Tennis Serve Practice Plan for 13 to 15 Year Olds

Spin, intention, and the plus-one plan: every serve designed to create the next shot. Second-serve courage and first-serve percentage, built in that order of honor.

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Throws, toss checks, then ten serves climbing from half to ninety percent with the full leg-drive motion graded. The ritual (bounces, breath, target look) runs on every single one, already.

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The sideways sibling of the groundstroke brush: contact moving around the ball's outside edge (two-to-three on a clock face for righties), the toss a whisper further right, the follow-through wrapping across. Twelve serves, spin graded by flight (the leftward curve and skidding bounce are the receipts). The slice wide on the deuce side gets its debut as the sport's great door-opener.

The teenage second serve: the up-the-back brush now genuinely heavy, arc high, landing deep in the box with action off the bounce (the kick's up-and-over is introduced HERE only as far as comfort and any coach's guidance allow; heavy topspin-slice hybrid is a complete teenage answer). Twelve serves, nine-in standard, depth graded. Courage stays the curriculum: the safe serve is the heavy high one, never the pushed flat one.

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Fifteen first serves, each with zone AND purpose called: "wide, opening the court," "T, denying the angle," "body, jamming the return." The purpose framing turns placement from decoration into strategy, and the disguise standard holds: one motion, whispering tosses.

The point-starter drill: serve to a called zone, then immediately move and shadow (or hit, if a feeder returns) the PLUS-ONE: the next shot the serve was designed to create (wide serve, then cross into the opened court; T serve, then first strike behind it). Eight sequences. Serving with a next-shot plan is the whole difference between starting points and donating them.

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Scored service games, solo edition: serve first-and-second pairs through imaginary games (four points each), full ritual, zones chosen with purpose, double faults costing the game. Three games, percentages logged (first in, second in, zones hit). The pressure column lives next to the practice column, and the ritual is what keeps them close.

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The day's numbers read aloud: percentages, zone hits, spin grades, pressure games held. One final first-and-second pair, purpose called, ended on the second serve landing heavy and deep, because that is the serve that wins teenage matches.

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What to watch today: pace creeping into the second serve during pressure games. The teenage tell of serving fear is a second serve that speeds up and flattens exactly when it matters, which is the double-fault machine assembling itself. The graded courage is the opposite: MORE brush, MORE arc, at 30-40. When the pressure column dips, audit the spin, not the nerve.