Put it into practice: Serve variations with Jethro Binns

Jethro played on the PSA World Tour before his career was unfortunately cut short by serious injury. Moving on from this setback, he created the SquashSkills brand with Peter Nicol and has since spent many hours breaking down the techniques of the game’s elite, to help players of all levels incorporate these skills into their own games.

The serve is such an integral part of the game, yet so many amateur players still treat it merely as a way to get the ball into play. There’s so much more to it than that though, and Jethro’s playlist gives you a great insight into the subtleties of the skill of the serve.

In the series, Jethro takes us through a variety of different types of serve, whilst also discussing some of the most common faults that players display in their serving. Whatever level you play at, a good serve can be a very effective weapon – you only need check out James Willstrop in action, to see the amount of pressure that can be created with a well-practiced serve.

Perhaps the most important fact to consider with the serve, is that unlike everything else in squash that is frequently so rushed, it is the one shot that you can almost take as long as you like with (barring a particularly over-zealous ref!). Taking this time to set-up and ready yourself, gives you an opportunity to really cause your opponent problems and put yourself straight onto the front foot in a rally.

The aim of this blog is to introduce you to some ideas of drills and practices you can utilise to start working on the quality of your serve, with a selection of progressions you can use to develop your consistency and accuracy. Over time, the skill you’ll develop with your serve will give you so many more opportunities to apply pressure to your opponent from the off. While it’s rare to hit an ‘ace’ in squash as compared to tennis, you can learn to be able to consistently force your opponent into bad positions – frequently forcing them into having to hit underneath of the ball, and preventing them from being able to utilise the volley on their returns.

To help you with your practice, we’ve put together a selection of brand new solo and pairs sessions for you to try, built around the main technical points introduced by Jethro in his video series. Watch through the playlist videos first and then click through the links below to check out these skills sessions, and see how you can start putting your new-found serving mastery into practice!

Put it into practice

Solo session

This session is structured around individuals drills and practices you can work on to start building your serve control.

Pairs session

This pairs session consists of a series of routines and games to try out with a partner, to get you thinking about using your serve effectively in a match.

Related content

Serving basics with Shaun Moxham

Shaun Moxham returns to get back to the fundamentals of squash with basic service technique featuring the Interactive Squash wall.

The serve with Paul Carter

In this series Paul Carter teaches you everything you need to know about the serve.

Backhand return of serve with Jesse Engelbrecht

Jesse takes us through how effectively return serve on the backhand side using the soon to be released Stingray ball machine.

Let us know how you get on with the sessions, we’d love to hear your feedback!