List Of Tennis Drills

Practicing drills in tennis is very important. They will help you improve your tennis skills and techniques. This list contains drills to help your groundstrokes, volleys, serves, lobs, overheads, and your overall tennis game.

Types of Drills

• Groundstroke Drills
• Volley Drills
• Serving Drills
• Lob Drills
• Overhead Drills

Groundstroke Drills

Cross Court

This drill will work on hitting the ball cross-court. You will need a partner to feed you tennis balls. You will be on the baseline and in the center of the court. Your partner will feed you a ball on one half of the court and your goal is to hit the ball cross-court. After you hit the ball cross-court you will go back to the center of the court. Make sure that your partner is feeding the ball on both the Ad side and the Deuce side. The goal is to hit the ball cross-court multiple times in a row.

Down the Line

This drill is similar to the cross-court drill, except your focus will be on hitting down the line. You will need a partner to feed you tennis balls. You will be on the baseline and in the center of the court. Your partner will feed you a ball on one half of the court and your goal is to hit the ball down the line. After you hit the ball down the line you will go back to the center of the court. Make sure that your partner is feeding the ball on both the Ad side and the Deuce side. The aim is to hit the ball down the line multiple times in a row.

20 Balls

With this drill, it will help with consistency. You will need a partner to feed you balls alternating to your forehand and backhand. Your goal for this drill is to hit 10 balls in a row cross-court without missing. Next, you will do the same thing again, but hit 10 balls in a row down the line without missing.

Hand Toss

You will need a partner to feed you balls randomly around the court. With this drill, you will need to keep your feet active and make sure to focus on the one specific shot you want to work on.

Swinging Volley

This drill will require you to be at the net with enough space to be able to swing your racquet. You will need a partner to feed you balls at the net. When your partner feeds you a ball, you will hit the ball out of the air and swing at the ball. This drill will help you achieve a faster racquet speed.

Volley Drills

Volley to Volley

This drill will require you and your partner to be in front of the net with one person on each side of the court and with enough room to hit the ball. You and your partner will volley the ball back and forth as long as you can without making any errors or the ball hitting the ground. This drill will improve your volley’s consistency and technique.

Approach Volley

You will need to start at the baseline for this drill and have a partner to feed you balls. Your partner will feed you a short ball and you will approach the net, then right after you hit that ball your partner will feed you a volley. The focus of this drill is to practice coming up to the net from the baseline.

Volley Placement

This is the perfect drill to do to focus on your placement with volleys. You will start off at the net and you will need a partner to start off at the baseline. Your partner will feed you a fairly easy ball and your goal is to focus on the placement of the ball and to make a winning shot. Make sure that your partner alternates their feeds to both the backhand and forehand.

Serving Drills

Targets

Get 4-6 targets (tennis ball canister or small cones) and place them in the service box. A good placement for these targets would be on the service line with one in the corner of the service box, one in the middle, and another one on the other corner of the service box. Then put the targets in the other service box. Your goal is to hit the targets as many times as you can. A great way to work on consistency and placement is to try and focus on hitting a certain number of targets within a certain number of serves.

Serve in-a-row

The drill is exactly what the name sounds like. The goal is to try and serve as many as you can in a row with them all being in. If you miss a serve, you have to then restart. A good way to do this drill is to have a goal of how many serves you want to get in a row.

Hand Toss

This drill is perfect for focusing on getting an accurate and consistent toss. All you have to do is go to the baseline and throw the ball how you would if you were to serve. You will continuously do this, with the goal of building your muscle memory to throw the ball consistently and effectively when you serve.

Lob Drills

Lobbying

Start by standing in the middle of the baseline with a partner at the net. Your partner will feed an easy groundstroke to you at the baseline and then you will try to hit a lob over their head. This is a very popular and common drill to practice lobs.

Running Lob

For this drill, you and your partner will both be at the baseline. You will feed a short ball to your partner and your partner will hit the ball back to you and come up to the net. Then you will try to lob the ball over your partner.

Hand Toss

Start off by placing a few medium-sized targets (cardboard boxes or large cones) around the end of the court. Your partner will be at the net on the side with targets and you will be on the opposing side of the court at the baseline. You will feed your partner a ball and after your partner hits the ball back you will lob the ball while also trying to hit one of the targets. This drill focuses on the placement of your lob and is perfect to practice lobs if you're a doubles player.

Overhead Drills

Overhead Wall

You will need to have a wall for this drill. It doesn’t have to be large, but it has to be a decent size. You will begin by hitting the ball against the wall and eventually try to hit the ball high enough so that the ball is able to go high over your head. It will take time to get this part down, but once you are able to get the ball to go over your head, you will be able to practice your overhead shot. This is the perfect way to practice overhead if you don’t have a partner.

Overhead Shuffle

You will start at the net and have your partner start on the baseline on the other side. You will let your partner know you are ready by touching the net with your racquet. Once you do so, your partner will feed you an overhead and you will shuffle back to a position where you are able to hit the overhead. After you hit the overhead you will then go back up to the net. You can do as many repetitions as needed.

Overhead Streak

For this drill, a partner will need to be on the baseline of one side of the court and you will need to be at the net on the other side. Your partner will feed you an overhead and you will go back up to the net and do the same thing. The goal is to do as many overheads as you can. Another way to do it is to set a goal of how many overheads you want to get in the court in a row; a good number would be around 10.