 Hey guys, I hope you're doing well. So as you should know, the serve is the most important shot in the game of tennis. With that being said, the return of serve is equally as important. 50% of your points in tennis matches start with the return of serve. And I would say it's probably one of the most overlooked shots and the least practiced. Although it is a forehand or a backhand when you're hitting it, there are a lot of differences between the return of serve and standard ground strokes. And I'm going to go through some of those differences and help you to hit bigger and better returns of serve. Let's get into it. So if you're new to this channel, my name is Ashley Neves and I am a tennis coach and director of the tennis program here at the Avenue Lawn Tennis Club in the UK. And alongside my coaching, I've now run this YouTube channel called The Tennis Mentor. And I've been posting a lot of videos for players and coaches and also parents as well to help everybody to get more out of the sport. And if you like what you see here and you want to see more videos like this, hit that subscribe button underneath and be sure to click the bell as well if you want to get notifications of when I next post a video. So I've already mentioned the importance of the return of serve, with it being said most matches you'll be playing around 50% of your points on the return. And alongside this, if you look at the pro tour, depending on which tournament we're looking at, over 60% of points played on the tour are finished within the first four shots. Two of those four shots are the serve and the return. So it shows how important they are to start the point well. If you can improve your return of serve, it will A, give your opponent less free points. B, it will add pressure to their serve. It may cause them to try to hit the serve bigger and better, forcing errors or they may even try to be more consistent on their serve, meaning that you're going to have a bit more time on the ball with that slower ball coming in. And C, it's going to give you a lot less pressure on your serving games if you are more capable of winning those returning points. So it plays a huge part in winning matches and beating players that you wouldn't normally beat. The way I'm going to present this video is a six point checklist. So I'm going to go through six things that you can think about when setting up to hit your return of serve, which will help you to hit that ball more effectively. And if you check out the description below, I'll put a link to a free PDF that you can download so that you can keep that checklist in your tennis bag and so that you can take it to your next practice session. So jumping into the checklist, the first thing you need to consider is what is your intention on your return of serve. Now it completely depends on how the serve is traveling towards you, but hopefully if you know your opponent, or if you've had a good amount of warm up time with your opponent, you'll start to see whether they've got big serves, whether they've got spinny serves, or just what type of serve they hit. And if you understand that, you can start to build a picture about what their first serve will look like and what their second serve will look like. When I'm playing tough opponents that have big serves, my intention when I'm receiving a first serve is going to be to neutralize the ball into the center of the court and deep so that they can't attack on their next ball. If I'm playing a player who hits the ball slightly slower, I may have an intention to be a bit more aggressive with my return of serve, or I might try to take the ball slightly earlier, but if you understand what you're trying to do before you do it, it's going to help you with all of the other points on the checklist. When we're talking about planning your intention for the return, we don't need to be as specific as I'm going to hit a slice backhand down the line short, or I'm going to hit a heavy topspin forehand deep into the backhand corner. If we're too prescriptive or too specific with our return, the chances are your opponent will probably serve to the other side and it will mess up your plans and you'll be on the back foot straight away. So have a general idea of what you want to do with the return. Are you going to be aggressive with it, or are you going to be trying to neutralize that serve to get yourself back into a better situation? A general rule that I like to stick to for the intention of my return of serve is when I'm receiving a first serve, my aim is to get the ball deep past the service line and into the center of the court to minimize my opponent's options. And if I've got a second serve, I'm going to try to take the ball earlier and try to hit the spaces. Once you have an idea of how your opponent serves and what your intention is going to be on the return of serve, you need to think about your court position. Now, what I tend to try to do when I return my serve and what I tend to teach as well is that you should stand at least one to two steps behind where you're thinking of returning the ball. So if you're playing a player who's got a medium speed serve and you're planning to return the ball near the baseline here, then you start a couple of steps further back so that you have room to move forwards to the ball. What you don't want to do is stand in the position where the ball is going to come to and you'll be on the back foot as you make the return. The idea is to start further back so that you've got room to step in and take that return out in front of your body. If you're playing somebody with a bigger serve and you're thinking that they're probably going to have you a meter behind the baseline to return the ball, then you'll simply take two steps further back from that position. So if you're going to be here to return the ball, you want to start further back so you've still got room to step in. So try to gauge the speed and the depth of your opponent's serve so that you can stand in the correct position, giving yourself room to move forwards to the ball rather than being pushed backwards. So the third thing on the checklist, once you know what your intention is and once you're stood in the right place is to have the right grip. Now, if you, like me, use a double-handed backhand, I tend to start with my dominant hand using my forehand grip and my non-dominant hand holding my backhand grip. That way, if the ball comes to my forehand side, I can simply release with my non-dominant hand and my grip is ready to go. And if the ball comes to my backhand side, because my non-dominant hand is already in the right place, I can use that hand to change my forehand grip to my backhand grip. If you're a single-handed backhand player, you can do exactly the same, but rather than holding the grip, you'd hold the neck of the racket for a simple transition to move onto your backhand grip. Now, I like to do it this way because I favour my forehand side, but if you are a player that favours your backhand side, you could always start with your backhand grip and make that transition onto your forehand side if it comes that way. If you are receiving against a big server and you don't have any time to make a grip change or you're looking to neutralise with a nice chip deep, then using a chopper grip is probably the best grip to have in that instance. The chopper grip allows you to hit the forehand and the backhand without making a change, giving you a bit more time to focus on making the ball back in play. So if you're defending off a really big server, chopper grip is a good grip to use. So my fourth tip for your checklist is to move in a Y-shaped pattern. Now, this is the way that I like to coach the return of serve because it's a very efficient way to get your body weight transfer going forwards and making you quick to pounce on the ball. So when I say use the Y-shaped footwork pattern, what I mean is you should move forwards in a straight line, make a split step, and then move out to hit the return to the right or the left. Now, the crucial part of the Y-shaped footwork pattern is the split step. The split step should be done at the exact moment that your opponent makes contact with the ball. So if you see some of this footage with me returning serve, you can see that as my opponent makes contact with the ball, my feet should be in midair. As soon as I land, I know which direction I need to push off into so that I could be efficient in moving out to the forehand or the backhand side. So if I were to do the Y-shaped pattern here, going back to point number two, I need to make sure that I'm starting a good one to two steps behind where my contact point is going to be. And that will give me the space to use the Y-shaped footwork pattern. So I will start back here. As my opponent throws the ball up for their serve, I will take a step forwards. Some players prefer to do a shuffle forwards, however you prefer, but as long as you move forwards, as they make contact with the ball, your split step, and then as soon as you've landed, you'll then know whether you need to push off to hit your backhand return or whether you need to push off to hit your forehand return there. So I'll show you again, the Y-shaped pattern will look here, forwards, split, go. The Y-shaped pattern also works for body serves. You just move in the opposite direction. So if my opponent jams me up here, I will still be moving forwards. I will still split step, but as soon as I see that ball coming to my body, I will move to the backhand side if I want to hit a forehand to create space behind the ball. So look like this, forwards, split, go. Although the Y-shaped footwork pattern is really, really useful for helping you to hit bigger and better returns, the number one focus in that footwork pattern should be the split step. And if you struggle with the split step, maybe take out the Y-shape and just focus on split stepping and moving out to the ball. If you can do the split step at the right time, then you can move on to doing the Y-shaped pattern. If you split step slightly too early, you'll be static and you'll be on your heels and it'll be much, much more difficult to push off to make your next shot. And if you split step too late, you'll just be rushing to the ball. So really work on your timing of the split step so that your feet are in mid-air at time of contact so that you're ready to push off and go. So now that you understand what your intention is, you're stood in the right position in the first place, you've got the right grip and you're moving in the right footwork pattern with a good split step, now we're on to the hitting part. So tip number five, we're talking about having a compact swing. Now compared to a normal forehand or a backhand, you're going to be more limited with time when you're returning a serve. So having a more compact swing will help you to be more efficient in timing the ball and making contact with the ball. A rule that I like to use to help you to be more compact with your swing size is the rule of 10. The rule of 10 relates to your opponent's serve speed and your swing size. And your job is to make the two equal 10. So what I mean is if your opponent's got an average serve speed, a steady five out of 10, then you can hit your return swing size at a five out of 10 size. If your opponent's got a really big serve and they're hitting an eight out of 10, then you don't have the time to do your five out of 10 swing size. So you're going to do a much more compact version of it at a two out of 10. And if your opponent's got a really slow serve, let's say they're serving at a three out of 10, then you do have the time to have a bigger swing. So you can go for a seven out of 10. Now, I may do another video on this rule of 10 because there's quite a lot of detail that goes into it. But the main thing you need to think about when returning the serve is making sure that the bigger the serve is, the less time you have, so the smaller your swing needs to be. And if you're returning a slower serve, maybe it'd be a second serve, you do have extra time, you do want to put more speed on the ball, and that's where you can increase the size of your swing to have more power on your shot. So if you're receiving a big serve, you need a smaller swing. If you're receiving a slow serve, you can have a bigger swing. If in doubt, make your swing size smaller. It will only make you more consistent. You may lose some power, but at the end of the day, if you're making that return in play and putting your opponent under a little bit of pressure by keeping it in, then actually it's gonna be better than you going for a big swing and hitting that ball out. So the final tip for your checklist is to hit and move. Now there's nothing worse than hitting a fantastic return and then your opponent hitting it back for a winner. So as soon as you've made contact with the ball and landed, your aim is to get yourself back into a good position for that next ball. In general, you want to move towards the centre of the court. If you hit the ball cross-court on your return, then you can probably stay slightly off-center on your half. If you choose to go down the line on the return or you're forced to go down the line on the return, you're probably gonna have to move a bit further to get onto the other side of that centre tee. But make sure as soon as you've hit that ball, as soon as you've returned it, get yourself back into a good position for the next ball. So there you go. There are the six points from my checklist. Now there was a lot of information in those six points and I would never advise you go onto court and try to think of all of them. So like I said at the start, if you click the link below to download the PDF document, you can keep the checklist in your bag and each training session that you go to and if you're practicing your return of serve, just practice one of them and I would start on point number one, work on your intention, step up to the court, step up to that baseline with a plan in your head as to whether you're going to go big, whether you're going to try to defend or what part of the court, roughly you're going to be aiming towards. If you get good at that, then look at your next checkpoint list and go down until you've mastered them all. In general, these days, I don't have to think about too many of them, but in my head, I always focus on what my intention is. I've done enough repetitions of the Y shape footwork pattern, enough repetitions of having a compact swing that my muscle memory does that for me, but if I go on to the court without the right intention, I'm going to miss every return. So step on to the court with the right intentions and you can't go too wrong. Anyway, I hope you liked that video and if you want to see more, be sure to click that subscribe button at the bottom and the bell as well if you want to get notified when I put my next video out and hopefully I'll see you back here soon. Take care.