Learn How to Serve Like a Pickleball Pro

Video: Pickleball pros Eva Welsher and Andrei Daescu demonstrate rules and techniques for serving, part of AARP’s Pickleball Fundamentals series.

Whether you’ve been playing pickleball for years or have just gotten into the wildly popular sport recently, it’s never a bad idea to try to improve your game — and that starts with mastering the perfect serve. Knowing how to serve like a pro in pickleball will allow you to impress your teammates and intimidate your opponents, while also giving you a serious leg up on the rest of the game.

“The ultimate goal when serving is to hit the ball diagonally across court into the other team’s service court,” explains Eva Welsher, an AARP Champions Tour Pickleball Pro. She adds that the ball must clear your opponent’s nonvolley zone — most commonly known as “the kitchen” — even if it just brushes the line, it’s out. Unlike tennis, you only get one try to get the ball into the service box.

But that’s just scratching the surface of what makes a stellar pickleball serve. In the beginner-friendly step-by-step tutorial below, Welsher and APP Tour Pickleball Pro Andrei Daescu give more great serving tips, including:

1. Serve from below your waist

Unlike in tennis, where players often serve overhand, pickleball requires that you serve underhand. “You must ensure that the contact point of where your paddle hits your ball is below your waist,” Welsher says. She notes that a high-quality serve should start around your knee level and go low to high; in other words, “go forward through the court and follow through towards your opponent.”

Welsher also emphasizes that your paddle’s head cannot be above your wrist when it connects with the ball; otherwise, it’ll be considered an illegal serve.

2. Stay behind the baseline — and within the service box

Welsher’s next piece of advice is to double-check before you serve that you’re standing fully behind the baseline. Your feet must be behind the baseline when you serve, she says. But that’s not the only thing worth checking; make sure, too, that both of your feet are completely in your serving box, and don’t accidentally cross over into your teammate’s side of the court.

3. Use one of the two types of serves

The volley serve

For this type, you hit the ball out of the air and don’t allow it to bounce. Remember that the paddle’s head cannot be above your waist when you hit the ball.

The drop serve

For this serve, you hold the ball out in front of you, drop it from your hand, let it bounce and then hit it. If you opt for this type of serve, there are two rules you must follow, Welsher says. The first is that you can’t toss the ball up in the air and then let it bounce, and the second is that you can’t “add any force when you drop it to the bounce before you hit it,” she explains.

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Rachel Simon is a contributing writer and the author of Pickleball for All: Everything but the “Kitchen” Sink. A pickleball player herself, Simon has written about pickleball for The New York Times. Her work has also appeared in other national publications, including Vogue and Glamour.