Videos and Tips on How to Practice Your Serve for Tennis

As the serve is the most important part of the game, you need to practice it, over and over again. It is recommended to have a coach look at your serve first, to make sure you are serving correctly and then go off and practice it.

By even doing 20 minutes a week to start off with, you will improve your serve, making it easier to win those vital service games. See why you should practice your serve along with videos and exercises to improve your serve below.

Why practice your serve?

• In a match, it can be difficult enough to always serve well, but you will gain confidence knowing you have put in the effort of practicing it beforehand.
• Once you have made a decision where you are going to hit your serve, can you hit it where you intended?
• In doubles, it helps if your partner at the net knows where your serve is going to go so they can react accordingly.
• If you have a really good serve, sometimes all you have to do is serve to win your service games!
• Are your 2nd serves being attacked by a big forehand? Learn to place them more to the backhand area.
• If you are always having long rallies and feel under pressure when serving then it is good to have a couple of points a game at least where by you are able to finish off the points quickly.
• If you get more of your first serves in, you won’t be under pressure so much when you are hitting a 2nd serve.
• Having a good serve helps you dictate the points if your opponent cannot hit a good return back.

Tennis Serve Target Practice Progression:

Some exercises to practice your serve by yourself:

• Always warm up first before you start serving and hit serves gently at the start.
• Set up targets / areas on the court and try to hit towards them to improve your accuracy.
• See how serves you can get out of 10 in the service box, if you can get 7/8 move over to the other side of the court and do the same. If you can do this then split the box up into sections and see how many serves out of 10 you can get in each area.
• See if the 2nd bounce of your serve can go past the baseline, then maybe can you hit the back fence or side fence for example with your 2nd bounce
• Try to hit flat serves, slice serves and topspin (kick) serves.
• Play a game against yourself. E.g. If you get your serve in, you are 15-0 up. If you miss you are 0-15. This is to add a bit of pressure to your serves.
• Throwing tennis balls in a service action over the net to help with your action and power.

Serve Flat, Slice and Topspin (Kick) Serves:

20+ Serve Exercises:

Novak Djokovic Serve Biomechanics:

Dominic Thiem First and Second Serve Comparison:

Roger Federer Practicing his Serve: 🎾😂