As the ball starts to descend, extend your body upwards to contact the ball.
Make sure the toss is in front of you. If you were to let it bounce, it should land in front of the baseline.
Watch the ball as it leaves your tossing hand. Maintain your head & eyes up on the ball until contact.
Focus on making contact as high as possible to ensure the ball goes over the net.
Your body should land over the baseline as you finish the serve. (it’s not a foot fault if you make contact with the the ball from behind the baseline)
Quickly recover back behind the baseline in a ready position, ready for the next ball.
Who’s Advantage is it? It’s the server’s advantage
In singles matches you serve in every other game. In doubles with 4 players on a court, each server will serve every 4th game until the set is over. The player who serves is considered to have an advantage. If you’re not confident serving or can’t get your serve in, you’ll immediately hand the advantage to your opponent.
Let’s break it down …
How to Serve: Continental grip
Beginners start out learning that comfy cozy forehand eastern grip and all is right in the world. But this grip on the serve will only limit you. Can you get the ball in? You can. Is that your goal? Yes. BUT, in the forehand grip you’ll be limited on power AND you’ll only be able to serve a flat serve. So unless you’re serving bombs each & every time, anyone can learn the pace of a big flat serve and easily block a return back to you. Believe me, it won’t be that exciting for long! Eventually you’ll want to be able to hit a slice, topspin or kick serve. And you’ll never do that in the forehand grip.
The correct serving grip is the continental grip. Some places around the world call it the hammer or chopper grip, fyi.
Pro Tip:💥
Hold your racket handle very loosely on the serve. Certainly don’t hold your racket handle tightly. The wrist needs a lot of fluidity on the serve. Both for pronating & coming over the ball.
The Beginner’s Serve Stance
Your starting position will begin behind the baseline - close to the center mark. Start on the right side of the center mark since that’s where you’ll begin the 1st point of a game. In singles it’ll mean your close to the middle of court for a (likely) cross court return. But in doubles you’ll stand out wider since you’ll have a partner at the net on your side. Standing out wider will bypass hitting your partner in the back of the head.
Position your hips & shoulders away from the court. Right handed players should have their left shoulder pointing towards the opposite service box where you intend to serve. And your left foot closest to the baseline.
Left handed players will have their hips & shoulders again sideways, with the right shoulder pointed at the diagonal service box and the right foot closest to the baseline.
Your feet should be shoulder width apart, at a 45 degree angle. Make sure your weight is evenly balanced with a slight shift into the front foot. As you improve you’ll naturally shift your weight but for now - neutral is good. You’ll shift back into the back foot as you start your serve motion.
The Ball Toss: Take it seriously
Tried & True Ball toss for all levels
With the ball in your tossing hand - hold the racket & ball together in front of you. As you begin to toss the ball up, your racket will go back at the same time. Careful with the height of your toss, eh’. Make sure the toss is slightly higher than your fully extended racket upwards and slightly out in front of you. If you were to let the ball drop & bounce, it should land in front of the baseline. Your ideal tossing position would be at 1:00 on a clock - directly off your front left toe.
Keep in mind if you toss the ball too high you’ll find it difficult in the beginning to get your timing down. AND if you get in the habit of hitting any ole’ toss that goes up!? It’ll be near impossible to have any consistency at all.
So take your toss seriously and practice it. You can find a tried & true tossing drill here.
The Serve Motion: Takes coordinating the moving parts
As I mentioned earlier, your racket & tossing arm move simultaneously. Your racket drops & goes back behind you as your tossing arm gently (lock your tossing elbow to help with control) goes up to release the ball out in front.
As you begin your swing to make contact with the ball, you’re hips & shoulders will rotate forwards toward the court as you swing through and hit the ball. That rotation from your sideways stance - that turning motion … is a big source of your power.
Beginner’s Serve: The contact point
Aim to make contact with your toss out in front of you as it’s coming down from the highest point of a good toss. You’re not making contact behind you, to the left or right side of your body. Bad tosses might cause you to do that. Only hit tosses at 1:00PM out in front of you. Got it!?
{You’ll notice I’m starting to stress your ball toss position a lot. Why? Because Soooo many intermediate players come to adult tennis holidays to have us fix their serves. But the tosses are all over the place and they’re locked in to a forehand grip. Please don’t take your ball toss lightly. Develop it. (Like your serve depends on it)
Keep your eyes & head up on the ball like the main image above.⬆️
Stay glued to the ball with your head up until your racket makes contact with the ball. Make contact as you’re fully extended upwards. This is how you’ll clear the net from behind the baseline. Remember to reach UPWARDS to make contact. If you throw up a toss only to let it fall down close to your head it’ll never make it over the net. *This is the biggest error I find in my intermediate adults. Letting a toss drop too low!
Follow through across your body to finish the stroke. If you’ve done it correctly - you should land inside of the court. Crossing over the baseline to meet your toss and make contact out in front is a good thing! It’s natural that your body’s weight & swing speed will pull you inside the court. (Think of it like your throwing your whole body into the shot, forwards)
Lastly, you can’t stay inside the court - in no mans land. Get outta’ there quickly. Recover back behind the baseline, into the ready position as you prepare for your opponents return of serve.
There’s a lot to put together so learning the serve slowly using progressions will help you build up to a full serve over time. Whatever you do, don’t stress. This takes any player serious development time and consistent practice.
How to Serve: Progressions will help coordinate the arm action
Pronation progression for the beginner’s serve
Here’s a module from Indie TENIS How to play tennis for beginners online course. It lets you see all the important moves rolled into 1 using an easy progression.
1.) Toss the ball up & out in front ( you’re working the correct toss position)
2.) Concentrate on the throwing action of the racket in front (if you’re in the continental grip - you have successfully pronated, extended & connected with the ball out in front WHILE clearing the net from the service line. (Next, move to the baseline & try it from there.)
This simple drill above helps you progress to a full service motion. First by coordinating the arm action from the service line then from the baseline with the same goal in mind. Getting the ball over the net and inside the service box is ALWAYS the goal.
Pro Tip: 💥
Point your lead shoulder at the box you want to serve towards. Allow for your feet to make whatever tiny adjustments they need to for that defining shoulder point. Remember! You need balance & natural comfort in your serve stance. As you connect with the ball - drive your racket face towards that service box & watch the ball smooth sail towards your intended direction. Like magic!
You may not get this tennis stroke right away. Keep trying and don’t even think about power in the beginning. You’re already adding the body turn - your #1 source of power.
In the beginning work on coordinating all the moving parts & developing your timing with the tennis ball. That’s enough. That and developing a consistent ball toss!
Later, we’ll work on developing your wrist snap. (terrible term I know! But it’s used all the time.)
Coordination … Timing … Accuracy always before power.🏋️
Tennis Serve Rules
A serve starts every point in tennis.
The server gets two serves each point. (it’s important the server carry 2 balls to the line instead of serving 1 and walking around for a 2nd ball.
After a point, the server has 25 seconds between points to serve again.
Regardless of right or left handed players. A new game at 0 - 0 (love - love) begins with both players on the right side of the the center mark.
Serves are only served diagonally into a service box.
If a ball touches any part of the service box lines - it’s good.
A double fault is when you miss both your 1st & 2nd serves. Server loses the point.
A let in tennis is when a ball hits the white tape on the net and lands in the box. Server is granted another serve.
If a servers ball hits the white tape on the net and it lands outside the service box, it’s a fault.
Server serves with both feet behind the baseline.
If the server touches the baseline with their foot before or during contact with the ball it’s called a foot fault.
After each odd game number, both players change opposite court ends.
Serve is decided by a coin toss or racket spin.
If you win the coin toss or racket spin you can choose to serve or receive.
The right service box is called the deuce box.
The left service box is the Advantage side (Ad in / Ad out)
Server is responsible for calling out the serve with their score called 1st.
Remember even if you’re gifted hand eye coordination and you’re sailing through your initial tennis core stroke lessons. Don’t get discourage when you’re first learning the serve. It’s tricky coordinating for everyone. I mean, just look at all the rules around this core stroke serve!!! You don’t see rules for a forehand or a backhand volley, right? It’s a stroke that once you get the feel for the it. Find your favorite ball toss height and understand the contact point, you’ll be serving in no time.
From there you’ll develop your own personalized first and 2nd serves. You’ll practice moving the ball around on your opponents body. Out far to their forehand (so you can pull them off the court). Serve down the middle of the service box (to make them receive an uncomfortable return) or a ball served into the backhand (to pull them and create a weak return). That’s what you’ll want to practice over and over again.
Then you’ll start adding other types of serves. Like the flat serve, slice serve, kick serve, topspin serve, And that’s where things get interesting.
Hang in there, you’ll get the feel for it.🌱
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With love from Mallorca~