Top Tennis Serve Tips For Beginners

Have you recently started playing tennis? If you’re new to the game you may have begun by playing with underhand tennis serves. This is fine at first, but if you want to play more effectively, it's essential to learn how to do a correct tennis serve.

There are several different types of tennis serve you can try, but in this blog, we will be covering tennis serve tips for beginners. You will learn how to do the most basic tennis serve, which is known as a flat serve. As you get more experience, you may want to learn other kinds of serve such as a slice serve, or a kick serve.  

Here are our easy-to-follow tennis serve tips.

How to do a tennis serve as a beginner

If you've ever watched tennis competitions like Wimbledon, you will have seen professional players serving balls at over 140 mph. While these professionals have years of experience and training, the fundamentals of a tennis serve are always the same. By following our tennis serve tips you will soon start to master this crucial part of the game and begin hitting the ball more accurately and with greater speed.

Basic tennis serve tips: footwork tips

Making sure your feet are in the correct position is one of the most important parts of doing a tennis serve correctly. In this blog we are going to assume that you are right-handed - if you're left-handed, simply reverse all the following tennis serve tips.

When performing a tennis serve, your body should be positioned sideways in relation to the net and you should be standing behind the baseline. Your left foot should be pointing towards the net post. Your right foot should line up behind it.

Whether you’re serving into the right- or left-hand service box, your foot position should be the same. You just need to shift along the baseline so you’re on the appropriate side of the court.

Gripping the racket for a flat serve

To do a basic tennis serve, you need to grip the racket correctly. The racket should be held out in front of you with the face perpendicular to the ground (the narrow edge should be towards the floor). Your hand should be towards the bottom of the handle with your index finger knuckle over the first wide face of the racket’s handle.

At the same time, you should be holding the ball with the fingertips of your left hands, close to the throat of the racket.

How hard should you grip the racket?

When performing a tennis serve, being able to hit the ball hard will make it more challenging for your opponent to respond. Transfering a lot of power through your tennis serve means you’re more likely to get an Ace - which gives you points without wasting energy. 

Many tennis players (both beginners and more experienced) often believe they should grip the racket hard if they want to hit the ball hard. Intuitively you will feel that a strong grip will transfer into more power passing through to the ball. But in reality this isn’t the case. 

In a powerful tennis serve, most of the speed actually comes from your wrist and the head of the racket. So, a slightly looser grip means your wrist and racket will move more - giving more power to your serves. Check out our tennis serve videos for more detail. 

The tennis swing

To serve the tennis ball, you should go through the following steps. Here’s how to do a tennis serve:

• As your left hand moves to toss the ball into the air in front of you, your racket should go down and backwards in a smooth arc. 

Some beginners mistakenly swing the racket forward while tossing the ball up, but this wastes time and means you’ll be in more of a rush to get into the correct position. 

• When tossing the ball in the air, it should rise up slightly in front of you. Keep your eyes on the ball as it rises. 

Many beginner tennis players don’t throw the ball high enough, which means they don’t have as long to time their hit. The ball should go at least a metre above your head. 

Wear a cap or visor to reduce discomfort from sunlight getting in your eyes.

• Meanwhile, your racket should swing up behind you and you should bend your elbow as if to scratch your back with the racket. 

Many beginners do not bend their elbow at this stage. Failing to do so will mean that you have to generate more energy from your wrist when hitting the ball, which can be uncomfortable.

• While the ball is still in the air, your weight should shift onto your back leg.

• As the ball starts to descend, you should swing the racket up in a smooth motion. The aim is to hit the ball while it is at the highest point you can reach. This means the ball is more likely to go over the net. 

Some more experienced players will jump at this point in order to get more height, but it’s not essential to begin with. 

Wearing lightweight tennis clothes will allow your body to move much more freely at this stage.

• Try to hit the ball with the sweet spot in the middle of the racket. The face of the racket should be flat, and facing towards the net.

• As you swing forward, your weight should pass to your front foot. 

Wearing a pair of stable and supportive tennis shoes is really helpful here – it will prevent you from slipping and mean you’re ready to move.

• As soon as you’ve hit the ball, you need to step into the court and prepare for your opponent’s return shot.

Always keep your eye on the ball, rather than your opponent. This will give you more time to respond.

Put these tennis serve tips into practice

When you know how to improve your tennis serve, you’ll soon notice the difference in your accuracy and speed when serving. With a little practice, the correct tennis serve motion will become second nature, and you won’t even have to think about it.

For more tips on tennis, head over the ASICS Tennis Academy. Or browse our men’s tennis shoes and women’s tennis shoes to find the right footwear for your game.