This is an AMA (ask me anything) episode on net play strategy. My new Masterclass on net play strategy for doubles is live and on sale through Sunday so I wanted to answer your questions on the topic to kick off the launch.
I answer 7 of your questions about net play including:
If you enjoy this episode, let me know, and I'll do more AMAs in the future.
The Masterclass is 30% off through Sunday 2/11! Learn more & enroll below.
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**Join the #1 Doubles Strategy Newsletter for Club Tennis Players**
**Doubles Strategy Courses** These video courses will help you play smarter doubles and make winning easier.
**Doubles Ebooks** These guides offer proven advice to improve your doubles strategy.
***
Download your free doubles guide to learn how to force errors and get more easy volleys at TheTennisTribe.com/doubles-guide/.
***
This is an AMA (ask me anything) episode on net play strategy. My new Masterclass on net play strategy for doubles is live and on sale through Sunday so I wanted to answer your questions on the topic to kick off the launch.
I answer 7 of your questions about net play including:
If you enjoy this episode, let me know, and I'll do more AMAs in the future.
The Masterclass is 30% off through Sunday 2/11! Learn more & enroll below.
-----
**Join the #1 Doubles Strategy Newsletter for Club Tennis Players**
**Doubles Strategy Courses** These video courses will help you play smarter doubles and make winning easier.
**Doubles Ebooks** These guides offer proven advice to improve your doubles strategy.
***
Download your free doubles guide to learn how to force errors and get more easy volleys at TheTennisTribe.com/doubles-guide/.
***
Hey everyone, in today's episode I'm gonna be answering your questions about net play strategy. So this is an ask me anything and AMA episode, and I'm gonna try to do more of these over the next Several months and maybe through the end of the year, just answering your questions directly here on the podcast so that I can help you, maybe think about some of your, your problems or issues You're running into on the doubles court in a different way. So this one is all about net play, so I asked y'all on Instagram to submit your questions and a lot of you did, and I've picked out some of the questions that I'm Gonna answer here shortly On mixed doubles tactics, on how to improve your reactions at the net, how to play lobbers, what do you do with that in-between ball that lands at the service line, and a few more questions as well. And, as I've mentioned in previous weeks, this episode does coincide with the launch of my new masterclass on Net play strategy, so it is on sale now through Sunday at 30% off, so this is the lowest price it will ever be. And if you're looking to improve your Skill at the net, improve your knowledge and tactics and strategy at the net, then this is really a system for doing that.
Speaker 1:The masterclass includes over a hundred and ninety minutes, so that's over three hours of videos. So there's whiteboard videos that I'm sure most of you have seen at this point, and then I also do the point analysis, which I typically do in a short format for free on our Instagram and YouTube channel and Facebook. But this is a lot more in-depth and a lot longer point analysis videos where I go over different tactics and movement at the net from ATP and WTA players that you can apply at the club level, and I'll be adding more lessons to it soon. There's a few Other things that have come up that I want to add to the course, so I'll be updating it over the next week or two as well, but as of right now, it's over three hours of video content. There's also written content with images and diagrams to really Help it kind of sink in and help the right mindset and strategies Stick with you so that you can use them to continue to develop your net game. So Check it out in the show notes we're gonna link to it there and then use the coupon code when you check out. I heart doubles all one word and you will get 30% off if you purchase and enroll Before Sunday. So thank you all in advance. For all of you who are going to enroll, it does help support all the free content that I do. So I do a lot of free videos on YouTube and Instagram and then, obviously, this podcast is totally free right now and it's not possible without these strategy products. So you're all purchasing. That helps me or enables me to continue to create more and more free, free content for everyone. So I really really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:So let's dive into the episode today. So the first question is from Greg. He says I am a righty and I love the net, but when I serve from the deuce court and close, I have a lot more difficulty handling lobs than I'm. Then when I'm serving and closing from the ad court, is this typical? Should I abandon closing in after serve on the deuce court? I'm 64 years old, by the way, nimble for my age, but can't get around the fact that I'm 64. So, greg, thank you for the question. Thank you for all the detail on that. It really helps me a lot with these questions to be able to answer them when you give me as much information as possible, and I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1:So, closing in from the deuce court, if you're a right-handed player it is going to be tougher to cover the lob. There's a few Different ways to handle that, but you can't get around the fact that if they lob through the middle of the court you have a high backhand. So one thing you can do is you can close and shift a little bit further to your left. So since your forehand is out towards the doubles alley, you should be able to have a little bit more reach with that forehand volley. But you're giving up kind of that cross court angle a little bit more, which which makes it a little bit more difficult. You should also be communicating with your partner. If you're getting lobbed off the return through the middle of the court, it's possible that maybe your partner should take a half a step or a step back and they should back up to hit the overhead, since they have their forehand in the middle. When you're serving to the deuce court, that is a great way to To kind of work with your partner and handle that.
Speaker 1:Another thing you can do from the deuce court is that you can actually run Australian or I formation and you can cover that Left side so that you are able to get to the ad side and have that forehand in the middle. And there there's two ways you can do this. Number one is you can just straight up serve and volley from the deuce court running this eye or Australian formation. But when you do this you have a lot more ground to cover and the ball is traveling a shorter distance since they're returning up the line. So unless you're super quick, or maybe if you're playing at a certain level and the returns aren't coming with a ton of pace, it's going to be pretty difficult to cover that off the straight up serve and volley. So you might serve, shift to the left, hit one ground stroke, maybe a chip shot or a slice or even a high top spin ball, and then come in behind that second ball. So that's another option for you to get your forehand in the middle. And then the last thing to think about it is you might just need to do that same thing out of the regular formation. You might need to serve, hit your plus plus one shot from the baseline and then come forward after that.
Speaker 1:This is really going to depend. You know there's so many factors that play in doubles, but this is really going to depend on how often the opponent's lobbing, how good they are at lobbing, your partner's ability to help you cover that lob in the middle and then your comfort level at the baseline as well. So hopefully that helps you think about a few different solutions and I would imagine you'll use all three of these, or all of these solutions I've talked about, or a combination of them, depending on the opponent that you play against. Some opponents, if they're lobbing every single time in the deuce court off that return, then you're going to have to make some significant adjustments. But if it's not that good of a lob or they're only lobbing every now and then, then maybe you don't worry about that as much and you continue to serve and volley, playing out of that regular formation. So hopefully that helps. I know there's not a clear cut answer there, but that's again that's. That's the thing about doubles is. Every situation is so unique and different and I'm trying to help everyone create kind of frameworks to think about this and come up with solutions on their own.
Speaker 1:So next another question related to lobbers what to do when you are playing lobbers and don't have many opportunities at the net. This is from Amanda. Amanda, thank you for the question. This is one I get a lot and I've got an episode, a podcast episode. If you just Google doubles only podcast lobbers or something like that you should be able to find it, and I've got a full episode on how to beat the lobbers.
Speaker 1:But when you're at the net, your partner's back and the opponents keep lobbing you. There's a bunch of different options here. So one option that I like to use sometimes if I keep getting lobbed, especially off of a return or even if it's just a baseline rally, is I'll fake towards the middle and then I'll move backwards. So a typical fake you're going to move towards the middle and then continue your forward momentum and move over towards the alley to cover the line. But if they're using the lob a lot, you can fake towards the middle and then shuffle kind of diagonally backwards, knowing that that lob is coming. So that's one way to handle it If you're quick enough to do that and have the ability to kind of hit that overhead from the service line area, kind of moving backwards. Another option is to bring them forward.
Speaker 1:Lobbers typically don't like to play at the net, they like to play at the baseline. You also want to think about finding their weaker side. So most lobbers prefer to lob either off their forehand or their backhand side, and that's up to you and your partner to figure out, especially early on in the match. So test out their forehand lob, test out their backhand lob, see which one is shorter, see which one lands shorter in the court and try to open that one up more often and target that one more often, and then you'll be able to get some of those overheads.
Speaker 1:And then, speaking of overheads again, I've talked about this a lot over the last year Practice your overheads, improve your overheads. One thing that, or in an episode that I had with Coach Rob Morgan, who is an ATP doubles coach, last year, I asked him the number one thing that Club players should work on and he said smashes, which is another word for overheads. So you've got to work on your overheads and improve them, and if you get a good overhead, the opponents will quit lobbying, because it's not going to work. One thing you can do with your overheads that'll help is To actually hit them. If you're around the service line area, or even further back, hit them as kind of a slice or kick serve if you have that ability, so that'll improve your Make percentage rather than trying to hit a flat overhead from the service line or from behind the service line, it's going to be a little bit lower percentage. But if you can hit a more of a slice serve with it through the middle of the court, then that is going to Improve your make percentage and keep you on offense, typically against lovers.
Speaker 1:I assume you're talking about one up, one back, but that's Usually the formation that you want to play with against teams that lob a lot and you want to put your better, your best combination of that net player and that baseline player. So I've talked about this in the past with serve strategy or return strategy. You can play two back and then have the better net player move forward and the player who's better at dictating from the baseline, who can sit there and be patient and try to find the weakness of the lovers, have them do that from the baseline and slowly you know, throughout the point try to Find a way to set you up at the net and and force force a short lob or a weak ball that you can attack. So Hopefully that helps you kind of think about a few different options there's on so many different scenarios and similar to my answer to Greg's question. It's really going to depend on the opponent, on your partner, on your own skill set as well, but those are a few options that I would think about starting with at the net.
Speaker 1:So next question is from Maria. So Maria said On volleys, how to improve speed. So, maria, I assume you're talking about just improving your reactions at the net, and I've actually got a lot on this in the course. I've got some drills that you can practice. One player on the WTA tour who has really quick reactions is Demi Shores, and I've had her on the podcast before and she she talked about how she uses this machine. You you may have seen it if you follow the pro tour On some of their Instagram videos or maybe on that Netflix series, breakpoint, I think it's called, where the players have this machine and it lights up and they have to quickly react and hit like the blue light or the yellow light or whatever it is, and Demi said that she uses that to help improve her reactions.
Speaker 1:That's probably not feasible for a lot of us at the club level. I know I don't have one of those, so when we're thinking about improving our reactions, it's not a lot of times we think about some of these things in kind of a complicated way, but it's actually quite simple. To improve our reactions, we have to just practice hitting reaction volleys very quickly. So the way you want to think about that is think about Trying to find ways to take time away from yourself when you're at the net during practice. So one way you can do that is you can practice volleying against a wall. So when you volley against a wall it's going to hit the wall and it's going to get back to you a lot faster. You can volley volley from really close with a another doubles player at the net and if they have better volley volleys than you, then that's going to improve your reactions. You can also have a coach feed from really close to you. So you really just have to practice these and, of course, if you don't have your technique right, then it's going to be more difficult. So that there is that caveat you want to make sure you have that Solid kind of continental grip on your volleys and you have your footwork and your technique right. But once you get that from there, it's just about practicing and taking time away from yourself, that you have to react during practice so that you can improve your reactions and improve your speed. A lot of players on the pro tour as well will practice their reactions without even having a racket in their hands, so they'll have a coach just feed them balls that they have to catch with their left hand, right hand, left hand, right hand, and they have to quickly react to the ball. So those are some ideas on kind of drills you can do to improve your reactions, but I've got more on that In the course as well, so you can check that out in the show notes.
Speaker 1:So next question on Instagram from C M I don't have your first name, I think you had just had your initials there Tactics for mixed when I am at the net, the do's and don'ts. So this depends on the mixed situation. So mixed, at least in the US. You know we have a lot of mixed leagues where the levels can vary greatly. So we've got 80 leagues, 90 leagues, and your ratings have to add up to that number. So in a 90 league, for example, I'm a 5-0 player and I'll play with a 4-0 lady, but sometimes we'll play against teams that have a 4-5 guy and a 4-5 lady, or teams that have a 4-5 guy and a 4-5 lady, or teams with a 5-0 lady and a 4-0 guy. So it can vary a lot on. On my side of the net I'm usually the stronger player in 90 Since I'm the 5-0 guy and I'm playing with a 4-0 lady. But I we have other teams or other partnerships on my team where it's a 5-0 lady and a 4-0 guy and the lady is actually the stronger player than the guy. So it really depends on the situation and on the skill levels.
Speaker 1:I do have a podcast on mixed double strategy. So again, go to Google and just Google Mixed double strategy, doubles only podcast, or something like that. You should be able to find it there. You can DM me if you can't. A lot of guys Like to hit really hard, especially in mixed doubles. So one thing you can do is force them down the line. This is over the higher part of the net and it shortens the court, so you can create some errors. That way They'll either miss long or miss in the net, especially if they hit the ball pretty flat. So that's one tactic you can use. You can force them down the line by either pinching aggressively or poaching aggressively.
Speaker 1:A lot of this is gonna depend on the baseline matchup. So when you're at the net and your partner's at the baseline, are they rallying against a guy or girl that's better at rallying than them, or do they have the advantage? Do they have better ground strokes? Are they a better baseline player? So if they're at a disadvantage, then you might need to actually play a little bit more aggressively and take some risks, because if you just let them kind of grind out that baseline rally, then they're gonna lose the majority of those points because we've just determined that they're not as good of a baseliner. But if they're better, if they can outrally the opponent, then in that case you can play more conservatively. Now this is gonna depend on your confidence at the net. So if you're very confident at the net and your partner at the baseline is outrallying the opponent, you don't have to play conservatively because you're a pretty good net player. So you can still pinch towards the middle and fake and use all sorts of movement to force even more errors from the opponent than your partner would otherwise if you were to just kind of stay and not really use a lot of movement. So a lot of it is gonna depend on that baseline matchup for you.
Speaker 1:One thing that you can do in mixed if you're trying to improve your mixed game is a lot of the reaction volley drills that I just talked about for Maria. So guys do tend to hit the ball a little bit harder. They tend to have a little bit less control, so that's why forcing them down the line can be helpful. But again, this is gonna really depend on the opponent. But because we know that they do hit it a little bit harder, if you can practice some of those reaction volley drills and get good at those reaction volleys, then it'll improve your ability and confidence at the net in some of these mixed doubles matches. So hopefully that helps. Again, there's not a super clear answer to this. I'd have to see you know this specific matchup to give you precise advice. But hopefully that gets you started thinking about some of the things that you can do on the mixed doubles court.
Speaker 1:So our next question is from John. So John is asking about I formation trends in percentages at the ATP level net guy covering cross versus line to give the server the forehand, okay. So, john, this is actually something. I don't have the exact data on this. So typically when I'm doing a scouting report or analyzing data at the ATP or WTA level. I'm usually looking at a specific team, so I don't have data for the tour level, but this is something I actually wanna get. I may even, by the end of the year, have a product on this with a lot of data for like top 10 ATP and WTA doubles teams. But I can tell you what I've kind of noticed and this is semi anecdotal, semi just my experience going through the data on certain teams. So at the ATP level is what you're talking about specifically. So this is the men's tour.
Speaker 1:Most teams on first serves, it seems to me, are running I formation over 50% of the time. At least that's true for the top teams. I can't speak to teams that are ranked around 30, 50, 100. I'm not studying them quite as closely, but for the top teams I would say they're probably running I formation over 50% of the time, maybe around 60%. So that is kind of an educated guess on that.
Speaker 1:As far as the net guy covering crawl traverse line, I don't even think that they're really they're really thinking about it this way. I don't think they're worried about the returner off of a first serve hitting the return into the doubles alley, like I think that's a shot that they're just totally giving up because they know if that's the returners target they're gonna hold serve almost every time because that returner is gonna make maybe two out of 10 of those at best Like off of a first serve at the ATP level, like you're just not gonna hit that small of a target. What's more common is they're gonna lob off of a first serve or they're gonna try to just go hard through the middle. So what the net guy's really doing 90% of the time is really just popping up and covering the middle. Maybe they're taking one step to their left or one step to the right, but of the video that I analyze, they're almost always straddling that middle service line or within maybe a foot or two of it. So they're really not covering a side and covering crawls, covering line.
Speaker 1:What they're really thinking about is covering a window over the net. So they have been able to scout their opponents a ton and there they have plays that they're running and they know with each opponent. Okay, this guy likes his back in return, so we're gonna mostly serve this forehand and when we run I formation, most of his forehand returns come over this window over the net. So we're gonna have our net player cover that window and it's usually Something within three or four feet of that center net strap. It's nothing, they're never that that net players never going all the way over toward towards the singles line are really anywhere near it. So hopefully that helps you kind of think about that from an ATP level on second serves.
Speaker 1:It varies. They will still run a good bit of I formation, definitely more than WTA, and they're still covering the middle a lot as well, definitely more so than club level players will. But they're they're shifting over a little bit more. They're hedging a little bit more on either towards that line or towards that crawls, from what I can tell. So and as far as giving the server a forehand, so it would say your your running I formation, the ad court, you have the net player kind of stay middle in the server covers line. That's something I don't think they're really thinking too hard about.
Speaker 1:Their goal, especially on the first serve, is to get the net player the serve plus one volley there. If the returner has hit the return back to the server, that means the returner has done their job and they the serve team needs to make an adjustment because for the most part they do not want the server hitting a second shot At the ATP level, especially on first serves, so they also don't have. You know, almost nobody on the ATP tour has a backhand that you need to hide that desperately to where. That's what you want to prioritize. So instead they're going to prioritize getting that net player the the first ball after the serve. So hopefully that helps. As I get more data on this throughout the year, I'll be certainly publishing it in the newsletter and mention it on the podcast as well, so keep an eye out for that. I wish I had exact numbers for you, but it's really really hard to get because you're kind of measuring the direction the net player goes. You're measuring I formation on every point. It's a very manual kind of process. There's no automated way to measure that. So Next question is from Josh.
Speaker 1:So Josh asks if the ball lands around the service line, do you close the net or start backing up? So this is a good question, josh, and this is a mistake that I see a lot at the club level. In the new course I've actually got a dedicated lesson on transition volleys, which this kind of sounds like transition volleys is what you're talking about. So any of those volleys around that service line area, maybe even a little bit behind it. So a lot of this depends on where you're starting. It's typically it's always best to close. The best options are close and catch the ball out of the air, or back up and let it mounts. The best option is always to close if you're not going to miss the ball and that sounds kind of obvious, but it's.
Speaker 1:It's something that a lot of players miss. They try to close too hard and they create too many errors for the opponent. When it's a ball that's heavy, it's dipping low. You're having to reach out forward. You catch it out of the air and you shank it, or you sail the volley up high and the opponent is able to finish the point offer. You missed it long, so you really want to focus on Taking it as early as possible while still maintaining your balance and control. So this is something that I have worked with a few college players on recently, actually, and one of the mistakes that I noticed from one of them is they were reaching too far forward on that half volley, so they'd either serve in volley or come in during a rally and the ball would come low for the net and they'd be just determined to get the ball out of the air. So they would reach really far forward and they'd end up hitting either a really poor volley or they just missed the volley altogether. So One, one way to think about this is no matter if the ball is out of the air or bouncing, you want to let the ball come into your strike zone.
Speaker 1:So you never want to be reaching too far and being be too off balance while you're making contact with the ball. So if that means letting it bounce and taking it on the short hop, that's going to be better than trying to reach forward and stretch out and take it out of the air. So in in general, it's best to close the net if you can. But if you are uncomfortable with the shot or if you feel like you're going to be off balance, it's going to be best to back up or slow your progress towards the net so that you're balanced when you make contact with the ball. That's got to be the priority because no matter how the ball is hit from the other side, if you're not balanced, if you're not kind of in sync, if that ball is not in your strike zone, you're unlikely to hit a very good shot. So you want to prioritize that before you think about closing into the net versus backing up, and you can use that to dictate your decision making on that.
Speaker 1:So last question is from Leo so do you know if pros determine where they're hitting their volleys, if they were to poach or go to the net? So this is a good question, leo. I think that the pros. It depends on the type of volley. So there's different types of volleys and this is something that a lot of coaches and players don't really distinguish, and I've actually, within the course, I've got a lesson on each of these types of volleys. There's offensive volleys, there's transition volleys, there's defensive volleys, there's also touch volleys and drop shots and then, of course, overheads.
Speaker 1:What you have to think about is the type of volley that they're hitting. So if it's, if it's, a very quick reaction volley, for example, the server's partner is hitting a reaction volley off of a second server turn and the returner just blasted over the net, this is not the type of volley that they are Choosing a location. They're just reacting, defending and trying to trying to get it back. Now, because they've hit so many volleys in practice and just over their lives, they're kind of ingraining in their head and their kind of muscle memory the direction a lot of these volleys go. So if it is, for example, a volley that's into their body but slightly on their forehand side, they're not Sitting here and the ball's coming to them and they're like, okay, the ball's coming a little bit to my right but it's kind of into my body, so I'm gonna take this volley to the left.
Speaker 1:It's just a volley that they've hit so many times. They just do it and they don't think about it. So they actually kind of do predeterminate through the drills that they set up and the, the repetitions that they've gotten in practice. So they know if that volley comes in to their right a little bit and it's a forehand volley it's a lot easier to catch that ball out in front and hit it across your body Rather than let it get into you and try to move your body around. A lot of times the ball is coming too fast so you don't have time for that. So they've just practiced hitting this volley out in front and across their body to the left so many times that when the ball Comes to them they just do it. They're not Predetermining it in terms of like thinking about it on the court, but they are predetermining it in practice.
Speaker 1:If they do have a little bit slower ball let's say it's a transition volley and they're moving forward A lot of it is about very split second decisions. So if it's a high forehand volley and they're serving and volleying and the ball is coming pretty slow over the net, they're hitting it from just behind the service line and the net player poaches a hair early, they'll just make a slight adjustment to their racket face and maybe take that volley down the line or maybe they'll take it a little wider across court if they're. They feel some pressure from that net player. So a lot of it is about, you know, on the slower balls, when they do have more time is about reading the opponent's position Out of your kind of peripheral vision and and making small adjustments that way. But I would say for the most part it is predetermined in practice because they've practiced a lot of these offensive volleys, especially a very Partic, very particular way. And then the last thing I'll say is it can also be predetermined by the opponent.
Speaker 1:So if two players get in a two-up, one-back position, so, or two up to back position, so you and your partner at the net. Both opponents are the baseline. The pros will have discussed their strategy before the match so they know this particular shot is the weakest ground stroke on the court. So if we both get up and both players are back, we're gonna take most of our volleys at that particular ground stroke. So it might be the deuce court players backhand, in the middle, or the ad court players forehand, or you know, this player is just a lot better from the baseline. So we're simply gonna take every ball at the other player. We don't care if it's a forehand or backhand, whatever it is. They have predetermined a lot of that just based on the opponents and what they know about the opponents. So they're they're kind of weighing the odds of Hitting that volley in a particular direction until they have an offensive volley. And then I would say the offensive volleys for the most part are Pretty reactive and they've worked on those in practice so much that they're just their goal with that is to angle it off the court or to send it through the middle For a winner, or at least stay on offense in that case. So Hopefully that makes sense.
Speaker 1:If you have any more questions on that, dm me and reach out and I will answer them for you. So that is it. Hopefully this was helpful for y'all. If you have any other questions, you can always reach out to me again. The masterclass on net play strategy is on sale through Sunday, so check it out in the show notes. It's 30% off, and if you enjoyed this episode, let me know as well. Y'all's feedback helps me a lot if you want to hear more episodes like this. If you have other questions, I will Kind of make a note of them for another AMA episode as well. So Thanks again, everyone. I appreciate all the support and I will talk to you all soon. You.