Doubles Only Tennis Podcast

3 New Doubles Lessons: Approach Drill, Attacking Strengths, & Using the Wind

• Will Boucek • Episode 175

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0:00 | 29:57

This episode covers three new lessons I've learned recently while coaching a high school team. These players are around the USTA 3.0 to 4.0 level.

  1. How to think about attacking the strengths and weaknesses of your opponent.
  2. A tactic that worked for one of my doubles teams in windy conditions.
  3. How I structured approach plus volley drills, and why.

Sign up for the Tennis Summit to see my presentation on Common Poaching Mistakes & How to Fix Them.

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Improving Doubles Strategy

Speaker 1

This is the first solo kind of non-interview episode I've done in a while. I'm going to focus totally on strategy in this episode and I think this is going to help you improve your own game. I know a lot of you prefer these type of episodes to the interviews, so I appreciate your patience as I got through a lot of interviews at the Dallas Open, at the ATX Open, at Indian Wells and the Dallas Open, at the ATX Open at Indian Wells and the Miami Open. But we are through those. The Pro Tour is back in Europe. It was a ton of fun covering those tournaments and continuing to try to help support Pro Doubles and make it more popular. But for the next few months I'm going to really be focused on helping you improve your doubles game, both mentally, tactically, strategically, and that's what we're going to focus on here today. So I've recently been coaching a high school team. I'm an assistant coach for a high school team in my area and there's three lessons that I've learned with them that I want to share with you today. And there's three lessons that I've learned with them that I want to share with you today, and they're all 3.0 to 4.0 level players roughly if they were adult USTA players. Obviously, they're high school students, but that's about their skill level, so I think this will apply to a lot of you. A few of them may be borderline 4.5, but for the most part that is the skill level. So I think this is a few good lessons to share with you. So we're going to cover how to think about strengths and weaknesses, how to play doubles in windy conditions and a rule that I created for one of my teams that helped them out a lot, and then how to think about practice and drills. Some of this is going to overlap with lessons I've done in the past. Some of it might be new to you, but regardless, I think it's going to help you improve your doubles game. So a couple of quick announcements before we get to that. So over the last eight weeks I've been focused mostly on the mental side of the game. We've talked a lot about playing under pressure, playing well in tiebreakers, communication with your doubles partner, and I'm going to continue that through the rest of this month. This episode is a bit of an exception, although we'll talk about mentality a little bit, and then on May 1st I'm going to launch the new course, so it's going to be called the Mental Game Masterclass. It's actually a revamp of a previous course that I did a long time ago, but it's going to be a much better version of that course. The video is going to be much higher quality. The lessons are going to be better. I've added some new content to the previous course and it's going to cover a lot. It's going to cover, uh, principles of good double strategy, how to maintain your focus throughout the match and avoid mid match slumps, communication and teamwork in doubles, uh, how to avoid getting angry, how to deal with pressure, play well in tiebreakers and a lot more. So keep an eye on that. Coming out May 1st is the plan anyways. Those always seem to get delayed, but I'm really hoping to get that going on May 1st.

Speaker 1

And then one more quick announcement the Tennis Summit is starting next week, so I am presenting at that again and I'm going to include a link in the show notes where you can sign up for free. So I do about two. I did two of these last year. I'll probably do two of these this year again. These are online kind of tennis conferences where you can sign up for free and watch, basically webinars with some of the best coaches in the world. So these are really really valuable and totally free for a limited time. You can buy lifetime access. If you do buy lifetime access through my link, I do get a percentage of the sale, so that does go back to the podcast and help support the show. Obviously, I don't have ads or make any money on the podcast, so it does help out a lot. Obviously, I don't have ads or make any money on the podcast, so it does help out a lot. But if you want to get a free ticket, there will be a link in the show notes Among the coaches presenting. A lot of them we've had on the podcast, but Gigi Fernandez will be on.

Speaker 1

Paul Anacone is presenting. Jonathan Stokey is doing a presentation on singles and doubles return strategy, which I'm sure is going to be great. All of his content is awesome. My presentation is on the most common poaching mistakes and how to fix them, which I'm pretty happy with the end result of the presentation. So I think you'll like it a lot. The end result of the presentation. So I think you'll like it a lot.

Leveraging Opponent's Forehand in Tennis

Speaker 1

It's going to come out Monday, april 22nd. It looks like at 9 am Eastern time. So if you sign up through the link. Keep an eye out for that. Again, gigi Fernandez will be presenting Louis Kaye. Ian Westerman is doing a live session with Top 10 Ways to Win More Dou and a Q and a um, so you can check that out. And there's a ton more so you can learn more in the link, uh, in the show notes. But anyways, these are really valuable presentations that you can get free access to Um. It's really amazing that, uh, we're able to do this with uh the um basically just do it with the internet today. So it's really, really cool. You know, 10, 20 years ago, we didn't have access to coaches like this, especially for free. You had to pay, you know, $500 an hour or something like that. So I hope that you can check it out and sign up and check out my presentation on poaching mistakes on Monday.

Speaker 1

So let's dive into today's episode. So the first lesson I wanted to share with you is on strengths and weaknesses. So this is something that I did a quick Instagram short or Instagram real YouTube short on a little while ago, and I included a newsletter lesson on this as well. So I was coaching someone in a singles match and she was down five, six. This was a eight game pro set, she ends up winning eight five. So when she was down five six, I walked over to the court and started watching. I think it was a five all game maybe and she was down 5'6". I walked over to the court and started watching. I think it was a five-all game maybe and she was serving. She ended up losing that game and I'm not allowed to coach until I get a changeover, so I'm sitting there watching.

Speaker 1

It was a long deuce game and she kept just rallying kind of through the middle, working the ball back and forth a little bit, and I noticed that her opponent had a really big forehand. But what I also noticed was that when her opponent had a forehand from a little bit further back in the court, and especially a low forehand, she wasn't able to hit it with a lot of spin. So she either hit it too low and missed it in the net or hit it too hard and high over the net and couldn't get the ball to drop and she missed it long. So it was a pretty flat forehand and because the forehand was so big, most players and a lot of coaches, to be honest with you, would look at it and say, oh, that's a big forehand, we need to avoid that shot at it and say, oh, that's a big forehand, we need to avoid that shot.

Speaker 1

But what I found is and I started counting the number of winners and the number of errors she hit with her forehand versus her backhand and she basically didn't miss her backhand and her forehand. She would hit two winners for every eight or so errors, so about one to four. So what I did on the changeover down five six is, I told my player, I want you to start rallying to her forehand. Now, if you get on defense, if she hits a really good forehand, gets you on the run or hits it really deep and you're having to pick the ball up at your feet, I want you to target the ad court and go to her backhand, because she can't really attack with her backhand but she doesn't miss it. But if you're balanced and you have a good look, I want you to rally low over the net with decent depth to her forehand and she's going to hit some winners but she's going to hit more errors. And she started doing this and she ended up winning 8-5. She won three games in a row and I counted the number of winners and errors in those last three games off the forehand side. And she hit 11 errors and three winners off the forehand side.

Speaker 1

So this is one of those things where the strengths and weaknesses aren't really what they seem and it's much more complicated than she likes her forehand better than her backhand. So for this particular opponent, she liked her forehand better. Her forehand was better if she got a short ball, an approach shot, for example, especially if it was high over the net. But if she was rallying from the baseline and especially if it was a low ball, her backhand was better because it was more consistent. She hit more winners off the forehand wing but there was way more errors off that side. So there's not a clear strength and weakness here. If you're able to hit the ball deep to this particular opponent, then the weakness is the forehand because it's going to yield more errors. But if you're going to leave the ball short, then the strength is the forehand because she's able to attack with it a little bit better. So how does this apply to doubles? Because this was a singles match.

Speaker 1

So in doubles, what I want you to think about is if you're getting stuck in baseline rallies, focusing on depth is really important and notice how the opponent is hitting the ball. So if you're able to hit the ball deep in the court and they have a big forehand that they like to try to slap down the line for winners, you can live with that if you're able to hit a quality ball, because what's going to happen is they'll hit one winner and then they'll make three or four errors and then they'll hit one winner and then they'll make three or four errors. But if you're leaving the ball short, then it might be the case that you don't want to get into that rally and you don't want to give them a short forehand. So if you're not able to hit with good depth, then you might need to lob down the line to get them on their backhand side. If you're rallying from the deuce court and you're all right handed, or you might need to get to the net yourself to apply pressure on them so that they go for even more with that forehand and you can force even more errors, or you might need to slice the ball. You have to look to change something up.

Speaker 1

So I don't want you to think about just because they hit their forehand really big. It's a strength and we have to avoid it. If you can hit with good depth, if you can keep the ball in this case with this opponent low, with some opponents they might struggle with a high forehand more so. So it's really going to depend. But if you can give them the type of forehand that they struggle with, then you're okay to rally to their forehand. But you have to be understanding and have the kind of self-awareness to know if you're capable of giving them that weaker forehand, that forehand where you hit the ball with more depth on a consistent basis, because if you don't, then you're going to get in trouble and self-awareness is something that is one of the most important skills you can have. It's something I talk a lot about in the new Mental Game Masterclass that's coming up, and it's really, really important when we're kind of approaching strengths and weaknesses and trying to match up our strengths against the opponent weaknesses. So think about that when you're on the doubles court. The last thing I'll add to that is when you're approaching the net, typically players will have a better forehand passing shot and the forehand is more difficult to volley off of, because people hit with more pace generally and more spin generally with their forehand than their backhand. So if you're going to approach and you have the option, approaching to the backhand is usually best, regardless of the depth you hit with. But it does depend on the player. It's very player specific.

Strategic Tennis Tactics and Drill Efficiency

Speaker 1

So next I want to go over a lesson that I taught or learned with one of my doubles teams about playing in the wind. So when we play tennis here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the spring it's often very, very windy and we've had a lot of windy conditions recently and during one of our high school matches it was super windy and it was the type of wind that where you're serving into the wind or against the wind, depending on which side you are. So it wasn't really a cross wind and we were down 3-4 in this doubles match and I noticed that the opponents on one of our players' particular serve they were hitting really good cross-court returns and pushing the server back and I noticed that we were just immediately on defense. So it was serve, regardless of first or second serve, it was a serve. And then the girl had to step back and really defend from there and hit a lob to stay in the point and they couldn't hold her service game. So there's seven games into the match down 3-4, I believe, down a break as well, and this girl on the side serving into the wind had gotten broken twice already.

Speaker 1

So what I had them do is I created a rule for them and I said when you're serving into the wind, you're only allowed to use regular formation once. So the rest of the time they use I formation. We don't really teach Australian, but you can use that as well. And they came back and won that set 6-4, and then they won the second set 6-1. And after I told them that down 3-4 in the first set, I walked away because there's other matches and I have to go coach the other matches. And I came back to check out their match and I noticed they were already off the court and I asked them how it went and they were like the I formation worked so well. So it worked so well for a few reasons and I didn't know it would work this well. But they were really stunned how often the opponents were missing.

Speaker 1

So what happens is when you're serving into the wind, the opponent is going to hit a return and the wind is going to add pace to that return. So if they're hitting a normal cross court return, that lands, say, two feet past the service line with no wind, that same return is going to land two feet inside the baseline with a bunch of wind, and that's what was happening. So the return was generating pace and landing several feet inside the baseline with a ton of depth, a ton of power, and we were on defense immediately. So by playing I formation or Australian, if you want to do that, you're forcing them to hit down the line, which shortens the court. So if you measure the distance from the returner to the baseline cross court it's going to be a lot longer. I don't know the exact percentage, but it's 20, 30% longer than if you go down the line. Maybe that's a bit high, I'm not sure, but regardless it's longer. So if you go down the line, it's a significantly shorter shot.

Speaker 1

So if they hit that same return that they just hit cross court, that lands two feet inside the baseline, down the line it's going to land a foot or two long past the baseline and then you've just won the point. You've forced a return error. So that's one reason that this works so well. Another reason is when they're returning down the line, they have to hit the return higher because the net is higher down the line. When you're returning cross court, you're returning over the net strap, which is the lowest part of the net, so you can hit your return pretty low and keep it in play. But now they have to lift their return more to get it over the higher part of the net and then if they're not able to generate a ton of spin or they hit the return too hard, it's also into the shorter part of the court, like we talked about. And that's two reasons that returning down the line when the wind is behind you is going to be much more difficult. So you just have to hit a much softer return or you have to be able to generate tons of topspin and, like I said, most of these players are 3035 level players, so they're not really controlling the ball with a ton of spin. So this worked really really well for them and they were able to, like I said, come back and win that match.

Improving Tennis Skills With Drills

Speaker 1

And out of that eye formation you know they're mostly shifting opposite direction so that they're forcing the returner to hit that down the line shot. Now, a few of the times they would go the other direction and they would poach and kind of shift back to a regular formation, but a lot of times the returner would go down the line anyways and then our net player could pick it off for a volley. But you're able to force a lot more return errors this way and, granted, they might hit a few more return winners. This goes back to kind of the strengths and weaknesses thing. A few of them might land on the baseline or six inches inside the baseline, and they're going to have a ton of power and as the server you're trying to get all the way over there to cover that down the line return and you're not able to get there fast enough or you're hitting a really weak shot. But you have to live with that and not give up on the tactic just because they hit it on the baseline or within a foot of the baseline. Once, what's going to happen is they're going to again miss two or three returns and they'll hit one that hits within a foot of the baseline and you're going to lose that point. So you're winning two out of three or three out of four points because you're forcing a lot more return errors. So I want you to think about that next time you're playing in the wind. Try to play some eye formation. Keep the returner going down the line if they have the wind behind them and if you're serving into the wind and another tip to add to that is, if you can keep your return low you're going to force them to lift the ball up and that's going to make it even more likely for them to miss, more difficult for them to keep the ball in the court. So that would be a slice serve. If you can hit a low slice serve, they're going to probably miss a lot of those long or in the net. So hopefully that helps you if you live in a windy area and want some kind of tips on playing, playing or holding serve I'm sorry, in the wind.

Speaker 1

So last thing I wanted to talk about is drills. So we've been doing a lot of drills on the courts during practice and I've been kind of experimenting a good bit with different types of drills. And one thing I feel like a lot of players and coaches struggle with is kind of information overload. So if I go to a local tennis center and I play a match, this happens sometimes when I'm, you know, I'm hitting with a doubles partner or something like that, and I'll look a few courts over and see a coach coaching someone in a private lesson and they'll be sitting there at the net just talking about technique for five or 10 minutes and they're not actually hitting a tennis ball. And this is something I've talked about a lot in the past. But something I wanted to reiterate, because I haven't talked about it in a while, is just maximizing the amount of touches that you get.

Speaker 1

So the area that I've found this is most helpful with our high school team is actually on the volleys. So you know, I've tried doing a lot of technical adjustments and trying to get the continental grip with the volleys, but some of them, just you know, we don't have time for private lessons. We're coaching a lot of students out there and some of them, just you know, aren't going to be able to get that continental grip down necessarily in a matter of a two-month season. We just don't have enough time to work with them. So we live with the forehand grip on the volley in a lot of cases and just feed a lot of balls. And if they are able to hit, you know, a hundred volleys a day for a full week or more, then even with that forehand grip, they're going to get better at the net. Now, if you're serious about improving your volleys, I do think you need to try to improve your continental grip or get the continental grip down. But a lot of these students are only playing, you know, two, two and a half months out of the year during the high school season and they've got other sports going on in the fall and the winter and the summer. So we're living with the forehand grip for some of them.

Speaker 1

But, regardless, maximizing the number of volleys they hit with targets has proven to be more effective than trying to hit fewer balls and talk more and try to walk up and adjust the grip and adjust the footwork and fix all these technical things. If you just set up the targets for yourself and hit a lot of balls whether you have a ball machine or a private coach or whatever you're going to make the adjustments. If you're missing long, you're going to hit it a little softer. If your volleys are floating, you're going to close your strings and hit the ball a little bit lower. If you're missing in the net, you're going to open up those strings more naturally by just trying to adjust and hit the targets.

Speaker 1

Another drill that we've done recently is an approach drill. So a lot of the students I found were missing their approach shots. So they would get on offense, they would get a short ball and they'd have a easy forehand from around the service line area and they would miss it in the net or miss it long and really just going for too much. And one thing that I taught them that I want you to think about with your approach shots is try to hit your approach shots slower and higher over the net and deeper and with more topspin if you can, higher over the net and deeper and with more topspin if you can.

Speaker 1

So the mistake we run into and this is kind of a mentality thing is, as tennis players, when we get on offense we kind of get excited and want to go bigger and want to go for that winner. But by getting a short ball and stepping forward and taking it from, say, the service line, we've already taken time away from the opponent with our positioning, so we don't need to take more time away from our opponent with pace. That's actually not what we wanna do, because by adding pace and hitting the ball harder from the service line than we did back from the baseline, we're gonna increase the number of errors that we hit with. So we don't want to be creating more errors for ourselves with this approach shot from the service line. Instead, we want to actually, if anything, hit the ball slower, and I think the mentality you need to have is hit the ball slower. Which you'll actually do is hit the ball with probably about the same pace you do on a normal ground, stroke from the baseline, but have the mentality of hitting the ball slower because you've already taken time away from them with your positioning, because you've shortened the distance that the ball has to travel and focus on depth, and by hitting the ball slower and hitting the ball deeper, you've actually bought yourself more time to get forward into the court for that next volley.

Speaker 1

So to reiterate this a different way if we're trying to hit this approach shot with a lot of pace, what typically happens is you hit it hard, you make more errors, but the ones that do go in land actually shorter in the court, and that gives the opponent more time to set up for the ball, so it lands around the service line. They have time to set up and you have less time to get at the net because you hit the ball harder. Now, instead, if we hit the ball slower and with more depth and with more height over the net. We hit the ball slower so we have more time to get forward, so we're closer to the net, making it an easier volley for us. We hit the ball with better depth, so the opponent has less time to react to the ball. They have to pick the ball up, kind of off of their feet, or back up and defend and hit the ball off their back foot, because you hit the ball with good depth and that makes it much more difficult for them to hit a lob an effective lob as well. So you can close a little bit harder and it makes a much more difficult passing shot for your opponent and you're going to be closer to the nut, so you're going to have an easier volley. So there's just so many benefits to this, aside from the fact that you're going to make fewer errors on these approach shots when you're already ahead in the point and you shouldn't be giving away a free point when you're kind of winning that point at that moment anyways.

Speaker 1

So I want you to think about that with your approach shots, and one of the drills that I had the students do for this is I simply just fed them a lot of short balls and they had to run up to the net and finish the next ball with the volley and they had to run all the way back to the baseline. This was kind of a good cardio drill as well. They ran back to the baseline, then I would feed them a short ball and I would set up targets deep in the corners, specifically to the backhand corner, especially for the singles players, and then have them hit that approach shot high over the net. I would always tell them higher, hit it slower, hit it higher, hit it slower, hit it deeper. And eventually they started hitting better and better approach shots. They got easier and easier volleys in the matches and it became a much more effective tactic for them and they became more comfortable approaching the net, which I know a lot of.

Speaker 1

You have emailed me and told me in the past that you don't like coming to the net because you think your volleys stink. Well, if your approach shots are better, you're going to get easier volleys and your volleys don't have to be that good once you get there. So just simulating that real match situation was the key with this specific approach shot drill Starting them at the baseline, feeding them the short ball, focusing on that height, hitting it slow, with a good spin, good depth, and then getting to the nut for that next volley. So think about simulating some of those in-match situations with some of your drills, maximizing the number of touches that you get on those shots that you're struggling with, and I guarantee you're going to get better.

Speaker 1

Obviously, technique's important, but I do. You know, as I've stressed in the past, I do feel like it is a little bit overplayed and over-focused on. You can't read a book about tennis technique and then go out there and be better. You have to actually hit the ball and practice and have the repetition. So hopefully this episode helped. I know the topics were a little bit all over the place, so hopefully this episode helped. I know the topics were a little bit all over the place, but I feel like there was some good content there. So again, sign up for the Tennis Summit if you can. I've got the Mental Game Masterclass coming up on May 1st and I will talk to you all next week. Thank you for listening.