We’re giving you access to some of the best minds in British tennis to help you improve your game and find out more about our sport. 

From serve power to in-game tactics – former British tennis player, Davis Cup coach and now LTA Head of Performance Coach Education Nick Weal has the answers to some of the questions sent in by you, our Advantage members. 

What's the most important thing to master in the serve for a beginner? 

There are two key components to the serve for a beginner – an efficient throwing action and a consistent optimal ball toss. 

Before you worry too much about what your legs are doing, it is important to have a fluid throwing action as you hit the ball.  

As a guide you are looking for a pre-throw position that has a 90 degree angle bend at the elbow and a 90 degree angle between your upper arm and the side of your body. With a nice ‘loose’ arm, you will ‘throw’ the racket upwards at the ball. 

The more fluid and repeatable this becomes you will learn to use your wrist and forearm to control the ball. 

For the ball toss you’re looking for consistency – you want to make sure that every time you throw the ball up, it’s roughly in the same spot for you to hit. 

As a guide, you want your ball toss to be slightly in front of you. As you are standing at the baseline, slightly sideways on with your front foot pointing at the net post ready to hit your serve, imagine you have a clockface in front of you. When you toss the ball up, just in front of you, aim to throw it at about one o’clock on your clock. 

Top tip: make sure the ball toss is high enough so that you can hit it at close to full stretch – this will help you hit more consistent serves and generate more power. 

What's the best (and fun) warm up game that the players enjoy before a session? 

If we’ve got a group of players – typically four or more – one game we like to play in the warm-up is Swedish handball. 

You split the group into two teams and play on one half of the court from tramline to tramline. The aim of the game is to pass the ball to members of your team by throwing it to each other, before eventually scoring a goal by catching it in a marked out ‘end zone’.  

If you’re holding the ball you can’t move, so it’s all about the movement of the other players to find space. If you drop the ball, it goes over to the other team. The players always get super competitive with this one… 

How do you prevent a more defensive mindset and play more positively? 

It’s more about choosing your moments to be defensive and when to play on the front foot. Being more defensive, or even pushing the ball to your opponent, is sometimes needed to help you stay in points or just improve consistency in the rallies. 

Recognising the opportunities to play more attacking is important. Generally, as a starter, try to attack your shots whenever you get a short ball in a rally and try to move your opponent. Even if the shot doesn’t come off, keep trying this tactic and eventually you’ll notice that you start to dictate more points.  

One thing you can do as well is trying to have a hit with players of a higher standard. This can force you out of your comfort zone a bit and force you to play more positive shots. Use your World Tennis Number (WTN) to help you find players at the highest end of your GameZone range. 

Find out your WTN

How do I generate more power on my serve? 

Once you’re comfortable with all the basics of serving and can consistently hit your serves in, then we can start looking at building the power. 

Power and ball placement are two of the keys to effective serving and putting your opponents under pressure from the first point in the match. 

To increase your power, start by making sure that you keep a loose arm during your motion with a great kinetic chain. This means that your pre-throw position also now includes loading the legs with an angle of separation between your shoulders and hips (shoulders are rotated further than hips).

As your racket now throws upwards to the ball, you are using the ground to drive up with the legs, with this power transferring through the hips and shoulders before contact.