The Pickleball Serve: What’s The Most Effective One?
Obviously there are a lot of options out there: the hard serve, the spin serve, the short serve, or the deep serve… Most importantly before you worry about WHICH serve – the bottom line is you have to get that serve in. If you don’t get your serve in – it’s not going to rattle any of your opponents. Get that serve in!
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Get That Serve In!
Obviously there are a lot of options out there: the hard serve, the spin serve, the short serve, or the deep serve… Most importantly before you worry about WHICH serve – the bottom line is you have to get that serve in. If you don’t get your serve in – it’s not going to rattle any of your opponents. Get that serve in!
Buy Yourself Time
If you already hit a perfectly good serve, what would be the most effective one? When I look at that, it’s the serve that allows you to buy yourself the most time. The serve that makes your opponent be on the defensive. What does that mean? It’s the serve that actually pushes your opponent back.
A Very Effective Serve
So a very effective serve would be a very high looped serve which is deep and keeps your opponents back with absolutely no pace in it. If you don’t have any pace in it, it forces your opponents to actually not only back up on the fence but also try and hit the ball very deep. Since that forces them to hit a deeper return which doesn’t have much pace on it – it might actually land up shorter than planned (to your advantage).
So I highly recommend you hit those deep serves because it allows you to be more effective. Read more on serve in this excerpt from my book Smart Pickleball. Also, a great place to master your serve is at one of my clinics that I teach around the country. Check out my schedule if you haven’t yet. I hope to see you there!
Warmly,
Did you miss last week’s Pickleball FAQ Webinar? Check it out here: Pickleball FAQs Session
Excellent tips which are very helpful for beginners just starting out the game. The video is short and concise which has the golden nugget explained which i really liked. I am consistently learning and working out to improve my accuracy and consistency while serving the ball. Cheers for the video and helpful information.
Nice info with sound principles. Keep it simple, get the serve over with a high percentage. Once you’ve got it down, start working on a variety of serves from different points on the Service/baseline. Aim at different points on the opponents court. The T in the middle, the center of the odd or even court you’re serving to and then to the corners but not too close to the lines, especially if you have spin on it. Makes it hard to call. In addition I propose using better terminology instead of a set of 3 numbers. First or second serve, then the score and done.
Side out, when both players on a doubles team are done serving and the serve goes to the other guys.
Cheers!
I take a box of balls and place a bucket in each corner at the back of the court as targets. Sometimes I just hit hundreds of balls over a few hours to try to improve my accuracy and consistency. I try to drop my serve right at the baseline on my opponents backhand side.
Great tip, especially for beginners- the most important thing is to keep it simple and get it over the net. Good reminder and nice video.