Red Ball Bounce Feed Lesson

I used this lesson plan during a recent Red Ball clinic and it worked like a charm. Hope you have the same success.

It's never too soon to teach your beginner tennis students how to bounce feed properly. You gotta walk before you can run, as the saying goes. Bounce feeds are an easy way for students to get a point or a rally started if they are having difficulty with an underhand or overhand serve. This lesson plan is composed of several simple activities in a progression that should culminate in the students bounce feeding and perhaps getting into a brief rally if we're all very lucky :)

Warm Up: Wacky Knees
Wacky Knees is a fun warm-up I have posted about previously. To recap, students stand at the baseline. They place a ball between their knees, then move forward to whatever spot you have designated, and underhand toss the ball across the net. For Red Ball players on a 36-foot court, I have them move from baseline to service line. Sure, they will eventually need to serve from baseline, but for young players and for warming up, cheating in a little bit to the service line is fine for now.

Underhand Toss Technique Tip: make sure players are tossing with a smooth underhand motion, not overhand, and are stepping toward the net with the opposite foot as they throw. They should use this same weight transfer step in the next progression, hitting the ball with their racquet rather than underhand toss.

For warm-up purposes, students rotate in and continue this activity until all balls are across the net. If you would like to make it more competitive, divide them into two or more teams with equal numbers of balls per team. First team to get all of their balls over the net, wins. If the ball falls out of the knees, player returns to baseline and tries again. Note: very young players may need to be reminded where to put the ball - for some reason my Red Ball players often tend to want to put the ball way too high up near the groin area. (????!!!!)

If you want to add more of a challenge, require the ball land in one of the service boxes. Even harder? Have it land cross court in the service box.

Handy for keeping score,
 but don't let them slow things down

If you have a larger group and want to cut down time waiting in line, have each student run over to other side of court as soon as they have tossed their ball. Once across court, they are in charge of retrieving one ball each (tossed by next player) and placing it in a hopper on that side. This way they can work on their ready position and tracking the ball. Also remind them to let it bounce before they catch it, as we are simulation a return of serve here. If you think they can handle one more skill on the return side, have them call balls In or Out after the bounce.

Caution - don't have them bring the balls back to the starting side, or you will never run out of balls and this will be a neverending warmup. Unless you are short on balls! If you are low on balls, have them retrieve and return balls from the far side and just end the warm-up when X amount of balls have landed in the proper spot across court. If you use this second option, they may need help keeping track of score. Pins are handy for scorekeeping but sometimes slow things down.

The Bounce Feed
Next step is to have the group or teams perform the same activity, doing Wacky Knees forward into a certain spot in the court. But now, instead of underhand tossing the ball over the net, have them bounce feed it over.

Bounce Feed Technique Tips:

Right-handed player turned 90 degrees
from net, racquet hand on baseline side

• Player faces to the side, 90 degrees from net with dominant hand closest to baseline and drop arm (the one holding the ball) closest to net. 
• Drop arm should be held out straight at shoulder height, 45 degree angle toward the net post. This angle is important. Most beginners want to hold both arms out in front, parallel to each other, like a Tennis Frankenstein.
• Back of hand should be pointing toward sky with ball pointing toward ground. 
• Drop ball, let it bounce, then hit it over the net. The ball is dropped gently; just release the fingers. It is not thrown, not tossed up in the air. 

Some students find a scooping motion helpful when swinging the racquet to lift the ball enough to clear the net. Some coaches don't like the 'scoop' analogy, but until we get to where we are understanding and hitting topspin, at this age (5-7), it's fine IMO. Some students will want to hit the ball before it bounces. For these, some students find it useful to simultaneously say, 'bounce, HIT' , or have you say it. Some young players don't mind if I stand behind them and we both scoop/hit the ball together a time or two. But some players don't like this, so I always ask first! Players who are struggling with this skill often benefit from the visual and the confidence they get from seeing the ball they just hit go over the net, even if they had a little help from me.

Begin with just requiring the ball to go over the net and inside the lines (not necessarily the service box - anywhere in playable court). When they master this, require it to land in service box; finally, in correct service box. 

Once they are bounce feeding pretty consistently from the service line, reverse the starting positions and have them moving (still using Wacky Knees) from some point in the court BACK to the baseline and bounce feeding from there. 

Remember you also want players on the receiving/returning side, catching balls after the bounce and working on calling In or Out. 

Keep the scoring format the same to avoid confusion. If you were having them empty the hopper in the first round, continue. If you were getting to X points first among teams, ditto. Try not to switch scoring formats mid-stream. The focus should be on mastering the skill (bounce feed), not the scoring format.
Play!
Your final goal in this lesson is to have a player on the other side of the net returning the amazing bounce feeds your students are now generating from their baseline, so we can have a rally!

For your final progression, transition to the returning player also having a racquet (instead of just catching the balls barehanded).  Once we have players at each baseline with racquets in hand, we're ready to rally! There are many ways to structure this, such as:

• Bounce feed side is Challenger; returning side is Champ. Players rotate to Champ/return side after their bounce feed turn, regardless of outcome. 
• More competitive: Players move to Champs/return side only if they win the point or series of points. 
• Group/team based: Groups moving to Champs side as teams, either per point or after winning X amount of points. 

Use your imagination!

The Takeaway: encourage parents to let their players always start the point with a proper bounce feed when they are out playing together on their own.

Fence Trap

After scouring over 400 posts on this blog I cannot for the life of me find one on trapping the ball against the back fence to improve service toss and point of contact. How can I have overlooked this? It's a tried-and-true technique for improving serve, no matter the age or ability of the player.

You will need a fence or wall 2-3 feet taller than your player. Stand sideways next to the fence/wall with your non-dominant foot touching the fence/wall and your tossing arm closest to fence/wall. Toss ball as if you were going to hit an overhand serve, so ball needs to be 2-3 feet higher than your head, or about as high as player can reach with racquet. Trap ball against fence with racquet.

Players will soon find this is easier to do with a good quality toss out in front of them (which hopefully they have perfected by doing the Tap N Toss activity). Tossing behind them pretty much makes this impossible.

Once player is comfortable with this, have them turn 180 degrees and face the net, or move to the actual baseline. Visualizing the fence trap activity (now imagining the fence at the baseline), have them try tossing and 'trapping' the ball. Since there is no fence/wall in their way now, they should have a pretty good quality point of contact at the baseline.

Notes: if you are using a fence, avoid the support poles. Very hard on the racquet.

Here's a video of one of my Red Ball students performing the activity:

Also here's a great article from about.com listing some other common-sense strategies for improving the serve.

Serve Smarter

PTR certified teaching professional Marcin Bieniek has some great tips on serve instruction in the November/December 2014 issue of TennisPro Magazine. The tips are not so much technical info as how to include the serve in the lesson plan in such a way that students are working on serves more effectively. If you are a PTR member or subscribe to the magazine, good for you - read the article! If you don't have access to it, I want to just give a couple of highlights.

My biggest takeaway is Coach Bieniek's recommendation to start as many points as possible during the lesson with a serve. I need to do better on this. I have many young beginners for whom getting the ball over the net and into play is a challenge, much less getting a serve in. So we begin many activities with a bounce feed or a coach feed. My logic is to get more 'touches' (in the soccer parlance), because if we waited for a serve to be 'in', we would be waiting a looooooong time. However - sometimes we go way too long without at least trying some serves. My bad. I have been thinking this week about how to incorporate serves into my beginner lessons with out slowing play to a crawl.

I sometimes have my students try their two allotted serves. If they double fault, rather than awarding a point to the opponent, I toss in a third ball as a serve. This way they can keep hammering away at the serve, but there is still a chance there will be a rally if I throw a ball in, rather than teams constantly winning games by virtue of a series of double faults by their opponents.

I also sometimes have my students aim for the correct service box, but also instruct the returner to play anything they can get to if it comes over the net and into the singles court. I have the returner call it 'out' to make sure they know it is out even though I have asked them to play it anyway. Jury is still out on whether allowing them to play 'out' serves is worth the trade-off of getting a rally going.

Coach Bieniek has a couple other lesson plan tips that I like. One is to vary the placement of the serve portion of the lesson, rather than always having it at the beginning or the end. Another is to pair serving with recovery and hitting the next ball. I agree with him that often players are so enamored of their serve, they forget to continue to play the point! I will be elaborating on both of these in future blog posts.

Do you have any tips on improving the serve for young beginners without bringing the learning process to a screeching halt?

Serves and Overheads

Here's a great serve and overhead exercise from Steve Smith at Tennissmith.

Group Serving Lesson Plan

Here's a serve lesson plan great for larger groups.

Warm-up
Form two teams. Station each time at the service line. Players take turn tossing balls overhand across the net into the correct service box (cross court). Continue until ball hopper is empty.

Ball pickup/water break

Skill activity: modified Clean Sweep
Teams at service line. One team member is sent across net cross court from rest of team. Players take turns serving from service line. If serve is in, team member across net retrieves ball and places it on the ground at net as a scorekeeping device (one ball = one point). Server now runs over to other side of court and is now score keeper. Next player in line now serves. Play continues until one team achieves 10 points.

Coach is stationed near servers. Teaching opportunities with groups between rounds and during serves with individual players.

Ball pickup/water break

Repeat above activity moving players back, now hitting serves from halfway between service line and baseline. Have teams switch sides of court to get practice serving from both ad and deuce.

Ball pickup/water break

Final repetition from baseline. Team winning best two out of three wins.

We had time at the end of our one-hour clinic for a round of Champs v Chumps which served as our cool down. They had done enough serving for one day. :)

Safety Tip: Be sure players take care not to run in front of servers or score keepers to avoid being hit by balls or slowing the game down.

This is a good cardio workout in addition to being a good serve drill. One player commented it 'wasn't fair' because the other team had one more player. I explained to them that was only an advantage if the other team was serving better. Players soon learned the more efficiently and quickly they ran this activity, the quicker they would win. It was fun to watch them manage themselves, encourage each other, and basically just figure stuff out on their own.

Serve Caterpillar

I can't believe I haven't posted this activity before, but I can't find it anywhere. I use it frequently with many variations. You will need some spots.

Throw down the spots outside the court sidelines about five feet apart starting at net position and progressing until the last spot is behind the baseline in the usual serving position. Players take turn serving from positions within the court aligned with the spots, starting with the 'head' of the caterpillar (the position closest to the net). Players move back one position for each serve hit in. A missed serve means player goes all the way back to the first position closest to the net. First player to reach baseline and hit a serve in, wins.

This game is easily converted to a team activity, with players on each team taking turns hitting. In other words, no fair having the same person on the team hitting all the serves! Whether playing individual or team, play best two out of three and switch sides (deuce/ad) each round.

Hint: when you are laying down the spots, try not to put two of the same colors together. It gets confusing trying to remember who should be serving from which spot/color. Having each position a different colored spot helps everyone keep track.

Slam Bang Serve & Return

I cooked up this drill idea the other day while running a serve caterpillar. I often have players returning serve during serve drills to reduce time spent in line and of course work on the second most important shot of the game. This drill will put extra pressure on the returner when the server is serving from up close.

Two players face each other across the net. One is serving; the other is returning. Serving player is doing a serve caterpillar, meaning they are working their way back from the net to the baseline. Server is serving from four stations: mid service box, service line, 60 ft. blended line/no man's land, and baseline. Returning player is just trying to get their own returns in play. Players do not play out the point. Activity should move quickly to get new players rotated in.

One point is awarded for every ball correctly hit. Server has one chance per position. Any misses by the server = a point for the returner. Winner stays and switches roles. Ties are broken with a serve from the baseline until someone wins.

Since players do not play out point, up to 4 players could be playing simultaneously per court with additional players waiting to rotate in.

Absolute Serve

Here's another great drill idea from Cosmin Milhoca at WebTennisDrills.com. It is similar to the Keep It Deep serve drill, but adapted for a single player for either practicing alone or during a private lesson.

Player serves out a game against an imaginary opponent. First serve must be hard enough that it bounces 2 times or fewer before hitting back fence. Second serve may bounce 3 times or fewer. If either of these conditions is not met, serve is considered a fault. Double fault = point for 'opponent', natch.

Corners

I cooked up this drill myself as a way to work on return of serve. Borrowing a little from a drill I saw that Jim Courier used to use. Bet his targets were way smaller, though! You will need some way to mark off the targeted area of the court.

Ad side corner of 60 foot court marked
off as a generous-sized target

Mark off a good-sized area deep in the corner of one half of the court. Coach or other player is on this side of the court, feeding or serving. All other players are cross court returning. One at a time, they return the fed/served ball. Once chance only on each feed. If server/feeder misses, receiving player waits until they receive a good serve. First to 21, wins. Anyone landing on 13 must go back to 0. Points awarded as follows:

0 = over net but out of play
1 = straight ahead
2 = cross court in front of service line (short)
3 = cross court behind service line (deep)
-1 = into net

Anyone hitting the marked off target (cross court very deep) is an INSTANT WINNER. The Instant Winner component can be the great equalizer and is very popular and motivating with my students.

Very simple to convert this game to a team-based activity, so good for larger groups, camps, etc. Make sure to feed/serve quickly, one chance each, teams alternating turns. If they are lollygagging, I feed/serve even if no one is 'ready', thus giving that player/team a missed opportunity = minus 1 point for ball not making it over the net. Trust me, you only need this to happen once, especially in a team setting, for everyone to pick up the pace and rotate through quickly!

Once game is won, rotate new player into serving/feeding position. Move target to opposite side of court on each rotation. So for example if you were hitting to deuce side, move to ad.

Want to make it harder? Make the target smaller. Easier? Reduce number of points needed to win, or hand-feed adjacent to player rather than serving to them.

Thank You, Jeeves

Thank You, Jeeves is a serve warm-up. You will need at least four players.

Pair players into teams of two. Place four balls on the ground on each side of court. Points are not played out so you can put them wherever you want as long as they are on the same location on both sides of court so as not to give one team an advantage. You want them some difference from traditional serving position. Suggest in alley near service line, at T, at net, etc.

First player from each team serves; server then runs to get a ball from their own team's pile and give it to the next server. First team to run out of balls wins. Notice they are not playing out points, just serving and then running to the ball pile and back.

Best two out of three wins. While speed is important, it is also important for playeres to maintain good quality technique here. Note the points are not played out. Just serve and go.

Variations

• Increase the number of players on each team. Even numbers preferred but if not possible, the team with the extra player will just have to serve quicker!
• Change # of balls
• Change location of where balls are stored on court

Update:

I used Thank You, Jeeves recently in two different small groups, with only two players each. It worked GREAT as a serve warm-up and I will def be using it again in future. Here's my tweak for uber small groups: the two players compete to see who can earn 7 points first (one point for each correct serve). Earning points for each good serve motivates them to hit quality serves. Played it once on each half of court so both players have a chance to win. By the time they finished two rounds they were def warmed up and ready for some match play. I also insisted they say 'Thank you, Jeeves' each time they were handed a ball. They got a huge kick out of that.

1-2 Hustle

This game was also at optimumtennis.net but was a little hard to decode so I hope I am explaining it
right. If not, at least I understand my own explanation. :) They did not give it a name so I took the liberty. I like it for its flexibility and requirement for players to hustle. You will need 2 or more players for this to be any fun.

Coach is on one end of court; all other players on the other. First player serves, then hustles up net diagonally from wherever they served. Meanwhile second player hops in to first player's spot at baseline. This must occur quickly because Coach will be returning the serve cross court to the second player. Player 2 returns Coach's shot. Coach then hits to net player. Coach continues alternating shots until point ends. Player 2 then serves and runs up to net diagonally that Player 1 has just vacated, and Player 3 steps into Player 2's spot.

This game should move quickly. If you want to add a scoring aspect, give all players a set number of points and subtract one for every error. Last player standing, wins.

UPDATE: Sorry to report this was an epic fail when I tried it with my intermediate green ball class. They could not get in a rhythm. Serving player on way to net kept wanting to hit the ball I was returning deep to second player. Oh, well. Maybe try again in future.

Easy as 1-2-3-4

In a 2011 article for TennisPro magazine, USPTA and PTR Master Professional Ken DeHart breaks down the basics of returning serve. He divides the receiving court into four blocks. Deuce service box is 1; area behind deuce service box is 2; area behind ad service court is 3; and ad service box is 4. He suggests discussing receiving/returning strategy with your doubles partner ahead of time so the net player has some idea of where the returner's ball is going and therefore how to defend subsequent balls.

Pre-planning and defensive doubles strategy may seem a little too advanced for young players, but it is never too early to ask them to be able to direct the ball to specific parts of the court. So I have devised a simple activity based on Ken's receiving principles. He mentions boxes 2 and 3 should be your fallback position if you are struggling on the return, so we will place a higher value on hitting the return into the deepest part of the court.

For the activity, you will need an assortment of cards numbered 1-4. If you are only using 4 cards, recycle them so that they may be drawn multiple times. Ideally you will have at least two players; one serving and one returning. Returning/receiving player draws a card before each return and must hit their return to that box. Player receives two points for each successful return to boxes 2 or 3; one point for each successful return to 1 or 4. Serving player receives one point for every miss. First player to 11 wins; then switch roles.

1-2 Punch

Float that serve out wide like a butterfly,
then sting like a bee with your second shot

Recently I was reading Cosmin Miholca's blog entry about practicing serving out wide. He has some very simple and practical advice on how (and why!) to accomplish this. Boiling it down, he suggests:

• Setting up some targets about a foot inside the singles line and 3 feet inside the service line on the deuce court. In other words, give a comfortable margin of error. 
• Use a slice serve on the deuce side, brushing the '3 o'clock' position on the ball. 
• On the ad side, use a kick serve to accomplish same (brushing up from 7 o'clock to 1 o'clock). 
• To add the '2' to the punch you will either need a partner returning serve or a coach or partner feeding a second ball to simulate the return. Either way, practice putting this ball far from your opponent, who should be busy recovering position from your out-wide serve.

This is an admirable goal for our advanced beginners and up, but what about the young beginners?

• Stick with the 1-2 theme. 
• Have them serve to an out-wide target, then toss them the second ball for down-the-line. If they are having trouble serving, do the entire exercise with them tossing to targets rather than hitting/serving.

Consider point play with one point awarded each time BOTH balls are on target. Want an even more competitive aspect? Add a second player receiving the 'serve'. Server gets one point for each ball he/she gets past receiver. Receiver gets one point for each ball he/she catches after one bounce. First to X wins. 

Return With Interest

I have done this drill before as an adult student in a clinic. Its purpose is similar to 7/11 in that we want to work on serve and return of serve simultaneously. But this game builds more of a sense of camaraderie between the two players because they are working together to earn points.

One player is serving with second serves; the other is returning cross court. As a team they are trying to see how many two shot combos they can complete with a total of ten chances. Team with best percentage wins.

Variation
Returner hits down the line

Progression
Server uses first serve

Adapted from TeachPE.com

Toss is Boss

Ian Westermann and his cool
tweener shirt

Thanks Web Tennis Drills for recently recycling a 2007 video of Ana Ivanovic giving some simple tennis tips. As she was talking about serves, she said, 'toss is boss'. I could not agree more. In a different interview with Roger Federer, the GOAT said if you can perfect your toss, you are halfway to getting a good serve. Think about that for a minute. Footwork, weight transfer, swing path, swing speed, target, spin, grip, point of contact - all of that is lumped together into only 50% of a quality serve, the other 50% dependent on one thing: your toss!

I have already posted some toss-related activities in this blog (just search the 'serve' label). Today I will add a link to a 5 minute video by Ian Westermann of EssentialTennis. He is demonstrating a toss activity similar to the Tap N Toss activity I beg my students to use as their tennis homework. It requires a tennis ball and a tennis racquet - that's it. No court necessary. You will need a safe place to toss in. But since you will not be hitting the ball or swinging the racquet, that place can be relatively small.

Enjoy Ian's video, and go back and look at some of my other serve-related blog entries. Let's get that toss to where it is BOSS!

Black Hole 2 - Serve and Return

If you are a USTA member and you receive their 15-30 digital magazine, you may have seen this game in their most recent issue. In the video explaining the game, host John Evert didn't give it a name, so I did. It is similar to the Black Hole game, where hitting various locations on the court determine how points are awarded. We are modifying Black Hole to make it a serve/return of serve activity.

Two players play out singles points. Part of the server's side is marked with stripes or small cones. If the returner's ball lands behind the marked area, the returner gets one point. If the returner's ball does not land in the marked area, the server gets a point. So in this example, the Black Hole is where we do NOT want the return of serve to land. It is the returner's job to hit a quality return. It is the server's job to hit such a nice serve as to make the returner's job very difficult. First to XX points wins, depending on how you want to structure the game.

Ignore the Play arrow from this screen capture. If you want to see
 the full video, click here. Inside the yellow cones is the
Black Hole. No bueno!

As for which part of the court is marked off, in the video, the goal was to return the ball deep, behind the halfway point of the back court (midway between the service line and the baseline) as well as in the  2-3 foot 'alley' adjacent to the singles sideline. So ideally the returner is returning deep cross court, or deep down the line. Even in the middle of the court is okay as long as it is deep. This may be too challenging for younger players, so consider asking them to aim for a large square deep and cross court, or just anywhere deep.

Serve Time

Continuing our incarceration theme with Serve Time, a great dual purpose game. No more boring serve practice. No more lost opportunities to improve the second most important stroke of the game (return of serve).

Players pair up and are playing together as a team. One player serves; the other is across the net retrieving the serve by hand. Retrieving player must catch ball after one bounce. For every successfully completed serve and catch, the pair earns one point. First pair to earn seven points, wins. Players switch roles and repeat. Players switch partners and repeat twice more so that each player has a chance at performing both roles.

You might argue the receiving player isn't exactly hitting a return. But the coordination required to track and catch the served ball bare-handed is critical to this process, and some might add even more difficult than having a racquet in hand.

Adapted from USTA's Learn To Rally And Play booklet 

Clear the Court

Here's a simple activity to warm up the shoulder. Perfect intro to a serving lesson. Divide players into two teams, one on each baseline. Place two piles of equal numbers of balls on the court, one pile at each T (middle of service lines). Teams compete within a set time limit to 'clear the court' of balls on their side. Team with fewest balls on their side of court at end of time limit wins.

Note: players must start at baseline, run up and get a ball from the service line, throw it over, then return to baseline before throwing another ball over. For safety reasons, players may not advance past service line to retrieve balls. Also for safety reasons, this game is best not played on 36-foot courts unless you are playing with foam balls.

Adapted from USTA's Learn To Rally And Play booklet

Clean Sweep

Azarenka demonstrates
either the 'out' signal
or reminding us she's
been  #1

I concocted this game to help my youngest students work on serve and return of serve. Specifically, to help them watch the serve and improve calling it 'out' when appropriate.

Two players face each other across the net. One is server. Server has a small hopper or other supply of balls, 20-30 max. Non-serving player is across net with an empty container. They must retrieve the served balls and put them into the empty container. They DO NOT have to retrieve any ball that does not land in the correct service box. Ideally they will watch the lines carefully and call 'out' and give the proper hand signal (index finger in air) when serves are out.

Continue until all balls have been served; switch roles and repeat. Repeat entire cycle on other half of court. Or, move server to other side of court (not end) halfway through the process.

If server serves into the net or whiffs, he/she may retrieve that ball and try again.

You may add a competitive element by counting how many of the balls end up in the retrieving player's hopper (indicating how many of total balls have been hit into correct service box).

Wacky Knees

If your students are struggling with the mechanics of the serve, take a break from all that technical talk and play this fun game instead.

Divide players into two teams. Place a pile of ten balls at the baseline for each team. One at a time, players get a ball from the pile and place it between their knees. They then move to the service line and using the ball between their knees, serve it over the net. This player returns to the end of their team's line and next player in line takes their turn. First team to get all balls over the net wins.

The instructions do not explain what happens if the served ball does not make it over the net. Suggest player keep trying until ball goes over.

Variation

• If you have a small group, have players compete individually rather than on teams.
• Ball may be carried at chin, under arm, between two players at hip or knee. Use your imagination!

Adapted from The Tennis Drill Book by Tina Hoskins.

Update: My Red Ball class enjoyed this activity. But watch for players trying to gain an advantage by carrying the ball higher than the knees.