25 tennis goals for beginners, juniors and club players

Tennis goals for beginners

Beginner goals are about getting the ball over the net many times in a row, with anyone or with a wall.

• Rally 10 balls in a row over the net.
• Get 10 serves in out of 20.
• Play once a week for 3 months.
• Learn to keep score and play one full set.
• Hit 100 balls against a wall, 3 times a week, for a month.

Tennis serve and return goals

The serve is the one shot you hit with nobody else involved, so it is the easiest to count. A putt is the same kind of shot, which is why serve goals look a lot like golf goals.

• Hit 50 serves at every practice for a month.
• Get 70 percent of first serves in across a full set.
• Hit 20 second serves in a row without a fault.
• Hit each of 3 targets in the service box 5 times out of 10.
• Return 8 serves out of 10 back into play.

Rally and technique goals

Rally goals count balls in a row, and technique goals pick one habit to hold for a whole session.

• Rally 50 balls in a row cross court.
• Land 20 backhands in a row past the service line.
• Come to the net 10 times in one set.
• Split step before every shot your opponent hits, for a full set.
• Work on one technical cue per session for 8 weeks.

Match and rating goals

Match goals should be things you do in the match, not the result. Serving under pressure is a skill shared with volleyball goals.

• Play 30 matches this year.
• Enter a first tournament.
• Hold serve 4 games in a row in a match.
• Keep double faults under 3 a match for 5 matches.
• Move your World Tennis Number 2 points closer to 1.

Practice and fitness goals

Practice goals count hours and sessions, and they sit under every other goal on this list.

• Play 100 hours this year. That is about 2 hours a week.
• Hit 3 times a week for 12 weeks.
• Hit 10,000 serves in a year. That is about 200 a week.
• Do 10 minutes of footwork before every session for 8 weeks.
• Practise against a wall 15 minutes a day for 30 days.

What is a good tennis goal?

A good tennis goal is a count of something you do, not a result against someone else. A review of 27 studies of goal setting in sport found that process goals, the ones about how you carry out a skill, had the largest effect on performance. Goals about beating others had almost none. "70 percent of first serves in" is yours. "Beat my club rival" depends on the rival.

If you want one number for your level, the International Tennis Federation has one. The World Tennis Number runs from 40 for a beginner to 1 for a professional, so a lower number means a stronger player. It is a good long term target, and a slow one.

For the weeks in between, cut the big goal into small counts. A better serve is 50 serves a practice. Breaking a goal into smaller ones turns a rating into something to do on Tuesday.

How to track tennis goals

Write down your counts before you leave the court. A review of 138 studies found that people who monitored their progress reached their goals more often, and that recording it beat keeping it in your head.

Sessions and matches are a day count. Hours and serves are amounts that add up. A goal like 100 hours of play is tracked the same way as a 100 day challenge.

A rating moves slowly. Your practice count moves every time you play. A picture that fills up one session at a time shows the part you can change this week.

Frequently asked questions

What are good tennis goals for beginners?

Rally 10 balls in a row, get 10 serves in out of 20, and play once a week for 3 months. When those are easy, raise the rally to 20 and learn to play a full set.

What is the World Tennis Number?

A rating from the International Tennis Federation that runs from 40 to 1. Beginners start near 40 and professionals are near 1. It gives players of any age or level one scale to measure progress on.

Should my tennis goal be to win more matches?

Keep winning as the direction, and set goals on what leads to it: first serves in, double faults, hours of practice. In a review of 27 studies, goals about how a skill is carried out had the largest effect on performance.