Fun Tennis Drills for Kids and Junior Tennis Players

In today’s modern tennis game, parents and coaches are advocating kids to begin learning tennis through fun tennis drills, helping them along in their development.

Many successful professional tennis players started to familiarize tennis at a very young age. Andre Agassi like for example started his tennis lessons at a very young age (2-3 years old).

However, there are also disadvantages to start learning tennis at a very young age. One is the short attention span of young children. Thus in teaching tennis to kids, it is important to make the lessons enjoyable, fun and interesting. This article describes some of these fun tennis drills for kids.

Fun Tennis Drills #1: Around the World

This fun tennis drill is good for more experienced beginner children. To accomplish the drill, two groups with equal number of children must be formed. We call these groups as Group A and group B. Each group forms a line behind each baseline of the court. The instructor feeds the ball to the first student in the line (say group A). The student then hits the ball and prints towards the other side of the court and stands behind the last student of group B.

The instructor then feeds another ball to the first student is group B and the student sprints towards the other side of the court and stands behind the last student of group A. If a student misses a hit, he or she is considered out. The drill continues with the same pattern and the last standing student is the winner.

Fun Tennis Drills #2: Fill the Court

This fun tennis drill needs two groups of students (A and B). Same as the above fun tennis drill, each group align themselves behind the baseline in each side of the court. The instructor stands at the net post and feeds the ball to the first student of group A, the student then starts the play by hitting the ball towards the first student of group B, then the first student in group B returns. If the ball is good, the succeeding student plays the next ball but if one student misses he or she has to stand behind the last student of his/her group and wait for his/her next turn. The group that finishes first (all members are able to hit good ball) is the winner.

Fun Tennis Drills #3: Around the World Jabba the Hut

Just like the first two fun tennis drills, this drill also needs two groups (A and B) of students. However, this time each group must have three members each. One of the students from each group kneels down at the T part (the point where the end of the center service line intersects with the service line) of the each court. Other members of the team stand behind the baseline. The two groups start to rally and if during the course of the play one of the kneeling student hits a good ball; his or her team wins three points. The points are given even if the team (of the kneeling student who hit a good ball) misses the point in the end. The team that earns 21 points each is declared as the winner.

Fun Tennis Drills #4: Hit and Run

This is one of the most interesting fun tennis drills especially for kids. This drill helps the kids or beginners to get to the ball, hit the ball and recover to the right spot of the court and be ready for the next shot. It is very common for beginners to be out of position when their opponent’s ball hit his/her courts.

This drill helps them to correct the problem. This drill will be done on one side of the court. The instructor stands on one end of the half court while the student stands in the middle of the half court. The instructor feeds the ball towards the student in any directions (in front, left and right side or behind); the student then returns the ball and tries to recover to his or her original position as quickly as possible. The drill continues where the instructor hits the ball in different directions.

Fun Tennis Drills #5: Simon Says

This drill is of one of the fun tennis drills that teach the learners the different tennis strokes and terminologies. The students need to have their own rackets and then stand on the baseline. The students must be spaced out so that they won’t hit each other when they execute the full racket swing. The instructor on one hand stands near the net.

The instructor says, ‘Simon says’ and mention name the stroke (forehand, backhand or overhead) he/she wants the student to execute and make sure that all the students correctly execute the stroke. To make this drill an enjoyable one, the instructor can say, ‘Simon Says freeze’ and check the students’ executions and eliminate those who are wrong in their executions. The last standing student is the winner.

Fun Tennis Drills #6: Four Square

This fun tennis drill does not involve so much physical activities such as running. It is aims to develop the students hand skills and quickness. Many tennis instructors like include this fun tennis drill in addition to the other fun tennis drills in their tennis classes because it is fun and very interesting.

This tennis drill needs four students who position themselves on each of the service box (center). This drill is accomplished by hitting the ball before it bounces the ground.

To start this fun tennis drill, any student can feed the ball to the other student and the receiving student must hit the ball to any of the student before it bounces the ball. There is no particular order as to whom to hit the ball, thus each student can hit the ball to any of the students. To make the drill more interesting, each player should hit the ball as far as possible from the student (e.g. corner of the service box) for a difficult return. Each student can also surprise one another by disguising their shots. The student with the least error is declared as the winner.

Fun Tennis Drills #7: Ring around the Rosie

This is one of the fun tennis drills that help to develops the students tennis strokes and hand quickness. At least three students have to stand around the instructor. Just like the other fun tennis drills, the more students there are the merrier the drill will be. To start the drill, the instructor feeds the ball to any of the student and the receiver tries to hit the ball towards the instructor after it bounces from the ground.

The instructor then hits the ball again to another student. If a student misses a hit, he or she is out of the drill and has to sit down. Any ball that does not bounces in front of the instructor is considered a miss hit. Like for example if the ball lands behind the instructor or lands to other student’s front, the ball is considered as a miss hit. The last standing student is declared as the winner.

Fun Tennis Drills #8: Go to Bed

This is one of the tennis fun drills that help the student develop their hand-eye coordination, accuracy and agility. This drill does not need particular number of students or a particular number of groups. To accomplish this series of fun tennis drills, the instructor positioned himself or herself on one side of the court while the student stands on the other side.

To make this drill easier for very young students, they can stand on the T section (please refer above for description) of the court. The instructor feeds the ball and the student has to return it to the other side of the net (or towards the instructor) and the ball must land on the singles court. Every time the student misses a return, he or she yawns and if the yawn reaches to four he ‘falls asleep’.

If the student misses again, he or she has to go bed (which is the opposite side of the court). This means that the student has to run towards the other side of the court after five misses. He or she can only wake up and go back to the other side of the court if he or she is able to catch another student’s ball after its first bounce from the ground.

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