Tennis Drills – Varying Difficulty Levels

Fun, challenging drills can greatly accelerate a player’s improvement. Here are some tennis drills for beginners, intermediates, and advanced players.

Five Great Shots

1. Line up in the middle of the court near the baseline.
2. Feed the ball to the opponent, playing out the point.
3. Look for angles early in the rally, setting up a potential winning shot on the 5th.
4. Move up or down a stroke for an added variance.

What It Works On:

The reality is that a tennis player who can hit five great shots during appoint will often win the match. It might seem fairly simple, but against high-quality players, it becomes a challenge. Try to make the first few shots pretty high percentage, looking to extend the rally or forcing an unforced error from the opposition. By shot four, the focus should be turning to offense, unless a player finds themselves in a very vulnerable position.

Volley-To-Volley

1. Start at the service line and feed the ball to the opponent.
2. Exchange volleys in a similar manner as standard rallies.
3. Set target numbers to work on consistency.

What It Works On:

What’s great about this drill is that both players can benefit from it at the same time. So many volley drills only help out one person at a time, but this can turn into a mini-game of sports. Players are always trying to keep up with each other and keep a rally going for a long time.

Serve and Volley

1. One player serves, while the other receives.
2. Server’s focus is on getting the serve in, and then moving up towards the net for all additional shots.
3. Attempt to make every shot after the serve a volley.
4. Take turns serving and receiving.

What It Works On:

Not that many people play a serve and volley type of tennis game in today’s world. The way technology is, it can be very tough to use the strategy against good players. However, it does allow people to train and use it as a surprise method of sorts.

Training how to play serve and volley makes players feel a bit more comfortable with their movement. It no longer feels foreign to pull something like this off when moving in.