For beginning tennis players everywhere, learning to serve effectively is one of the most challenging tasks in the sport. Here are three quick tips to improve your tennis serve.

Relax: As with most sports, relaxation is essential to ensuring smooth motion and consistency. By learning to relax your wrist and arm before the serve, you can ensure elasticity in the muscles and fine-tune individual serving elements.

Work on your ball toss: When it comes to serving, the height of the ball toss can have a significant impact on the effectiveness of the serve. A high toss makes it difficult to time the contact with your racquet, while a low toss prevents you from making a powerful serve. Different serves have different ideal ball toss heights, so be sure to practice often.

Avoid foot faults: All too often, beginning tennis players needlessly give away points due to foot faults. Practice with a physical object in front of your foot, so you know when you’ve stepped over the line.