AMA: Dropshots, Overheads, Fixing Double Faults, & Developing a 2nd Serve

In this AMA episode, I answer Tennis Tribe member questions with simple doubles strategy rules for drop shots, overheads against lobbers, and cutting down double faults.

I also share how I think about building a second serve you can trust, as well as starting and recovery positions at the net.

• Drop shot rules and the best place to hit drop shots from
• Why your drop shot doesn't have to land short
• The best overhead targets
• When letting a lob bounce makes sense
• The causes of double faults at club level
• The easiest way to simplify your 2nd serve
• Members only: How to develop a reliable 2nd serve that doesn't get attacked
• Members only: Where to start at the net and how to move during your partner's baseline rally

Learn more about all my upcoming camps and Rally Trips at thetennistribe.com/camps/.

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Transcript

AMA Agenda And What We Cover

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Hey everyone, welcome to this AMA episode. It has been a little while since I've done one of these, had a lot of player coach interviews as well as DC Open Tournament Director or owner, I should say, Mark Ein. So thank you all for the support and listening to those. But today we're going to answer some of your questions from Tennis Tribe members. So we're going to talk about drop shots drop shots, which is a topic I've not discussed. I don't know that I have really any lessons on drop shots specifically. So I'm going to talk about why that is and how I think about the drop shot, how you should be using it in your matches. Then overheads. So we're going to talk about overheads, how to play against lobbers, which is always a hot topic on the show. Then we will talk about double faults. This is something I'm not sure I've addressed specifically, but how do we reduce our number of double faults? So if you have some serve issues or second serve issues specifically, I'll talk to you about how to think about that, how to approach it, how to reduce those double faults. Then very much related to that, how do you develop a second serve that is less exploitable? So maybe you're not double faulting a lot, but maybe your second serve just isn't very strong. What do you do about that? And then at the end, we'll talk about the server's partner position as well as just net positioning and movement during the point. One of the tennis tribe members reached out asking about helping out their partner more when their partner's at the baseline and they are at the net. So we're going to dive into your positioning, both how close you should be to the net, where to move, where you should start, all these different things. So it's going to be a very in-depth strategy episode. Before I get to all that, first off, I want to go through kind of my schedule for the rest of the year. I know some of you have been interested in some tennis tribe doubles strategy camps as well as some of the rally trips that I do with the Rose Gold group. So I wanted to clarify my schedule for the rest of the year in case any of you are interested in working with me personally or attending a rally trip. So right now I'm actually in Memphis at the WTA 250 here helping coach Catherine Harrison, who's playing with Alexa Gurachi this week. They actually have their first round match later this afternoon. I'm going to be here through Sunday, through the end of the tournament, and then I will be at home in Fort Worth until I go to New York. I'll be in New York for two different events. So number one is my annual uh double strategy camp with Ad In. Ad In is a New York-based company that runs a lot of tennis events in the area. They do a really great job with that. And we host a double strategy camp each year at Columbia University. They have a very nice indoor facility that we run the camp

Camps And Rally Trip Updates

SPEAKER_00 4:20

out of. And we do have some spots left. So if you're interested in that, go to the website the tennistribe.com/slash camps, is where you can find info on all of these events that I am mentioning here. And then after the double strategy camp, which is September 3rd and 4th, I'm going to be hosting a rally trip with the Rose Gold Group. If you haven't attended one of those or heard about these, they're basically a nearly all-inclusive tennis vacation. So it includes US Open Tickets, it includes your hotel stay, it includes playing tennis each morning, as well as breakfast, a metro pass for the subway rides back and forth from the tournament, and you'll be with us the whole time. So it's a very kind of hands-on, uh, full experience tennis vacation. It is a ton of fun. Everyone who attends these really says it's kind of a vacation of a lifetime. It's a lot of fun to be able to play tennis and then go watch the pros. You'll be able to sit with me next to the doubles courts and I'll be talking through some of the strategy and we'll be able to hang out and have meals and drinks and all that stuff. So it's a lot of fun. The New York one is unfortunately sold out, but uh the WTA Finals, I will be hosting another rally trip, which also sold out the 10th through 13th, but we haven't released publicly yet. But I'm gonna go ahead and mention it here. We're actually doing another one because that one sold out so fast. So we're doing another one the 7th through the 10th. So if you're interested in that one, email me if uh you want to attend that rally trip at the WTA Finals, which is in Indian Wells. Like I said, we haven't shared that with the newsletter. I haven't shared it on Instagram yet. But if you are a podcast listener, um I am feeling generous and wanted to go ahead and throw that out there. But these do sell out fast. The first ones sold out within like three days. Um, so they do go fast. But uh the WTA Finals is in Indian Wells, so I will be there, even if you're not attending the rally trip. Um, shoot me a message. I'd love to meet you. I think it's gonna be a really fun event. Um, Indian Wells is such a cool tournament each year, uh, but the grounds are always really crowded and it there's a lot of buzz and it's a fun environment. But this is gonna be the WTA Finals is always a lot more kind of intimate setting. It's a lot more um, you can get a lot closer to the players, you can uh kind of have a bit more space, if you will. So it's gonna be a lot of fun. Uh they're hosting that in stadium two there. And then right after the WTA Finals, also in November, um the 14th and 15th, I'm hosting a camp in Miami at the Weston Racket Club. And this is gonna be a really fun one. So if you're in the Miami area or you want to fly down for that, um, you can go to thhetennistribe.com slash camps to check that out. Uh, I'm hosting it with uh Adam Maddock, who runs the Weston Racket Club, and also David Samel, who is a mental performance expert. He's a former ATP coach, um, and he has a lot of um a lot of content out there on how to deal with pressure, how to deal with nerves. So I always love learning from people like this, and he's gonna be at the camp with me the whole time. So we're gonna be doing lots of doubles drills, lots of point play, but we'll also be helping you with the mental side of the game as well. So again, thetenistribe.com slash camps uh to check out all of those events. Um, let's dive into the AMA episode. So these first three are gonna be free for everyone, and then the last two are going to be for members only. So Marie is asking about drop shots. She says, I want to build the confidence to use more drop shots. I want to increase my consistency and improve my situational awareness of when it's prudent to hit the drop shot. So I've got some kind of rules around this, and I'm gonna talk about at the end why I don't have any content on drop shots, um, because it's not my favorite shot to use, honestly, but I'm gonna go through my drop shot kind of rules that I live by. Um, so you want to generally drop shot the slower player. So if one player is really fast, you probably shouldn't drop shot them. Um so drop shot slower players. Uh the opposite of that, I just said don't drop shot fast people. Um, and then drop shot from closer to the net. So if you're behind the baseline and you're hitting a drop shot, A, it's very difficult to have the feel to hit a shot that barely lands over the net from that far back. But then B, the ball just even if you do hit it really well, the ball has so much further to travel. The opponents have more time to read it and to get up to the ball. And it's a little bit too risky. So, best

Drop Shot Rules That Actually Work

SPEAKER_00 9:18

is hitting drop shot volleys. Those are very easy to quickly get over the net, they're very easy to disguise, and they're very easy to take pace off the ball and get the ball to bounce twice, right? So practicing your drop volleys is a great idea. Uh, the next best is on an approach shot. On an approach shot, you can disguise kind of a forehand or a backhand that you're about to hit really hard. Maybe you've already hit some really hard approach shots with good depth. So the opponent's backing up to defend, and then all of a sudden you switch grips and you hit a drop shot, right? So that can work as well. But from back near the baseline, it's just very, very difficult. One of the reasons the drop shot has become so popular over the last five, 10 years or so is Carlos Alcaraz. So if you watch him play singles on TV, his drop shot is really good. Now, there's two things that Carlos has that you and I do not. Number one is a massive forehand. So his opponents are used to him hitting this huge forehand with tons of spin, tons of power, tons of depth. So they're playing way back behind the baseline to defend against that. That makes Carlos' drop shot more effective because they're playing way back behind the baseline, and then they have further to run. The other thing he has that we don't have is lots of time on the court, and maybe some of you do have this, but lots of time on the court to develop your drop shot and to practice it. Um, I don't play enough tennis to practice my drop shots all the time. If I'm going out and practicing, I'm focused on serves, returns, forehands, volleys. I don't have time currently to practice uh those specific kind of tertiary shots, right? Um, the secondary tactics, if you will. So he has lots of time to do this. So if you do have the time to develop it, sure, go for it. Um, if you don't, it might not be a shot that you even want to add to your game. Um, and if you do, like I said, start with drop volleys and then work your way backwards because those are going to be more effective. They're also easier to hit. Um, so you want to practice these. Another area you can use it is against weak second serves, right? So if the opponent has a weak second serve, it's very similar to an approach shot. You've been hitting some deep approach shots through the middle. The opponent sees you wind up for a forehand and then all of a sudden you drop it short. Now, one thing that you have to think about with the drop shot is this is kind of a common misconception. So you've probably seen a drill where uh the coach has a basket and you want to get the ball to land in the basket and it's just past the net, maybe three feet, five feet past the net. So it's good for your drop shot to land short, but that's not the only thing that matters. It doesn't actually have to be that short. Our goal is to get it to bounce twice, right? And there's two ways to do that. One is to get it to land really short. But if you hit it really short, but you hit it really high, the opponent has lots of time to get forward and get to that ball, right? So short isn't the only thing that matters. The other thing that matters is the height. So ideally you keep it super low over the net and it lands really short, but that's really hard to do. So sometimes the second bounce can be near the service line or maybe even past it. But if it stays low the entire time and it's not going up and then coming back down, then it's gonna bounce twice very quickly. And that's ultimately the goal. So you don't have to necessarily get it to land short, it just has to bounce twice quickly. Okay, so that's something I want you to think about with the approach or drop shot against a weak second serve. I would focus more on keeping that ball low, right, than necessarily getting it to land short. Because if it pops up, that net player can come across and get it, or the server can run forward and get it. So if you keep it low and kind of angle it off, uh then that's going to get it to land twice or bounce twice quickly, and they're gonna have a bit more difficulty getting over to that ball. Um, the last thing I will mention with the drop shots, and this is the reason I haven't created a lot of content on it in the past, is because with drop shots, let's I'm talking about drop shots now after the ball bounces. So this is not drop volleys. I love drop volleys. Um, angle volleys, when I talk about those all the time, drop shot volleys are kind of what I'm talking about. A lot of times when I'm running my angle volley drill, I'll tell my players to take pace off the ball. So if the ball's coming at them at 60 miles an hour, I want their uh angle volley to be half that, 30 miles an hour. Um, so we have to work on those drop volleys. But if we're talking about drop shots after the ball has bounced, so this could be an approach shot, this could be a ground stroke when you're back at the baseline and you want to hit a drop shot. Two of the three potential outcomes are bad. And that's why I don't have a lot of content on it because I don't like most players using this shot. You have to have a very specific skill set uh to use this shot. You have to have time to practice it. It's just a little bit too risky for me. And I have some friends who use it all the time, and I don't coach them personally. I try not to coach people on the court, but I don't like it. I don't think it's a good uh decision because, like I said, two of the three outcomes are bad. So, what are the three outcomes? Number one, you miss the drop shot, right? You miss it in the net, maybe you're trying to angle it and you miss it wide. That's a bad outcome. Number two, you get it over, you hit a drop shot winner, it bounces twice, or maybe they run up to it and barely get a racket on it and you force an error, or maybe they pop the ball up and you get an easy overhead. It's a good drop shot. So one out of two are bad now. But the last one is the one that happens a lot. You hit the drop shot, but it's just not a very good drop shot. It goes over the net and you give them an easy short ball that they can hit for a winner or hit at your partner at the net, right? So two of those three outcomes are very bad. So on your approach shots, on your ground strokes, I'd rather you just hit the ball deep through the middle and let them come up with some sort of creative shot, uh, passing shot or lob or whatever it is to win the point. I don't want you taking that sort of risk, right? Two of those three outcomes are bad. You've got to really train the shot for it to work. And even still, it's a secondary, tertiary tactic. It's not something you're gonna be using a whole lot. So that's how I think about the drop shot. If you want to add it to your game, Marie, that's how I would approach it. Again, start closer to the net. But this is something where if I were to study your game, I'd probably find other higher leverage things to work on that'll have a bigger impact than working on the drop shot. But if you're on the court five, six, seven days a week for several hours a day, then you probably do have time to work on it. So, anyways, that's how I think about the drop shot. Um, hopefully that helps. Um, that was kind of fun to put together because I haven't talked about that before, um, but I have thought about it a lot in the past. So let's move on to overheads. Uh, Emily said, My overhead needs help when I play against lobbers. This is very common. Um, I was just working on this yesterday with Catherine on the court at the Memphis Open. Um, but I want to start before I got get to what what we did yesterday and talk about targets. So there's two different types of overheads. And the first step to this is recognizing which type of overhead you have. So you can call them whatever you want. I'm gonna call it the pro-style overhead and then the club style overhead, right? The pro-style overhead is very similar to service motion. You've got your continental grip, you turn sideways, you're able to pronate, you can hit the ball harder. It's a better overhead. It is. It's technically much more difficult. So if you started tennis at 35, 40 years old and you're a 3-0 player and you don't have the continental grip mastered, then you're probably not going to be able to hit that type of overhead. You're probably gonna miss a lot. So the club style overhead, and this is for lower level players, it's where you have that pancake kind of forehand grip and you're just kind of shoving the ball over, right? And you might do that on your serve as

Overheads And How To Beat Lobbers

SPEAKER_00 17:55

well. So I'm not here to tell you how to learn the pro-style overhead. I don't talk about technique a lot. Um, I'm not great at teaching the continental grip. I don't have a lot of experience with it. There's lots of content out there. If you want to learn that, you can. It will take you a lot of time. So, again, similar to the drop shot, you have to spend a lot of time on the court to develop that. But if you want to make the most of your club style overhead, then that's okay. The important thing with overheads, and this is kind of my rule that I've gone through several times over the last year or two, is to target deep, generally through the middle of the court, unless you can finish the overhead, right? And if you have that club style overhead, you're typically not gonna be able to finish the overhead unless you're very, very close to the net. And in that scenario, you can probably angle it off the court. With that kind of forehand pancake grip, you can't really hit it over the fence or smack it down into the court and hit the top of the fence over the head of the opponents. So you're gonna have to angle it off the court. But for the most part, when you're hitting an overhead from the middle of the service box, from closer to the service line or behind the service line, or you're simply just moving backwards and you're kind of on your back foot. Um, this is something I worked on with Catherine yesterday. Overhead depth is so important, right? And it's so difficult too. So many players, even she was doing this, lots of pro players do this. They are on their back foot, they're hitting an overhead from around the service line. They hit the ball really clean, it comes off their racket really hard, over 100 miles an hour, and then it lands inside the service line. And the opponent at the baseline sees the ball land, it bounces up, it loses tons of speed when it lands, and they have plenty of time to react and hit another lob, which is probably gonna be better than the previous lob because they had a little feel for that previous lob that it landed short, and they're gonna it's they're gonna be able to hit it deeper, right? If you can hit an overhead in that situation that lands near the baseline, they have less time to react and read that ball. It's much more difficult to hit a lob or a ground stroke off of that ball. So overhead depth is so important. Now, another way you can approach your overheads is to hit a slice or kind of a kick serve. Now, this is typically going to be required, um, you're gonna be required to have a continental grip on this or a pro style overhead, if that makes sense. But I do this a lot, right? From the deuce court, I like my slice serve out wide. If somebody hits an overhead and say I let it bounce, or even if I don't and I'm taking it out of the air, all of a sudden I'm able to hit that same slice serve that I like, but I have the entire court to hit it into, right? I don't have to get it into that surface box. I have the entire court, including the double sallies. So it's a very easy shot for me to make. So I can aim through the middle and try to let it slice out wide in the deuce court. I can aim in the ad court and let it slice into the middle, but it's a good shot for you to have, um, especially on balls that bounce, especially if you're closer to the baseline. Um, the last thing I'll talk about is when to let it bounce. So when should you let your overhead bounce? The answer is when the ball is high. So the lob is very high in the air, and you'll be able to hit the overhead from roughly the same spot as if you took it out of the air. So if the wind is at my back, for example, and the opponent lobs, if they lob it up really high, that wind's gonna kill the momentum towards me. It's not gonna push me back to the fence. The ball's gonna actually be moving uh forward from my perspective, right? So that ball's gonna go up really high. It's gonna bounce, let's say it bounces between the service line and the baseline. The first bounce is between the service line and the baseline in no man's land, it bounces up. And if I were to not hit an overhead, that second bounce would probably be in the same position, right? So in that scenario, I might as well let it bounce because I have more time to read it. I'm less likely to miss the overhead. It's hard when the lob is very high to take the ball out of the air, right? The ball's just moving faster. So you let that one bounce. Now, if they have the wind behind them or if they hit a low uh lob, right? That one you do need to take out of the air. Because if they have the wind behind them, that ball's getting momentum towards me. And if I let that ball bounce in no man's land, it's gonna keep traveling back to my fence, and I'm gonna hit end up hitting it back close to the fence if I let that ball bounce. So you kind of have to take that one out of the air. So that's how I think about letting the ball bounce versus not, and this is something you have to train. People don't practice their overheads enough. So you can do this with a ball machine, you can do this with your coach, you can do this with your doubles partner, practice your overheads and create a target about three to five feet inside the baseline around that center service mark. You can also create targets in the deuce and ad court, right? If there's a net player that has really good hands and you want to hit that overhead deep to the baseline player, that's okay. And then you can practice angling off your overheads from closer to the net. And when you do that, you can slowly progress backwards as you get comfortable with those angles. So a lot to think about there. Overheads are such an important shot in club level doubles because there's so many teams that are good at lobbing. And the reason they continue to lob is because we don't have good overheads. Okay, so we've got to really work on this. Alright, so next let's talk about reducing double faults. So Mark reached out and said, I want to reduce my number of double faults. Simple, very easy one. I've worked with club players on this, I've worked with pro players on this. Um here's how I think about it for most of you listening. So double faults at the club level generally come down to three different things. Number one is it's your technique. Number two is keeping things simple. And then three is practice. Most people don't practice their second serves enough, right? So practicing second serves is boring. I don't practice the mind that much, but I'm not double faulting that much. And if I do, I'm trying to forgive myself because I don't practice it that much. I can't expect much of it on practice, right? So your technique has to be simple. You don't need a second serve at most levels, 3-0, 3-5, 4-0, even 4-5, 5-0 sometimes. You don't necessarily need a second serve that you can locate wide body T. You just need something that's reliable that won't break down, right? So you want to keep your technique simple. If you have a wonky toss that goes all over the place, or you

Reduce Double Faults With Simple Fixes

SPEAKER_00 24:51

have a weird motion that you do with your hands or your body or your hips or whatever it is, it's more likely to break down, especially under pressure, right? So how do we simplify our technique? Now, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but what I'll tell you is film yourself serving and remove any unnecessary movements. So, one example is a player I worked with a year or two ago. They were having issues with their toss. And what I noticed is the balls in their left hands, a right-handed player. And the ball in their left hand, before they tossed it, they dropped their left hand all the way down to their leg. Their left hand literally touched their leg. And then they come all the way up from down near their knee in their quad area. And they had issues with their toss. And I was like, okay, we don't need to bring our left hand down that low to create a toss, right? Just down an inch or two and then toss it up. And that kind of fixed their toss, right? So I couldn't figure that out until I watched them, and they didn't know it until they watched themselves on film. So watch yourself on film and then go to YouTube and look up serve technique videos and just remove unnecessary stuff and then film yourself again and keep removing and only remove one thing at a time until your service motion is simple. It doesn't matter if you have a pro-type service motion with a continental grip or if you have a pancake serve, whatever it is, it just needs to be simpler. Because if it is a complicated pulse motion, serve motion, then it's gonna break down. So that's the first thing. Next, targets. So in the deuce court, a lot of players think that we have to serve in the backhand. This is true of Deuce and Ad, right? Second serve, we gotta serve it to the backhand. There's a pro player I was working with recently. I looked at all of their second serves in the deuce court and they just went T on all of them. They never hit their second serve wide. So I had them make the adjustment to start hitting more second serves wide to create more variety, and then their second serve win percentage went up, right? It's okay to hit second serves to the forehand as long as it's a decent serve. And if you're double faulting too much, I don't want you to try to think about the target too much at all. I'd rather you just get a reliable serve that reduces the double faults. So one of my favorite targets in the deuce court for people who double fault too much is the deep wide corner. Why is that? It's more natural for right-handed players. It also uh is over the lower, you're slicing it so it's a lower part of the net uh compared to the ad court, but you have more court to work with, right? The distance between you as the server and the service line at the T is shorter. The distance between you and the server and the service line where it meets the singles line is further away. So you've got more depth to work with. So it's a little bit easier, a little bit more natural serve for a right-handed player. So if you can develop a reliable second serve mark that is a slice serve deep to the corner in the deuce court, then that's gonna be good enough, right? That'll reduce your double faults, you'll make more second serves, and you'll have a decent second serve as well. I'm gonna talk about how to develop a second serve in a bit more depth here in a second for the members only section. For the ad court, the corner is great there too, but sometimes it's a little bit difficult for players to hit if you have the continental grip, right? And you're learning how to kind of pronate, or you don't have a kick serve, for example, or a good slice serve. So, but if you have that forehand kind of pancake grip, you can hit that deep corner. Again, I think in the ad court it's the same thing. Deep corner or go towards the body. Down the T, you just have a little bit less margin, a little bit less room to work with. Although that is one of my favorite second serves, but it's something I've developed over the years. It's something that's a bit more natural for me as a right-handed player to hit that kind of slice or kick serve down the T on the ad side just because it feels more natural. So you have to figure out what works for you on the ad side. Um, but I wouldn't necessarily be married to a specific target, right? I have to avoid their forehand or I have to avoid the backhand, whatever it is. Pick a deep target and hit it there, right? Um, the other thing that's very much related to this is you need to know where you tend to miss. Where do you tend to double fault? Most players tend to double fault, I would say most tend to double fault in the net, but I've worked with some players who tend to miss their second serves long, right? Uh there was one player at the pro level who I measured double faults across, I think, three or four matches, and it was over 80% of their second serve misses were in the net, and they were double faulting too much. So it was a simple fix. We wouldn't worked on it in practice, and we just worked on aiming longer and aiming higher, getting more height on that. And their other coach worked them with them on technique, keeping the front shoulder up, all that stuff. I don't do a whole lot of technique, but I was able to let them know hey, this is where you're missing all these second serves, right? In the net. And then they can fix it from there. Um, if you just simply aim higher or aim longer, your technique kind of corrects itself a lot of the time. But you have to measure this. So you can have somebody on the sideline measure it during one of your matches, uh, or you can go out to practice and just hit a bunch of second serves and write down, literally, uh miss that one in the net, miss that one long. Wide shouldn't really be an issue. We shouldn't be going for uh too much width or too the the sidelines too much on second serves. I kind of want to eliminate that one. Um, but if you measure it, you can typically fix it pretty easily. So, how do we develop a less exploitable second serve? So, this is what I want to go over next in the members section.