Tennis is a game involving many skills, but its complexity tends to discourage novice players. A common problem of the beginner is the inability to make contact with the ball and stroke it effectively. This is due, in part, to lacking the ability to judge where the ball will bounce and improper foot placement at contact. It is an ever present concern of tennis instructors to seek the best strategies for teaching beginners the skills of tennis and simultaneously produce feelings of success within their students as quickly as possible. The purpose of this study was to ascertain which of the two methods of teaching beginning tennis, volley (start at the net then progress to the baseline) or groundstroke (start at the baseline then progress to the net), is most effective and to evaluate each method on the basis of which of the following techniques can most effectively be used to teach tennis to beginners: command (traditional command-response interaction between teacher and student) or task technique (summary KR). This study used ninety-seven male and female students enrolled in four beginning tennis classes as subjects. After pretests, each class was instructed in one of the two designated methods (volley or groundstroke) and by one of the two techniques (command or task). Thirteen 45-minute sessions of instruction were followed by post-testing. Assessment scores were gained by the use of the Scott-French Revision of the Dyer Wallboard Test and the Broer-Miller Forehand-Backhand Test. These were used to nullify the possibility that a particular teaching method might favor the development of the skills needed in one test more than those needed in the other. Statistical analysis provided mean scores and standard deviations of each treatment group. A two-way analysis of covariance, using the pretests as the covariant, was computed with the data provided by the two dependent variables. Results of the statistical analysis of the data revealed significant (p < .05) differences of effectiveness. The volley method showed itself to be preferred to the groundstroke method when teaching beginning tennis. Moreover, comparisons of didactic strategies showed that the task technique was more effective than the command technique. Thus, beginners would benefit by starting at the net, thus lessening misjudgments in determining bouncing distance to the racquet, and in faulty footwork in movement to the ball that diminishes stability, thereby degrading power and accuracy.Keyword(s): physical activity