Abstract:
The purposes of this research were to study and compare the effects of goal setting on the serving performance of tennis between serving training with goal setting and serving training only. The samples of this study were fifteen tennis players from the Suphan Buri Sports School and fifteen ; youth tennis players from Bangna Tennis Court. According to random assignment, the youth tennis players from Bangna Tennis Court were in the control group and the tennis players from the Suphan Buri Sports School were in the experimental group . Both groups were pre-tested by the Hewitt's Achievement Test, having validity coefficients between .52-.93 and reliability coefficients between .75-.94, on service placement. The experimental group trained serving with goal setting whereas the control group trained serving only, a days a week, for eight weeks. They were periodically tested at the end of 2nd , 4th , 6th and 8th weeks. The collected data were analyzed by Statistical Package for the Social Sciences / Personal Computer Plus, in terms of mean, standard deviations t-test and one way analysis of variance with repeated measurement. The results were as follows : 1. After training at the end of 2nd ,4th , 6th and 8th weeks, the serving performance of the experimental group which trained serving with goal setting was significantly higher than the control group which trained serving only, at the .05 level. 2. The serving performance of the experimental group at the end of 8th week was significantly higher than at the pre-test, the end of 2nd , 4th and 6th weeks, and the serving performance at the end of the 6th week was significantly higher than at the pre-test. Whereas, the serving performance of the control group was not significantly different among the pre-test, the end of 2nd ,4th , 6th and 8th weeks, at the .05 level.