Teaching Juniors To Make Better Service Line Calls
April 22nd, 2014 | 
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Many juniors have coaches who spend the lion’s share of practice time on strokes and footwork. But one important component of their game that’s sorely missing is the ability to correctly recognize an “out” serve.
Stop by any junior tennis tournament and you’ll see what I mean. On top of great ground strokes and fierce defense, it’s not uncommon to see juniors AT ALL LEVELS return serves that are 6-12 inches beyond the service line. Not surprisingly, many of these points end with disputed calls.
This isn’t a commentary on juniors and bad line calls. It’s merely an observation that we need to do a better job of training young players how to make good line calls; especially when receiving serve. The reason for this is twofold: accuracy and trust.
We can’t expect players to make good line calls during a rally if we don’t teach them how to correctly make calls when receiving serve. If their ability to gauge “out” balls on the service line isn’t accurate, it only stands to reason the same will hold true for sideline and baseline calls.
Bad service line calls can also engender a lack of trust between players. If a server can’t trust the receiver to correctly call a serve that’s clearly out, they won’t trust them to make correct calls closer to the lines later on in the rally.
There are a couple of things that coaches can do to help juniors improve their service line calls. Most have already talked to their players about the need to make good line calls. Perhaps they could also emphasize that correct service line calls are the first line of defense for proper line calls throughout the match.
Additionally, something as simple as placing tennis balls on the court (as in the picture at top and at right) can provide their players an excellent visual reference for balls on the service line.
Making good line calls, on the service line or otherwise, is a skill that can be learned, and is just as valuable to a player’s overall development as proper stroke technique.
With a little help, our juniors can become great players as well as great sportsmen and sportswomen.
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Good observation. I think as coaches we assume players just know this. It like everything it should be trained. Perhaps you should also place a ball on the line. I like this article b
Interesting. I thought coaches spent time on line calls, but maybe I was wrong and that’s the basis for many of these issues. And yes, a ball on the line (as well as one on the inside of the line) would have given a more complete range of in and out balls.