Ask most junior players what they need to return serve better and they’ll tell you the same thing: faster hands. They think the answer is reacting quicker once the ball is already coming at them. After 30 years of coaching here in Sarasota, I can tell you that’s almost never the real problem. I’m Michael Boothman, founder of SRQ Tennis, and the return is the shot I see rushed, under-practiced, and misunderstood more than any other in junior tennis.
The truth is that the best returners don’t have faster reactions than everyone else. They start moving earlier because they read information sooner. They’re watching the toss, the shoulder turn, the contact point—not waiting for the ball to leave the strings. That’s a learnable skill, and it’s one we build with live serves at Potter Park, not with a basket of fed balls.
Why the ball machine can’t teach the return
This is where one of our Six Pillars matters most: Live Ball Is the Method. A ball machine fires from the same spot, at the same speed, on the same timer, every single ball. A junior can groove a beautiful-looking return against a machine and then completely fall apart against a real server—because the machine removed the only thing that actually makes the return hard.
The return is a reading problem before it’s a swinging problem. The server gives you cues: where they stand, how they toss, how their hips open. A machine gives you none of that. So a player who has only practiced against a machine has been training the swing while skipping the part that decides whether the swing ever happens on time. When I watch a Sarasota junior who “can’t return,” nine times out of ten they’re not slow—they’re late to start, because nobody taught them what to look at.
That’s the difference between rehearsing a motion and rehearsing the decision. Match returns are decisions made under time pressure. You have to train them that way.
The drill: Read, Step, Block
Here’s the live-ball drill I use, and it works for everyone from a 10-year-old at Potter Park up through tournament players. You need a live server—a coach or a hitting partner—and a returner. No machine.
Round 1 — Read only (no swing). The returner stands in return position and does nothing but call out the serve direction out loud—“wide,” “body,” or “T”—the instant they read it. No racket swing at all. The goal isn’t to hit the ball; it’s to see how early they can identify direction. Most kids are shocked at how late they’re actually picking it up. We’re training the eyes before we train the hands.
Round 2 — Read and split. Same thing, but now the returner adds a split-step timed to the server’s contact, then takes one step toward where the ball is going. Still no full swing—just a controlled move and a soft block of the ball back into the court. This is where you see the early-information habit start to pay off. They’re moving on the read, not on the bounce.
Round 3 — Block to a target. Now we add accuracy. The returner blocks every serve crosscourt into a cone target about six feet inside the sideline. We’re not going for power or for winners. We want a returned ball that lands deep and gives them time to recover. I want to see 7 or 8 out of 10 returns land in that crosscourt zone before we ever talk about driving the return or stepping in to attack a second serve.
That progression—read, then move, then place—keeps the hard part first. The swing is the easy part once the read is solid.
The coaching cues that make it stick
A few simple cues do most of the work here:
- “Watch the toss, not the ball.” The toss tells you more about a serve than the first ten feet of its flight. A toss out to the right usually means a slice out wide; a toss more over the head often means a flatter serve up the T. Reading the toss buys a junior a fraction of a second, and a fraction of a second is enormous on the return.
- “Split on their contact.” Not before, not after. The split-step should land just as the server strikes the ball, so the returner is light and ready to push off in either direction the instant they read direction.
- “Block, don’t blast.” Especially on a fast first serve, a compact block beats a big swing. Short backswing, firm wrist, let the server’s pace do the work. We add the bigger swing later, on second-serve returns where there’s time.
Notice none of these cues are about swinging faster. They’re about earlier information and a calmer first move. That’s almost always where the real improvement lives.
Why we keep score on it
We track the crosscourt-target number every session—how many out of ten land in the zone—because a junior who can see that number climb from 4 to 7 over a few weeks believes in the return in a way no amount of encouragement can produce. They’ve got evidence. That’s the whole point of training with real numbers instead of vague praise: confidence is built on what a player can actually see themselves do.
If you want to dig into how we sequence this kind of work across an entire junior’s development, our coaching page lays out how the Six Pillars connect from first lesson to tournament play. And if you’d like a deeper look at the research behind reading an opponent’s cues, the USTA’s coaching resources are a solid, credible starting point on anticipation and perception in tennis.
Try it this week
If you’re a parent reading this and your junior is struggling on returns, you don’t need a court full of equipment. You need a live server and ten minutes of the read-only round. Have them just call the serve direction out loud, no swing. You’ll both be surprised how quickly the reads sharpen—and how much calmer the actual returns get once the eyes are doing their job.
That’s the return of serve, the way we teach it in Sarasota: not faster hands, but earlier eyes. Live ball, every time.
If you’ve got a junior who wants to work on this, I’m easy to reach—text me at 941-239-4703 or email michael@srq.tennis.
— Coach Michael