Tennis Serve Drills

The drills that actually move a serve forward isolate one link in the chain at a time, worked in the order the serve is built. A serve that breaks down rarely needs more raw effort. It needs the one piece that is failing, drilled on its own until it holds.

That is why "just hit more serves" so often stalls. A player whose toss drifts will groove a flawed serve a hundred times over. A player with a solid toss but a flat, attackable second serve needs spin work. Another basket of flat first serves only buries the real problem. Find your weak link below and start there:

• Toss. The part you fully control, and the platform the whole motion is built on. Fix this first if your contact point moves around.
• Contact and trophy position. The loaded shape and the full-reach strike. Fix this if your serves float long or dump into the net.
• Pronation and power. The forearm snap and leg drive that create pace. Build this once the contact point is steady.
• Placement. Aiming the serve wide, into the body, or down the T. Add this when your serve lands in but gives the returner an easy ball.
• Spin. The slice that curves and the kick that jumps. Many coaches lean on the kick as a dependable second serve.
• The second serve. The serve that has to start a point on its own under a tight count. Practice it with stakes, not just reps.

No piece has to be perfect before you touch the next. Pour the time into whichever link is costing you points, and treat each drill's readiness marker as the signal to move on once it clears. For the same skill-by-skill treatment of the forehand, backhand, volley, and footwork, the complete tennis drills library picks up where this page leaves off.

Teaching the serve works best from the ground up, one link of the kinetic chain at a time. The serve is a chain of body segments firing in sequence, and USTA Player Development describes the body acting as linked segments, with force generated by one link transferred up through the next to build racquet speed(opens in new tab). Skip a link and the serve leaks power or accuracy, so a coach builds the pieces in order and only then puts them together at speed.

A simple teaching sequence runs in three phases. Coaches commonly break the serve motion into preparation (store energy in the loaded trophy position), acceleration (release it up and out to contact), and follow-through (decelerate safely). Most coaching progressions add the toss as a separate first step, because a wandering toss undoes everything that follows.

1. Groove the toss alone. No hitting. A repeatable toss that lands in the same spot is the single biggest lever for a beginner serve.
2. Find the trophy position and the full-reach contact. Load the body, then strike the ball at the top of the reach, which clears the net with margin.
3. Add pronation and the leg drive. Let the forearm roll over the ball and the legs push up, the two moves that turn a push into a real serve.
4. Place it, then spin it. Aim to targets, then learn slice and kick so the serve curves, drops, and starts the point on your terms.

Each phase has its own drills below. Work them in order if you are new, or jump to the link that is breaking down if your serve is already in play.

The toss is where a serve is won or lost before the racquet ever moves. It is the only part of the motion with no time pressure and no opponent, which makes it the fastest thing to fix and the most worth your attention. All three drills below run with just a basket of balls. They build a toss that lands on the same spot every time, peaks high enough to strike at full stretch, and gives nothing away about which serve is coming.

Once your toss drops onto the same spot again and again, the rest of the serve has a stable platform to swing up from. A serve struck off a steady toss repeats. A wandering toss never does. Fix the toss first. Everything downstream gets easier.

With the toss handled, the next piece is the loaded shape the serve launches from and the height of the strike. The trophy position stores the energy: tossing arm up, racquet arm cocked behind, knees bent. From there the racquet drops down the back and swings up to a contact point at the very top of your reach. These drills build that shape and that high strike, starting with a no-ball hold so you feel the position before you have to find it under a toss.

A serve struck at full extension clears the net with room and angles down into the box, while the same serve hit with a bent arm floats long or nets. Reach is free margin. Get the trophy shape and the high contact grooved, and the serve starts landing before you have added a drop of extra power.

Pace on a serve does not come from a stronger arm. It comes from the legs driving up and the forearm rolling over the ball at contact. Forearm pronation drives the racquet-face angle and pace on a power serve, with the legs and trunk feeding the chain underneath it. These drills build the pronation snap and the leg drive, then tie the new pace to a number you land, because a fast serve that misses wins nothing.

How fast is fast? At the very top of the women's game, the quickest serves climb past 200 km/h, around 125 mph and up. Those are outliers built on a lifetime of the chain you are grooving here. For everyone below that level, the numbers matter less than you think. Placement and a steady second serve win far more games than raw speed. That is why the next two sections carry as much weight as this one.

A serve that only lands in the middle of the box hands the returner an easy, comfortable strike. Placement is what turns a serve into a weapon: wide to drag the returner off the court, into the body to jam them, or down the T to steal the center. These drills put real targets in each box and split the reps between the deuce and ad courts, because almost every player serves better from one side and needs the other exposed.

Aiming the serve also sets up the shot after it. A wide serve opens the court for a forehand into the space; a T serve draws a weak reply to attack. Place the serve, link it to the next ball, and you are dictating the point from the very first swing. That is serving on your terms.

Spin is what makes a serve curve, drop, and stay safe under pressure. The slice serve brushes around the outside of the ball so it curves away and skids low, deadly out wide on the deuce side. The kick serve brushes up the back of the ball so it clears the net high and dives into the box, then jumps at the returner. Learn the kick and everything changes. The topspin buys a huge margin over the net, which is why so many coaches lean on it as a dependable second serve.

Spin serves take time, the kick especially, so judge them by movement first and pace later. A slice that curves at all is progress; a kick that clears the net high and drops is a second serve you can trust. Once the spin holds up under a count, your service games stop bleeding free points on missed second balls.

The second serve is the serve that decides matches. A weak one invites the returner to step in and attack every time the first serve misses, which is most games. These drills strip away the first-serve safety net and add a count, so the second serve has to carry real depth and spin under the same pressure a match applies. The serve clock matters here too.

That pressure is real even at the recreational level, and the rules build it in. Under the ITF Rules of Tennis, a player has a maximum of 25 seconds between points to start the next serve(opens in new tab), the so-called 25-second rule enforced with a visible serve clock at bigger events. Practicing the second serve with a steady pre-serve routine, a bounce and a breath inside that window, is what keeps it from rushing into the net when a game gets tight.

Every serve drill you ticked while reading lands in the session below, ready to run on court. A focused serve practice stays short by design: open with a few minutes on the toss, give the bulk of the time to the link you are rebuilding, work a set of placement targets, and close on a block of second serves under a count. Print it or send it to your phone, and the next practice has a defined sequence instead of a basket hit at random.

A serve gets rebuilt in stages, and the focus moves down the chain over the weeks: toss first, then pronation, then placement, then spin. Run a squad and every player sits at a different link on any given day, which turns one practice into six small serve plans at once. Scattered video clips cope until that happens, then they fall apart. This is where pulling your serve drills into Striveon's drill library, filed by skill and carrying the courtside cue you wrote on each one pays back: the toss-to-spin order is already there, and assembling the right session for each player takes a minute, not a folder dig.

The wins on a serve are quiet, a toss that finally settles, a first-serve count creeping from five toward seven in ten, a kick that begins to bite. Each drill's readiness marker is a number, which means it doubles as a record. Feeding those serve numbers into Striveon's athlete development tracking makes the call obvious: this player is ready for kick work, that one still owes the toss another week. When the serve here runs on its own, the full tennis drills library carries on with the strokes a developing player reaches for next.

Which serve drills you reach for depends on who is hitting and how far along their serve already is. The toss and trophy drills suit a true beginner; placement and spin suit a player whose serve already lands; the pressure games suit a competitor. Age shifts the equipment and the expectation more than the drill itself.

Serve Drills for Beginners

A beginner serve is built almost entirely from the first two buckets. Spend the bulk of practice on the toss drills and the trophy holds, then add the start-from-trophy serve so the up-and-out swing has a stable platform. Spin and targets can wait. A beginner needs a repeatable toss and a contact point at full reach long before any of that, and chasing spin too early just grooves a rushed motion. The serve bucket in our tennis drills for beginners guide pairs these with the rest of a first lesson, including the block return that comes back the other way.

Serve Drills for High School and Competitive Players

A high school or club competitor already lands a serve, so the practice turns to placement, spin, and the second serve under pressure. The wide, body, and T targets, the slice and kick drills, and the second-serve-only holds are the daily diet here. The single highest-value project for most developing players is a reliable kick second serve, because it removes the double fault that loses tight matches and lets the first serve swing freely. Build these into full timed sessions with our tennis practice plan templates, which slot serve blocks into 60- and 90-minute individual and group lessons.

Serve Drills for Kids and Younger Players

Younger players learning the serve do best with the throwing motion at the heart of it, because an overhead throw is a movement most children already own. Start them serving from inside the service line with a lighter, lower-compression ball so the box is reachable and the motion stays loose, then move them back toward the baseline as serves start landing. Keep sessions short and playful: the toss-and-freeze and trophy-hold drills turn the technical pieces into a game, which is how the shape sticks for a child without it feeling like drill work.