We try incredibly hard to make tennis fun. We buy more cones, search Instagram for new drills, invent complicated scoring systems, build obstacle courses and sometimes create activities that barely resemble the sport itself. Somewhere along the way, I think we occasionally forget something fairly obvious: tennis itself is fun. Otherwise, why would anyone want tennis lessons in the first place?

When somebody asks me, “What are some fun drills for tennis?”, my first thought is not usually about a particular drill. I think about what makes the sport enjoyable. Competition is fun. Trying to outthink another person is fun. Testing your skills is fun. Improving is fun. Discovering something you could not do last week is fun. Having the freedom to try something different is fun. Some of my favourite practices are therefore incredibly simple. Try to make your opponent miss using your forehand. Win your opponent’s points by getting the ball to bounce twice. Earn extra value for winning before the ball bounces. Start at 40-0 and see whether you can close out the game. Give players a problem and allow them to decide how they want to solve it.

The practice does not need another twelve cones. Sometimes it just needs a better problem.

We often misunderstand what makes sport fun

Watch children playing in a playground and you will rarely see an adult standing beside them organising everything. They change the rules, argue about the rules, make new teams, change the teams again, decide one goal is worth two and give the younger child an advantage. Then five minutes later, they change everything again. I grew up playing football with children who were younger and older than me. We did not need somebody continuously differentiating the activity for us. We adapted because we wanted the game to work.

I think tennis coaching sometimes loses that. We start believing that fun has to be delivered to the player by the coach. The gaming industry gives us an interesting comparison. Think about why games such as Minecraft, Roblox or open-world video games have been so successful. There is structure, but there is also freedom. Players can explore, progress, encounter problems and make choices. There is not always one predetermined route through the experience. You could describe it as a sandbox.

Good tennis practice can feel similar. There are boundaries and laws within the environment, and the coach may manipulate certain things to guide the player towards a particular problem, but inside that space the player still has choices. Tennis already gives us an incredible sandbox. You can serve and volley, counterpunch, dominate from the baseline, attack with your forehand, absorb somebody else’s pace, play singles or doubles, and win points by hitting harder, softer, higher, wider, shorter or behind your opponent. There is not one way to play tennis, so why would we design practices as though there is?

Fun tennis drill 1: Make your opponent miss with your forehand

A very simple practice I might use starts with one problem: can you make your opponent miss using your forehand?Immediately, there are multiple solutions. The player could stretch their opponent cross-court, stretch them down the line, hit directly towards them and jam them, use the forehand to create an opportunity for the next shot, or recognise space in front of the opponent and use a drop shot.

I have given the player an intention without prescribing the solution. If I want to guide the practice further, I can manipulate the environment. Perhaps I want the player to explore attacking the opponent’s backhand. Instead of continually shouting, “Hit to the backhand”, I could make the target slightly more inviting by including the doubles tramline on that half of the court. Now there is a little more safety available, but I have not said they have to hit there or told them exactly how to hit there. I have simply changed the landscape of the game.

That is one of the things constraints-led practice design can do particularly well. Rather than specifying one movement solution, the coach can manipulate aspects of the task to encourage exploration while still retaining important information from the game. The same idea can work with almost any age or level because the problem can be scaled. Change the court, change the ball, change the value of different outcomes, but keep the problem meaningful. Can you use your forehand to create difficulty for another person?

Tennis stops being fun when there is only one right answer

This is where I think we can accidentally coach the enjoyment out of tennis. A player hits a forehand and the coach says it is wrong. They hit another one and are told where the racket needs to finish. Another ball comes and the coach demonstrates again. Another correction follows. Very quickly, the player is no longer solving the problem of tennis. They are trying to reproduce the movement the coach has decided is correct.

I often ask coaches during coach development how long they would stay in a job if their boss stood beside them constantly telling them they were doing everything incorrectly. Most say not particularly long. Yet somehow we have convinced ourselves that this can be a motivating way for somebody to learn sport.

That does not mean coaches should not provide feedback. Of course they should. The question is what kind of relationship we are creating with that feedback. Sometimes the player does not need another answer immediately. They need another attempt, a little more time, or another opportunity to interact with the problem.

Fun tennis drill 2: Bounce twice and steal the points

One of my favourite scoring games is incredibly simple. Play normal tennis, but if you can get the ball to bounce twice on your opponent’s side before they reach it, you steal their points. If they have seven points and you have three, you might suddenly have ten.

It completely changes what players search for. The attacking player starts looking at space differently. They might hit behind the opponent, use an angle, recognise an opportunity for a drop shot or find another way to make the second bounce happen. At the same time, something equally interesting happens at the other end of the court. The opponent becomes highly motivated to protect space because allowing that second bounce is suddenly very expensive.

One simple constraint has influenced both players. What I like about this game is that the scoring system does not prescribe the solution. I have not said, “You must hit a drop shot.” I have created a problem: can you make the ball bounce twice? The player decides how.

That is generally how I like to use value-based scoring. The score is not there simply as a reward for doing what the coach has said. It is there to guide intention and attention towards something useful within the game.

Fun tennis drill 3: Win before the bounce

Another version might give additional value if a player wins the point with a ball that does not bounce. Again, notice the wording. I have not said, “You only get bonus points if you win with a volley.” The player could volley, hit a drive volley, smash, or even win immediately with the serve because that ball has not bounced either.

I have created an outcome with multiple possible routes towards it. That is an important distinction between guiding behaviour and prescribing behaviour. A constraint should not simply become another technical instruction disguised as a game.

If I say, “You can only hit cross-court,” I may occasionally have a reason for doing that, but I have removed a significant decision from the player. If instead I create an environment where cross-court becomes particularly attractive, the player still has to perceive the opportunity and choose whether to use it. That matters because tennis matches are full of choices.

If we want decision-makers, give players decisions

When should I go down the line? When should I go cross-court? When should I attack? When do I recognise that I am under pressure? Should I serve wide or down the T? Should I take some pace off? Should I move forward?

Players do not become sensitive to those decisions because we explain every possible answer to them. They need experience. A player needs to experience being 40-0 up and comfortably closing out the game. They also need to experience being 40-0 up and somehow losing it. Those experiences contain information.

One of the contradictions I regularly see in tennis is coaches complaining that modern players cannot think for themselves, cannot problem-solve and are coach-dependent. Then you watch the practice and the coach decides where every ball goes, which shot the player hits, which direction they hit it, what movement they use and what happens next. We solve every problem for them and then act surprised when they struggle to solve problems alone.

If we want better decision-makers, we have to give players decisions to make.

Fun tennis drill 4: Start somewhere different on the scoreboard

You do not always need to invent an entirely different activity. Sometimes you can change the context simply by changing the score. Start one player at 40-0 and ask whether they can close the game. Reverse it and make them start 0-40 down. Begin at 30-all, play a deciding point, or put one player a break ahead.

The tennis itself has not changed, but the experience has. Players can discover whether their choices change when they feel ahead, behind or under greater consequence. Most importantly, I would not continually tell them what they should do. Let them experience it and then ask questions afterwards. What did you notice? Did anything change when you got to 40-30? What would you try next time?

There is a big difference between creating a rich experience and giving players the answer before they have even encountered the problem.

Competition is not the enemy of fun

I think adults sometimes lose sight of the fact that competition can be fun. Watch children playing sport without adults organising them and, more often than not, somebody is keeping score. They are trying to win, celebrating, losing and then playing again five minutes later.

Where competition starts to become problematic is when adults attach enormous meaning to the outcome. Now the eight-year-old is not simply playing another child. The result affects a rating, a ranking, a selection decision, whether a parent thinks the lesson was worthwhile or whether the coach considers them talented. We start trying to produce a tennis player at eight, nine or ten years old and forget that they are simply kids who play tennis.

Winning and losing points can just be part of playing. As adults, we have to be careful about how much emotional weight we attach to those outcomes. I do not think the answer is removing all competition from practice. I think the answer is creating environments where winning matters in the moment without convincing children that the result defines them.

Fun tennis drill 5: Let the players change the rules

Here is something that might make some coaches uncomfortable: let the players design part of the practice.

Ask them what they could change to make the game work better. Maybe one side becomes wider. Maybe one player gets two serves. Maybe somebody earns additional points for a particular outcome. Maybe the more experienced player uses a slower ball. Perhaps the players invent something you would never have considered yourself.

Does that mean the coach has disappeared? Not at all. A sandbox still has boundaries. The coach creates the learning environment and can guide or shape what happens inside it, but player-led coaching actually has to contain some player leadership. If every decision still has to be approved, created and controlled by the coach, we have not really given much autonomy at all.

The important question is simple: where can I give some control back to the people actually playing?

Mixed-ability groups can be fun too

Coaches often become nervous when players of different abilities have to play together. We try to protect everyone by pairing the best with the best and the least experienced with the least experienced. I do not think that always reflects sport particularly well.

A top seed at Wimbledon is not guaranteed another top seed in the first round. Tennis players have to learn how to interact with different styles, speeds, levels and problems. Mixed experiences can therefore be valuable.

That does not mean a highly experienced player should spend an entire hour dominating somebody who has only played twice. That would not be particularly enjoyable or useful for either player. Rotate them. If there are four players, everyone can experience three different opponents very quickly. Then use constraints to help differentiate the challenge. The more experienced player might have less space available. The less experienced player might have a larger target. One player might use a different ball or have a different scoring opportunity.

Or do something even more radical and ask the players what they think would make the game fairer. Children are often remarkably good at adapting games when adults give them permission to do so. We sometimes underestimate them because control feels safer to us.

You do not need a new tennis drill every week

Social media has created a strange problem for coaching. There are now thousands of tennis drills available every time you open your phone. A coach sees an influential account using something that looks engaging, saves it, and then copy-and-pastes it into Tuesday night’s session.

Nobody asks why the original coach was using it. Who were those players? What problem were they trying to solve? What came before it? What happened afterwards? Does any of that apply to the players in front of me?

The drill becomes the curriculum.

I do not think good coaching is about constantly finding something new. Good coaching is slowly moving the dial up and down according to the players standing in front of you. Tennis already contains enormous variability. Different serves, opponents, scores, ball flights, positions, heights, speeds and intentions constantly produce new situations.

We do not need to manufacture complexity simply because we are worried that repeating a game will become boring. This is also why I have never particularly liked the traditional programme structure of week one forehands, week two backhands, week three volleys, week four serves, week five returns and week six match play. What happens if I miss forehand week? Do I wait another six weeks before I experience a forehand again?

Each week could be considerably simpler: this week, we are going to play tennis. The coach then watches what emerges and designs around the players.

Fun tennis drill 6: Two play, two reset

Group coaching creates another strange obsession: everybody must be hitting all the time. If anybody stops for ten seconds, the coach starts panicking. Get them shadow swinging. Put them through a ladder. Give them another ball. Keep them busy.

But tennis is not constant activity. Points finish, players reset, they prepare and then they play again. As a general coaching rule, I try not to have more than four players sharing one playing space, whether that is four players around a mini red court or four on a full-sized court.

Two players play a point, they come off, and the next two play. The first pair have a brief opportunity to recover, reflect and prepare before going again. Nobody needs to stand in a queue of eight people waiting for the coach to feed them a ball.

I do not think we should confuse constant activity with learning. Sometimes that short space between points is useful. The player gets to think and the game gets to breathe.

The coach does not have to fix everything immediately

This is probably the hardest part. A player struggles and we feel uncomfortable. We are the coach, so we think we should do something. We interrupt, explain, demonstrate, correct and restart.

Sometimes that intervention is absolutely necessary. If the challenge is completely inappropriate and the player cannot find any way into the task, change something. But sometimes they simply need another thirty seconds, another point or another attempt.

A little struggle is not automatically bad. A good practice problem should require some searching. The role of the coach becomes knowing when the player needs support and when the player needs space. That requires patience and also confidence, because standing quietly can sometimes feel less like coaching than delivering constant instruction.

But coaching is not measured by how often the coach speaks.

Three ways to make your next tennis session more fun

If I had to change three things tomorrow, they would not require buying anything.

The first would be to give the player more voice and choice. Let them shape parts of the session, give them decisions worth making and ask them what they noticed before telling them what you noticed.

The second would be to use scoring and value to guide attention. Do not simply add random bonus points because it looks fun. Decide what behaviour you are trying to invite and create a scoring system that makes players search for it while leaving several possible solutions open.

The third would be to give the game some space. Resist the urge to jump in after every unsuccessful action. Watch for a little longer and allow players to explore. If they are genuinely stuck, change something. But do not assume every struggle requires an immediate correction.

None of that means coaching becomes passive. It means the coach becomes more deliberate about when and how they intervene.

So, what are some fun drills for tennis?

Fun tennis drills do not need to look like entertainment. They can be incredibly simple. Try to make your opponent miss using your forehand. Get the ball to bounce twice and steal their points. Earn extra value for winning before the bounce. Start at 40-0 and try to close the game. Rotate through different opponents. Allow players to change one rule themselves.

These practices work because the fun does not come from the cone arrangement. It comes from competition, exploration, choice, challenge and solving problems with another human being at the other end of the court.

There is a lesson there for coaches. We spend an enormous amount of time asking, “How can I make this drill more fun?” Perhaps the better question is, “What am I doing that is stopping tennis from being fun?”

Sometimes we do not need to add anything. We need to remove some control, allow a few more choices and let the players play.