Depending on where you live, finding a regular practice partner for tennis isn't always straightforward. That's especially true if your job means you can only play at different times to most others who work the standard nine to five.

Now and again, you might run into someone who wants to play as often as possible. But what if you want to improve your game yet can't find an opponent to hit against?

The answer is a solo tennis practice, and there are several different drills you can do alone to help improve your game.

Tennis is also a sport where lots of little things come together to produce good shots. So by practising things in isolation like footwork, ball toss etc., you can piece them together and see significant improvements when you play against an opponent.

Let's take a look at some of the options you have at your disposal.

Here are my favourite ways to practice tennis alone. Some of them require the use of a court, but most of them don't.

They're in no particular order, and you can combine them into one session if you'd like variety, but my favourite is by far the wall. It's all action and fewer stoppages due to having to collect balls!

One of the most underutilised practice tennis tools is a wall, and it's a great way to improve reflexes, fitness, footwork and consistency.

Many professional players credit playing against a wall as a junior for building their love of the game and their consistency.

Even Roger Federer still has a tennis wall at his house in the Swiss Alps to practice on, which he used while rehabbing from his two knee surgeries in 2020.

On a personal level, some of my best practice sessions have come against the tennis wall. Why? Because the wall never misses, it's high intensity, and you don't get much time to react until you have to hit the next shot. You get that pedal to the metal feeling and can find a great rhythm.

Often after a session against the wall, my legs feel it way more than after a match because you are constantly moving, and it's quite a goal-driven practice as you want to make as many balls above the line as possible.

My favourite drill is where you hit several forehands down the line, then fire one crosscourt. You have to make up a lot of ground and get there in time to hit a backhand down the line. You then hit several more backhands down the line before going crosscourt and repeating the drill with more forehands. This one is a real killer on the legs.

Any downsides? You're not replicating match conditions as the ball comes back at you on a flat trajectory. You can practice facing shoulder high balls by first hitting the ball into the floor, so it rears up against the wall and bounces much higher. You then backpedal and take the ball around shoulder height which is an excellent drill for putting away short balls.

The wall isn't just for groundstrokes either; you can use it for volleys, approach shots with volley finishes, chip charges, touch play, overheads and serves.

Many courts worldwide have a wall or backboard as part of their facilities, but if you're not lucky enough to have that, any smooth wall with enough width and a flat enough surface in front of it works fine. Just remember to pick one with decent height to it, as it's not fun having to go collect balls every 10 minutes.

How To Use a Tennis Wall Effectively

All high-level tennis players have one thing in common – the correct fundamentals for stroke production.

Yes, there are quirks and some players who have funky styles. However, most top guys do the same things even though their techniques and results appear vastly different.

You can practice stroke production without stepping onto the court, practice swings in a mirror or the garden, and get a feeling for the correct swing path.

I'd recommend watching some slow-motion videos on Youtube and some coaching channels that give pointers on the fundamentals such as early preparation, racquet lag, shoulder rotation, contact point etc. You can then mimic this with shadow swings.

However, one far better way to practice stroke production is by using a training aid. The best one out there is the Topspin Pro.

One of the essential skills in the modern game is the correct stroke mechanics to produce topspin, and the problem is that it's not the most straightforward technique to learn.

Some players struggle for years to master topspin; however, the Topspin Pro guides the racquet through the contact point, speeding up the muscle memory. You can make dramatic improvements in no time at all on both the forehand and backhand.

The beauty of the Top Spin Pro is that you can use it anywhere, as long as there's enough space to swing a racquet without fear of knocking something over or clattering the racquet into a hard surface.

That means if you're not lucky enough to live near free to use courts, you can set this up in a garden, balcony, patio, garage, driveway or even your living room, providing there is enough space.

How to use the Topspin Pro

At the recreational level, and maybe even the professional level, the serve is one of the least practised strokes. 

That makes little sense, seeing as though it's one of the most important for winning matches, but for one reason or another, players tend to remove that from practice and instead feed from the hand to rally from the baseline.

A solo practice session allows you to hit 100's of serves, all you need is a basket of balls, and you can hit one serve after another.

To mix it up, you can bring in targets (use a tube of balls), aim for them, and try to hit different serves at different times.

Rather than trying to empty the basket as quickly as possible, I recommend hitting your serves as you would in a match, so take your time, go through your full-service routine and try to imagine match situations. E.g. Ok, I'm down breakpoint here, 2nd serve, let's kick this one into his backhand side.

Watch any tennis match on TV, and you'll hear the words ‘great footwork' at least once, especially when the likes of Federer and Nadal are playing.

Footwork is another area of your game that you can practice alone, and you can do it anywhere – on the court, in the gym, at the park or in your garden.

I like doing drills with the racquet in my hand and shadow swinging.

My favourite is an exercise, whereas a left-hander, I hop sideways onto my left leg, then jump forward onto my right leg and swing a closed stance type forehand. I then hop back onto my left leg, hop sideways onto my right leg, then hop forward onto my left leg to swing a backhand. Repeat.

A consistent ball toss is one of the key's to a good serve, and you don't even need a court to practice it. 

My favourite drill is the ball toss target drill. You take up the serving position as usual and then throw the ball in the air. However, rather than hitting it, you instead let it drop onto a target in front of you inside the baseline.

I usually use masking tape to create a small square target and get as many in a row as possible. It's trickier than you think, but you quickly learn to release the ball more consistently and let go of it as late as possible rather than throwing it into the air.

You can see the drill in action below, where Nick from Intuitive Tennis uses a trash can as his target.

Suppose two players of equal tennis ability and game style face each other in a match. In that case, it's often the fitter guy that comes out on top, so if you want to compete, it's imperative to build some muscle and work on some cardio so you can go the distance when matches get physical.

Tennis players rarely have bulging biceps, so it's essential to work on explosive type training. I often do HIIT style workouts where you work for 40 seconds, rest for 20, then move on to the next exercise.

Check out Dominic Thiem's regime below for some inspiration.

The last method for practising tennis alone is the only one that has any high $ cost behind it, and that's a ball machine.

This one needs no real explanation, you set the ball machine up one side of the court, and it will feed you balls to practice your game.

Depending on the machine you have, you can alter the speed, spin, trajectory and direction. This can make it into hitting a specific shot repeatedly or more of a cardio type workout.

The only issue with this method is that ball machines start at around $1000, so they're not cheap. Some of the popular options out there include:

Is a ball machine worth the investment? It depends on how often you plan to use it and what sort of disposable income you have.

They're helpful and fun. But I prefer the wall as there's zero setup time, no faffing around to get the balls fired out in the right place, and it is cheaper.

Hopefully, the ideas above give you some ideas of practising alone and not despairing if you can't find a practice partner!

My favourite is the tennis wall, and if you can find the time to hit against it once a week, you'll improve your consistency, footwork and intensity without fail.

What solo tennis drills do you use? Any I've missed? Let me know in the comments.

No spam, just the latest tennis news and guides.

Jonathan, that serve practice pic looks awfully familiar. IW, 2017, I was close to courtside. Great article!

I have always used the tennis wall, including as a warm-up before the training with the coach or hitting partner and I can only confirm everything Jonathan told in this article. I could add another benefit of learning regularity. If you have no regularity, you will feel it quickly in your legs. Then you try to focus on hitting just what you wanted to not be required to run all the time. Which includes running to collect balls after you hit too often over the wall and eventually hear some angry voices from those playing on the neighbor court, regularly being disturbed by balls coming from the heaven (=from you). The wall can serve very well, if you just miss a hitting partner or have no lessons with a coach. But it’s also a great improvement to your coached training if you are starting it after half an hour of hitting the wall. Then you don’t start spraying balls for first quarter all over the court. Re intensity – half an hour on the wall is equal to 2 hours of intense training with coach/hitting partner. Of course there are some elements you cannot train on the wall. The wall works on the reaction principle and cannot offer you balls coming from a certain height, at certain angle or power. It’s only the “feedback” of your own shots. But once you learned to control what comes from the wall, you can train virtually every element of the game. You can also try to hit the wall with the partner, if you both can cooperate well. Another aspect is, some day you are no more able to play with regularity or intensity your partner would expect, so you lose partners. But the wall will never claim about your poor level 😉 Still you can have some fun and improve or at least hold your level. And for active tennis fans hitting a wall is always better than hanging up the rac(q)uet 😉 In terms of preparation for matches, what you can learn on the wall, is to hit the ball so you get the wanted feedback. Then you can somehow expect your hitting partner will have the same problem the wall have had with your shots. And while any quite even wall is good enough, the best if course professionally build one, not simply all vertical, but with some profiling, so your balls hit too high don’t go direction heaven but come back to your feet.

Is the wall you use at the courts you play?

You can buy some pre-made walls that aren’t completely vertical but those are for the cantillionaire class.

My first was on the courts in a Olympic Sport Center in Spala (17 km driving from my site) and I was playing and training there. Then they decided to close everything for tennis and replaced with beach volleyball. Then I needed to change the court and wall and I have the luck, the rural village, 4 km away from my place in the wood, have build (for UE money) a professional multi-sport hall at the local school and then a outdoors court, including the wall. While the wall was built professionally, the courts were unfortunately not – it was synthetic grass on concrete, but concrete was of very poor quality and it was rather something to get an injury than to have fun. So I play since on a quite good private clay court in a close small town, around 20 km from me. Given Poland has not many courts at all, I must have had extreme luck, because I started to play 2 years before my migration to the forest and I thought I would need to travel 100 km x2 every time I want to play. Instead I just landed in the forest with close vicinity of good tennis infrastructure 🙂 I have even a friend in the village, who has 3 young daughters (8-10-12) and he has built quite a good clay court for girls to be able to play every free hour, so I can sometimes play with local NextGen 😉

Take care with trying to copy Thiem’s fitness drill. They are dangerous for someone who is not not fit and capable enough. The best you go first through survival-like training in the forest like Thiem did at 15-16 years of age with an Austrian all-extreme sports guru, Sepp Resnick. If you survive running uphill for an hour with a heavy log on your arms, you are somehow ready 😉 But jumping over posts or a rope ladder or whatever obstacles you can find in the nature will be good enough as a general fitness preparation.

True, if you are starting from scratch then lighter exercises are better. Low impact HIIT.

Or if you are old and no more able to jump 1 m high from stance, hahaha … My rule for exercises is – I always try to go for a bit more, I think I’m able to, but this depends on how good is my general health and fitness. Since I started Budwig diet, it’s again better than it was over last 5-10 years, so I can go for more 🙂

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

No spam, just the latest tennis news.

Hi, One long strip would block grommets? I suppose you could...

1. why you don't use one long power pad instead of 3 or 4 pi...

Serena needs badly start money??? Yes, good the guy has WC f...

He was scheduled for Ilkley but withdrew after winning the f...

Yeah, I have seen him too. But is he not a one-time-wonder?...

Hi, One long strip would block grommets? I suppose you could...

1. why you don't use one long power pad instead of 3 or 4 pi...

Serena needs badly start money??? Yes, good the guy has WC f...

He was scheduled for Ilkley but withdrew after winning the f...

Yeah, I have seen him too. But is he not a one-time-wonder?...

peRFect Tennis started back in 2011 as a tennis news site. Since then it’s gone on to be one of the largest independently owned website for tennis news and a platform for fans to share their views on the game.

The site primarily focuses on the men’s game with a bias towards Roger Federer but also covers the financials of the sports, equipment reviews, strings, and every tournament at Grand Slam, 1000, and 500 level.

The mission of the site is to allow tennis journalists and fans freedom and creativity in their writing, personal commentary, and out-of-the-box analysis.

If you want to learn a bit more about peRFect tennis and what to expect from the site, then head over to the about page.

@Jikkyleaks @K_Sheldrick Queer disabled sex worker😂

RT @peRFectTennisUK: Pre Stretching Tennis Strings What is pre-stretching? Which strings should you pre-stretch? What are the benefits? h…

OAS is real unfortunately. https://t.co/IH9f04D6R4

RT @peRFectTennisUK: The Best Tie-Off Knots For Tennis Racquet Stringing https://t.co/t6FPacQ35C

RT @MartinNeil9: Bayesian efficacy & superiority analysis yields 78% probability that placebo is superior to treatment for severe covid!…