How to Improve Your Pickleball Serve

Quick Answer: To improve your pickleball serve, aim for depth rather than speed. A serve that lands within a few feet of the baseline pins the returner back and buys your team time. Fix your contact point, use a consistent pre serve routine, and practice to targets instead of just getting it in.

The serve in pickleball is the one shot nobody interferes with, which makes it the most improvable shot in the game. It is also the one most recreational players never practice.

What makes a serve legal?

Two legal serves exist, and they have different requirements.

The volley serve is struck out of the air. The paddle must move in an upward arc, contact must be below the waist, and the highest point of the paddle head must be below the highest part of the wrist. In the 2026 rulebook these requirements are described as needing to be clearly met, which gives referees room to fault borderline serves without giving the server the benefit of the doubt.

The drop serve is now a permanent part of the rules. You drop the ball from your hand without adding force and hit it after the bounce. The upward arc, wrist and waist restrictions do not apply to it, which is why players with inconsistent toss mechanics often prefer it. Our article on the drop serve covers it in detail.

Both serves must be hit diagonally into the opposite service court, and both must clear the non volley zone including its line.

Why does depth matter more than power?

Because a deep serve keeps the returner behind the baseline, and a returner who has to move forward to hit is a returner who arrives at the kitchen line late.

A short serve does the opposite. It invites the returner to step in, hit through the ball, and be at the kitchen line before your third shot has even been struck. That is the whole reason serve depth is worth practicing.

A serve that lands in the last three feet of the service box is doing its job. Nobody needs to be hitting winners off a serve, and the players trying to are the ones with 30 percent fault rates.

What are the three fixes that add depth?

Most depth problems come from the same three places.

• Contact point too close to the body. Make contact out in front, roughly at the level of your front hip. A cramped contact point produces a short, floaty serve.
• No weight transfer. Start with weight on the back foot and move it forward through contact. Standing flat footed and swinging with the arm alone caps your depth.
• Aiming at the box instead of a target. Pick a spot two feet inside the baseline and aim at it every time. Aiming at the whole service court produces serves that land in the middle of it.

Where should you serve?

Deep, and usually to the backhand. Most recreational players have a weaker backhand return, and a deep serve to that side produces short returns you can attack.

Vary it anyway. Serving to the same spot every point lets the returner set up early. Mixing a deep serve down the middle with one out wide changes the geometry of the return without requiring you to hit anything harder.

The middle serve in doubles is underrated. It creates a moment of hesitation about who takes it, and hesitation produces weak returns.

How do you build a repeatable routine?

Do the same thing before every serve. Same number of ball bounces, same stance, same breath, same look at your target. The routine is what holds up when the score is 9 to 9.

Call the score clearly before you start the motion, since that is required and since rushing it is how the rhythm falls apart. Our guide to pickleball scoring covers the calling sequence.

Should you try adding spin?

Only after depth and consistency are reliable. Topspin serves dive and kick forward, which makes them harder to return cleanly, and they are worth learning eventually.

The extreme version is not available to you. The pre spin serve that some players used to generate with the hand is no longer legal, and our piece on the chainsaw serve explains what happened to it.

Spin costs consistency at first. If you fault more than one serve in ten, work on depth instead.

Frequently asked questions

How do I stop hitting my serve into the net? Usually contact is too far behind you or the swing is too flat. Move contact forward and finish the swing upward toward your target.

Can you serve overhand in pickleball? No. The volley serve must be struck below the waist with an upward arc, and the drop serve must bounce first.

What is the best serve for a beginner? A deep serve to the backhand with no spin. Get it in, get it deep, and worry about everything else later.

How many serve attempts do you get? One, in standard play. There are no second serves, which is why a low fault rate matters more than a spectacular serve.

Can the serve land in the kitchen? No. A serve that lands in the non volley zone or on its line is a fault.

Should I use the drop serve? If your toss is inconsistent or you want to remove the wrist and waist judgment calls, it is a reasonable choice. Plenty of strong players use it.

How much should I practice serving? Ten minutes with a hopper of balls, two or three times a week, changes a serve inside a month. It is the easiest solo practice in the sport.

Where can I read the basic rules? Our guide to the 5 basic rules covers serving alongside the rest of the fundamentals.

Serving is solo practice, which makes it the cheapest improvement available to you. If you want someone to check the legality of your motion before a tournament, an instructor can do it in five minutes, and our pickleball coaches directory lists teaching pros by area.

Written by the Pickler Junction Team.