Racquetball Basics - Serves

Malia Bailey: Hi, my name is Malia Bailey and today we are learning about the fundamentals and basics of racquetball. Right now we are going to learn about serves. We are going to talk a little bit about the four basic serves. Its a lob serve, the hard Z, the drive serve and a half lob.

We are going to start with the drive serve. We are going to start with the footwork. In order to get a nice hard low hit, you want your body moving with the ball. So we are going to use our legs to help us with that. Start with the nice comfortable balanced stance. We want to step with our right foot. Step, push forward and as we are pushing forward, we have got our racquet in good position. Start again. Nice comfortable stance, step, push forward, so that we are using our hips and our legs, be balanced when we swing, point of contact. Let's try that again. Step, balance, racquet up, push forward and swing. The Lob serve. We don't have to get our body moving into it. Stand up a little bit closer to the front wall. When we step forward, we don't need two steps. Just a nice step, easy swing. The racquet will come up and lifting the ball up, bounce and lift. That would be your high lob. The Z serve. We will do a Z from this side, so it goes over here. We want our two steps like our drive serve. Step, step; When we contact the ball, the ball is going to be up here a little bit more, rather than down here. That will carry the ball close to the front wall, close to the side wall. It will hit the front wall, side wall and come across your body here. So it creates a Z effect. With the half lob, again, we don't need the two step in getting down on the ball, like we did with our drive, hard Z. Its more like the high lob. Instead of lifting the ball up with our racquet, its a flatter swing. It will carry back. With all your serves what we don't want to happen is, the ball to come off the back wall. That usually will be a setup for your opponent. So those are your four basic serves. Coming up, we will be showing you some drills to implement and perfecting those serves.