How to Serve A Pickleball | Beginner's Guide

If you're a beginner struggling with your serve, or you're just a player that wants to improve your serve, this is the video for you. And stick around to the very end, because I have a secret to share with you about something I'm currently working on at the pro level that will also help you. Before we get into anything with serve technique or placement or power, blah, blah, blah, the first thing you need to know is what are the serve rules in pickleball? Today's video is brought to you by Selkirk. Both your feet must be behind the baseline while serving. One foot can be hovering over the line, but one foot must always be on the ground when you make contact with the ball. So you can't jump in the air and serve. You must serve underhand. There's a couple nuanced points to this. The paddle face must make contact with the ball below your wrist and also below your waist. But the gist is, you gotta serve underhand. And listen, you can also hit a drop serve, and all those nuanced rules then go out the window. Just note, you can only drop the ball. You can't throw it down to make it bounce higher. You have to just drop it, that's fine. Now on the serve, the ball must go diagonally across the net. Also, the ball must land beyond the kitchen line. If it lands on the kitchen line, it's a fault. If it hits any other line beyond the kitchen, you're okay. Now we're getting the technique here in a moment, but first, there's four main principles you have to understand. Number one, consistency. You wanna make your serves. If you're missing 50% of your serves into the net or left or right or long, you're not doing it very well. So consistency in making it into the court is number one. Number two, focus on depth. Because whether you hit it soft or hard, left or right, if you get the ball deep into the court, that's a good serve. And then three and four are somewhat interchangeable. You could probably argue them both ways. It's placement and power. Placement, do I wanna hit the ball out wide to pull the person off the court? Do I wanna hit the ball to the person's backhand? Placement matters. Then fourth is power. Because if you can generate a ton of pace on a serve and keep a player back on their return, you can gain an advantage when you come up to hit your third shot. First shot's the serve, second shot's the return. Your third shot is the one that you can take advantage of. By starting with a really good first shot, which is a serve that has power. Quick interruption. If you're watching this video, there's a good chance that you are a beginner. So I made something specifically for you. It's a 10 video series, 10 mistakes beginners make, delivered to your inbox or email inbox, one video a day for 10 straight days. Go to the description below, click the link, enter your email, and you'll start getting videos. All right, back to the video. So let's get into some technique. There's two types of serves you can hit. A drop serve and a toss serve. So we're about to talk about the drop serve, and I'm gonna teach you that one first, because a lot of beginners find that the drop serve is actually a little bit easier when they first start playing. Now, if that's not you, that's fine. You can go right into the toss serve, experiment with your serve, see what will get you consistency first, depth second. And within each of those serves, I'm gonna give you a three-point checklist for what you do before you serve. Now, this checklist is more for when you're training, when you're actually serving and playing in a real tournament match. You get to automatic by practicing over time, so it becomes that way. Here's the checklist. Number one, feet. Number two, hands. And number three, swing path. We're gonna start with the drop serve first. Number one, feet. On the drop serve, what are you doing with your feet? My non-dominant foot, I'm a right-handed player, my left foot here is gonna be about at a 45-degree angle. My right foot is gonna be parallel to this baseline, okay? And if it's a little off, that's okay, right? But the reason you wanna have it like this is because this is gonna allow us to actually twist our hips, which we'll get to here in a moment, and generate some power. If my feet are all the way parallel, it's hard to twist and generate power. I would say some players, you will see some players serve it like this, a la Tyson McGuffin, Catherine Parenteau serves like this. I'd call this a little bit more of an advanced footwork, not wrong by any stretch, just different, not the one I'm teaching right now. So left foot's at 45, right foot's at parallel. Now, what do I do with my hands? For the drop serve, I like to have my arm out straight. If my arm's out straight, it creates simplicity and it creates repeatability. If my arm's here, sometimes I don't know if it's here, I don't know if it's closer or farther out. If I extend it out, I know it's gonna be the exact same every single time. The ball can land in the court, I just have to make sure my feet are behind the baseline. I cannot throw the ball down, I just have to drop the ball. So now let's talk about swing path. A quick note, like how are you holding the paddle? I hold it in continental, that's how I'd suggest you hold it. Continental's basically just like a handshake grip like this, okay? Other people use different grips like that, I just like to hold it about continental like this. So my feet are in their position, my arm is extended, and I like having my left arm here in line with my left foot. It just makes it simple. I'm actually creating somewhat of a triangle. I'm also gonna have my right hand, experiment with this, right? If you have it a little farther back or a little bit, that's okay, experiment with what's gonna work. What you wanna do at the end of the day, number one, like I said, is consistency. So we got the gist, right? My feet are in the place, my hand is extended, my paddle is down, my paddle tip is at a somewhat diagonal in line with my foot. Now let's add something here. As you drop, I actually want you to squat down slightly. I'm gonna drop and squat and twist and rise until I make contact with the ball. Try to have the tip of your paddle end up in the direction of your target. Experiment with that. Of course, it's not always gonna be perfect, right? But as you're learning, experiment using some of these things. So in conclusion, feet in their position, 45, parallel, arm extended all the way out for simplicity and repeatability, arm is in line with my foot, my left arm, my left foot. My right hand, right, is gonna be in line, parallel with my right foot. It's gonna be down. The reason it's down is so you can lift the ball. As you drop the ball, you're gonna drop, squat, twist, rise, and make contact with the paddle tip pointed in the direction of your target. So that's the drop serve. Well, how about the toss serve? Well, we're gonna put it through the exact same framework. Feet, hands, swing path. This time, instead of dropping the ball, I'm actually gonna have the ball a little bit closer to my body and I'm gonna toss it, toss it, toss it. You don't need to toss it super high. You just need to toss it about right here, about right here. Okay, I'm gonna line up my feet the exact same way. Well, I'm gonna toss the ball. It's a minimal toss. It's not anything extreme, right? And as I toss, I'm gonna twist my core and I'm gonna finish with my paddle tip aimed at the direction of my target. Okay, I'm gonna hit you another one. Okay, here lined up. Boom. That's the toss serve. So some of you might be asking, well, how do I serve it even harder? I got the feet thing down. I got the hand thing down. I got the swing path thing down, but now you want more and more power. Well, there's a way. So how do you do it? It's gonna be a weight shift. Number one, from your back foot to your front foot, from your back foot to your front foot as you swing through. And because you're down in a stance about to serve, you're also gonna lift through the ball as you make contact. Here we go. It's gonna be back through. Boom. Rip that thing. There we go. Back foot, weight shifts from back foot to front foot at the same time that I'm lifting through the ball. Here we go. Boom. That's the first way to generate power. Here's the second way to generate power. More of a core twist, core twist. And this is a big mistake I do. If you're just using your arm to generate power, there's no chance you're gonna generate as much power as you could if you use your core and twist through the ball in addition to shifting your weight from your back to your front foot. It's like a baseball player who throws a ball. They use their core for rotational power. It's like a football player, core for rotational power. It's like a boxer, core for rotational power to generate more force. We're doing the same thing here. Front foot at a 45, back foot at a parallel. Arm out, paddle in a good position. Weight shift from my back to my front. I'm gonna lift through. I'm gonna twist my core. Boom. Here's the secret. I've played a year and a half. I played at the pro level. And this is something I still have not done to this day. But now that I'm making this video and thinking about how to help you all, this is gonna help me. And I'm gonna start to implement this right now. So if you see me out at a tournament ever, ask me if I'm doing this because the answer is gonna be yes. A pre-serve routine. I played basketball in college. I played all throughout my life. And when I got to the free throw line, I did the exact same routine for like five years and I changed it for the next 10. My first routine was just three dribbles, a spin, and a shot. Then I saw a pro player, J.J. Redick, who used to do bounce, spin, bounce, spin, shot. So I adopted that routine. Anyway, so I had a routine before I shot. Why? To center myself. To mentally prepare to take that free throw when thousands of fans are watching the game. The number one reason I ever miss serves at this point is either because I'm going for a huge serve or the more common one, I'm not focused. I'm being lazy. What a serve routine does is it keeps you from being lazy. What any routine does is it helps lock your mind in to what you're about to do. So right now, think about what a serve routine might be for you. I'm gonna create one right now. I'm gonna go with this. I'm creating this on the spot right now. I'm gonna start experimenting with it this week that I'm making this, okay? I'm gonna go two bounces. I'm just making that up right now. I don't know, there's no secret routine to have, a routine that works for you. I'm gonna go two bounces, a deep breath, and I'm gonna rip that thing, okay? So it's gonna be like this. I hope that video helped you learn how to serve better, but you're not gonna get better by just watching. You gotta go out and practice. Now, after you get your serve down, if you want another video to help you, a double strategy video, in fact, six double strategy videos that new players must know, click this link right here. I stuttered. I think we're gonna keep that. In fact, I'm not even doing another take. It's right here. Click it. Oh, s**t. Oh, God. Can't wait to watch that back. You okay? Oh, gosh. I almost just hit the camera.