Fix Your Serve, Net Position Mistakes, & Communication Errors: 3 Lessons from Doubles Camp

Historically , on the podcast , I've done a combination of interviews with pro doubles players and coaches and members of the media and more as well as strategy episodes where it's just me , like this , talking in your ear about doubles strategy and in 2025 , for whatever reason , it's been exclusively interviews .

I guess I've gotten to know a lot more players and coaches and people in the tennis world and been able to get a lot more interviews this year . So we've had a lot less , or actually zero , strategy episodes , but I'm going to try to get back to doing a good blend of both . Today I'm going to cover three different lessons with you .

One is on partner communication . Number two is on net positioning , especially covering the

lob , and these are all things that I've recently learned . So I actually just got back from Atlanta where I helped run a doubles boot camp with Peter Freeman from Crunch Time Coaching and the lessons that we were teaching to the players . It's funny with these camps .

You know I go there to deliver information to these players and I actually feel like I learned just as much as they do . And these are three of the lessons that I learned , teaching them about positioning and strategy and shot selection and different things like that . So number one is communication . Two is net positioning , especially on covering the lob .

I've got a few kind of new thoughts on that that I don't think I've ever illustrated before . And then some serve solutions , and that one's my favorite . It is basically a solution if you've had any serve problems , if you've been frustrated with your serve , if you can't get your serve down , if you double fault too much .

I really liked the way Peter actually explained this during the camp and I wanted to share it with you all because it was really well put the way he described it and I'd never heard the serve kind of broken down this way . So I want to share that with you as well .

So before I get to all that , the reason for this solo episode or one of the reasons is this week is the launch of the new Tennis Tribe memberships . So if you haven't heard the story , I launched Tennis Tribe memberships back in November of last year .

I launched them on Teachable , which was the platform that hosted all of my online courses , and they had a membership feature as well that I decided to use for the membership and after a few weeks I was clicking around and getting some feedback from some of the members and realized that it just wasn't the best solution going forward .

So I spent November , december , a little bit of January kind of searching around for a different solution , eventually found one and spent the last three or four months migrating all of the content from Teach easier to navigate membership and I'm going to have new content going forward very soon .

I'm hoping to actually have premium podcast episodes that are only going to be for members . I still have the free podcast , so don't worry if you're not interested in becoming a member or investing in your tennis game in terms of kind of learning online , which I know isn't for everyone . I'm still going to have tons of free podcast episodes .

But I do want to give my members a little bit extra and I think premium podcasts are a good way to do that . So that will be coming . I'm still working on the technical kind of back end details of that , but that'll be coming hopefully in the next couple of months .

But the new membership is going to be 20% off from Wednesday June 11th , which is when this episode is released , through Sunday June 15th . So that means you'll get 20% off when you sign up , you'll get 20% off next month , the following month and so on for the lifetime of your membership .

You'll get 20% off next month , the following month and so on for the lifetime of your membership and then , if you sign up for a yearly membership , you get an even bigger discount and that discount again stays active for the lifetime of your membership . If you're a current member , I'll send you instructions on how to kind of get migrated .

We're obviously going to keep your account and I will send details on that . If you have any questions about it at all this week , email me with your questions . Will at the tennis tribecom is my email . The schedule for this week is obviously this podcast episode which I'm about to get started on tonight .

So June 11th , wednesday at 8 pm Central Time , and I'll link to this in the show notes if you want to sign up and attend . I'm going to be hosting a free webinar , so this is free for everyone . You just have to enter your email to sign up and I'm going to be covering why strategy and not technique should be your number one focus as a doubles player .

I'm going to share some specific examples of when players focus on technique too much and they could make a simple strategic change to improve different areas of their game , and then I'll also be answering any questions you have , and then I'll also be answering any questions you have .

So if you listen to the rest of this episode and have a question about it , or have a question about a match you played recently , anything like that , bring it to the webinar and I will answer it live on the webinar .

So it should be a lot of fun and it's a topic that I'm really , really passionate about , and I think if you can understand this topic , if you can understand the importance of strategy over technique and when to choose which one to work on , then you'll be able to improve so much faster .

And then over the next several days Thursday , friday , saturday I'm going to release a new lesson each day . You'll need to be signed up for the newsletter , which is totally free , to receive those lessons . I'll be sharing them through the newsletter , so I'll link to that in the show notes as well .

But I'll be releasing a new lesson each day during this kind of mini launch week . But again , you can sign up for the membership 20% off through Sunday and I'll link to that in the show notes as well . So let's dive into the meat of this episode , the lessons themselves . So number one is on communication .

Before I get to even that , I want to talk about Roland Garros for a second . So all four matches , excluding mixed , which was last Thursday , uh . So men's and women's doubles , men's and women's singles , they all went the distance . So men's singles was five sets , those other three were all three sets and I wanted to go over the point totals .

So we'll start with singles and then move to doubles . So the singles was , uh , an epic five setter where Carlos Alcaraz came back and won and Yannick Sinner won . The total point count it was 193 to 192 .

There was one point over five and a half hours of tennis that separated the two of them and Carlos Alcaraz won the match even though he lost the total point count by one . Let's move on to women's singles .

The women's singles Coco Golf beat Irina Sabalenka . Coco won 119 to 110 . That was the total point count . So if you can , I can kind of reframe this for you . So if you can imagine if we're playing off the ground to 15 or something like that , or maybe we're serving and playing a game to 15 , let's say I'm beating you 12 to 10 .

Would you consider that a big lead if we're playing to 15 ? Probably not . I'm only up two points . So that's basically how much Coco beat Sabalenka by 119 to 110 . If you divide each one by 10 , we're at about 12 to 10 , even a little bit closer than that . So super , super tight margins there . Let's move on to the doubles . Men's doubles was 103 to 84 .

So we're at about 10 to 8 . You can imagine if we're playing an 11 pointer or 5 to 15 again , if I were up 10 to 8 on you you would still think you have a pretty good chance of winning this right . You're only down two points and that was with a 6-0 first set for Zabaios and Grenoyers , who ultimately won their first Grand Slam title .

So they won the first set 6-0 . First set for Zabias and Grinojers , who ultimately won their first Grand Slam title . So they won the first set 6-0 . After that they lost 7-6 in the second and then won the third 7-5 . So with a 6-0 set they still only won the total point count 103-84 . The women's doubles was 103-91 .

And then the women's doubles was 103-91 . So obviously super close there , a 12-point difference . So that would be about 10 to 9 in that 15-pointer analogy . But if it's a 12-point difference , actually we have to divide that by two , right ?

Because if Paolini and Irani , who won the title , lose an extra point , so they drop to 102 , that means that Krunic and Danilina won an extra point . So they drop to 102 , that means that Kroenich and Danilina won an extra point . So that would make it 102-92 . And then 101-93 if they lose another point .

So every time you lose a point , I win a point right . So if it's a 12-point margin , it's really a six point swing . And again , this was a three set match . So a six point swing over a three set match means two points per set was the difference . So why am I telling you all this ? I'm telling you this to illustrate how tight the margins are in tennis .

All of these little details , even if they can only get you one point per set or two points per set , that is a massive , massive difference in your ability to win and lose . Again , that six point swing was over three sets . That means Kroenig and Danilina needed to win an extra two points per set to bring this match to dead . Even . That's all .

So the margins are so , so small . And I've looked at these numbers for the club level and it is no different . Even if you win a match 6-2 , 6-2 , I guarantee the total point count is a lot closer than you think .

So when I'm talking about each of these topics , a lot of the time people will kind of gloss over some of this stuff because it doesn't seem like it'll make that big of a difference . But honestly , if it gets you an extra point per set , or an extra point every two sets or an extra point every match , then it's going to help .

So let's start with communication . So let's start with communication Again . I was in Atlanta this past weekend and I was doing a doubles camp on both courts . So we played some 10 point tiebreakers and I watched as people played . I wasn't coaching at this point , we were just kind of making notes of what we saw .

So I was taking some notes watching the 10 point tiebreakers . And then we went back in for lunch and we started talking about what all we saw from those 10-point tiebreakers . And it got to me and I asked how many of you poached at least once during those 10-point tiebreakers ?

And all eight of their hands went up , or actually it was seven and we were rotating out , but all eight or all seven of their hands went up . Everybody had poached at least once . Then I said okay , put your hands down . Then I said how many of you told your partner who was serving

that you were going to poach ? One out of seven raised their hands . This is a very common theme at the club level . We all want to poach more . I've expressed and stressed to you over and over over the years that you need to be poaching more , but you've got to let your partner know .

I was watching some video of a private client recently where his partner was calling a poach and he wasn't even looking while he was serving , so his partner ended up poaching . The opponent hit a high , slow ball down the line and he couldn't get to it because he had no clue his partner was poaching , so he didn't shift over after the serve .

So that cost them one point and he said it probably happens two or three times per match . Now they've fixed this , but is this happening to you and can you communicate more in between points ?

At one point during the camp I had to hop in because one of the players had to leave for a minute and I was playing with someone and we were working on eye formation and what I was trying to teach them was to huddle up in between every point .

As the serve team and the player I was playing with just could not remember to come back to the baseline and huddle up between each point , I had to continue to remind her and it's not her fault , I see this all the time with everyone .

It's a habit that we've got to develop and we've got to over-communicate and communicate way more than we think we should , so that we're on the same page with our partner , especially as the serve team in doubles .

Because if you're going to poach or you're going to fake or you're going to pinch or shift left or right out of the eye , you better be on the same page with your partner , again , especially as the serve team , even the return team .

If you're going to return and volley or you're going to lob down the line , it's really helpful for your partner to know that , so that they can prepare to defend or shift over or whatever the play calls for . So again , communication , super , super important . So next let's talk about net positioning and covering the lob .

This is something I've talked about a lot over the years and I kind of learned a little bit running this camp about covering the lob . So we worked a lot on approach shots . So we would have one player up , one player back , we would feed a short ball to the back player , they would hit an approach shot and come in .

And one of the issues is that they would hit a good approach shot but then they would get lobbed and if they closed in too far with their partner , unless one of them was super fast and could cover the lob or really tall and could get back and had good overheads , then they would get lobbed and they would all of a sudden excuse me , all of a sudden turn

an offensive situation into a defensive situation because they closed into the net too far . So one of the things I've stressed in my lessons over the years is you need to play closer to the net and that's true .

But this helped me kind of realize that it's a little bit less true than I've always expressed , and I realized that I hadn't shared this lesson on the podcast or with the newsletter probably as much as I should .

So it's true that I want you to close into the net , but if you're going to get two players up , if you and your partner are both going to be at the net . You need to have a plan to cover that lob , and one of you should probably be around the service line area .

So you really want to consider that with your net positioning , in terms of approaching and covering the lob . Generally , I would say the faster player should cover the lob . You can talk with your partner . You can do the staggered formation which I've talked about in the past . Gigi Fernandez is big on that . You can also choose one player Me , for example .

When I play men's doubles I like to really crash the net and I'll tell my partner that If I approach the net , I keep rushing forward and they actually will shift back . It totally depends on the scenario . Of course , you also want to consider how likely is this other team to lob ? Do they lob a lot ? Want to consider how likely is this other team to lob ?

Do they lob a lot ? And if so , you might need to stay a little bit further back . So I'm going to cover more about net positioning actually in one of my three lessons for the membership launch later this week , so keep an eye out for that .

I'm going to talk more about kind of when you should move forwards versus backwards and then also when you should be moving left and right at the net . So your movement and positioning , those are super , super important .

Because one of the students actually at the Atlanta camp her goal was to become more comfortable at the net and what she thought her mentality was my volleys just aren't very good and it turns out it was actually a big positioning mistake .

So again , I'm going to share that uh , more about that and what the solution was for that a little bit later , uh , this week . So last , uh , the serve solutions . So this was my biggest takeaway from the camp .

Peter did such a great job and if you haven't checked out his stuff , he does a really nice job on YouTube , especially with all of his video lessons . If you just look up Crunch Time Coaching , you can find him there . But he did a really good job of explaining the club level serve .

So he basically shared that there are two types of serves at the club level serve . So he basically shared that there are two types of serves at the club level and kind of a hybrid between the two . But I'm just going to break it down into the two types of serve for simplicity . So one is the push serve .

So this is where you have your forehand or pancake grip and you just kind of push the serve into the service box and then you have the throwing serve . This is what the pros do , right ? They have a natural kind of throwing motion to their serve . It's what we all aspire to have , it's what we all want

and it's what I've tried to coach to my students over the last several years as I've dove more into technique . So when I'm working with someone on the court , I'm trying to get them to do this throwing serve .

Even with our high school team , I'm trying to get a lot of our high school players to learn that throwing motion and use that continental grip and get the racket on edge and find the trophy position and pronate and do all of these things that are so difficult . And Peter described it like this .

He asked one of the students when we were doing some serve analysis so we'd filmed all of their serves and then we went back into the video room and started analyzing each of their serves in slow motion , technically , and the first thing he asked them was how much time are you willing to put into this ?

Because if you're not willing to put in the time to learn the proper throwing motion serve , then you're wasting your time trying to do it because it is so , so difficult to learn . It takes so many years to learn and you're probably better off if you've been super frustrated with your serve and you've had coach after coach .

Try to teach you how to pronate and how to teach , try to teach you how to use that continental grip . If it's not working , you might be better off just sticking with the push serve , mastering that and working on just placing the ball around the service box .

And if you can really master that , sure it means you probably won't ever get to a 5-0 level , but you can certainly get to 4-0 with that serve . I see tons of 4-0 players with a push serve , with a very good push serve . They can get it deep in the box . They can hit the forehand corner , they can hit the backhand corner . They can go wide .

They can get it deep in the box . They can hit the forehand corner , they can hit the backhand corner . They can go wide . They can go tee , they can go body . You can probably even get to a four or five level , depending on the area you're in and the rest of your game as well , obviously . But it can get you a long way .

And one of the kind of epiphanies or realizations I had when he was talking about this is we have to start with our goals , right . If your goal is to get to 5-0 , then , yeah , you're going to need to figure out how to get a proper serve with a continental grip and that throwing motion . But if you're a 3-0 and you just want to get to 4-0 , that's it .

You don't want to go to 4.5 or 5.0 , which is totally reasonable because it's a very , very difficult thing to do to make that big of a jump . We're all adults with jobs and a lot of us have families . We don't have time to dedicate to mastering the proper professional service motion .

Then just stick with the push serve and master that and work on the rest of your game . There's really room for improvement in that push serve . If you want to work on it , you can set up targets in the service box . You can set up targets to focus on depth on your second serve and you can go a long way with it .

Like I said , you can probably get to 4-0 , maybe even 4-5 with that serve and ultimately with the serve and with every stroke or every shot in doubles . Placement is more important than power anyways .

So a lot of players a lot of players at this camp , a lot of players that I see at USTA tournaments , at leagues they continue to try to bang their head against the wall using that continental grip and trying to pronate properly and trying to get this throwing motion serve and ultimately they double fault a lot .

They're not happy , they're frustrated , they spend a bunch of money on lessons and then they don't make their serve better . So set your ego aside for a second and be honest with yourself and ask yourself do I really want to put in the time and effort to learn this professional level serve ? Or am I okay with the forehand grip push serve ?

And I can go a long way with that and I'm totally content playing my leagues at the 3-5 , 4-0 , maybe even 4-5 level because you can go so far with that push serve and you're going to actually improve more rather than double faulting all the time and being frustrated and not ever mastering that throwing motion , that professional level serve .

So I wanted to leave you with that . It was a big epiphany and kind of takeaway for me and , honestly , I'm going to really teach the serve a lot differently . I'm going to start with that going forward and ask all of my players you know , do you really want to ? You know when I'm coaching someone at you know , do you really want to ?

You know when I'm coaching someone at the club level , do you really want to go through the heartache or the time , the blood , sweat and tears , the effort , the years of struggle that it takes to learn the proper serve motion ?

Because it is very , very difficult and you have to be able to dedicate a ton of time to it , because it is very , very difficult and you have to be able to dedicate a ton of time to it . So that was a really , really big lesson that I took away from the camp recently . So that is all I have for today . Again , check out the membership .

I hope you can join me for the webinar tonight . If not , I'll probably try to get the replay maybe up on YouTube or something like that a little bit later this week , if we have time . And that is it for today , folks .

I will talk to you all soon and again , if you have any questions about the membership sale 20% off through Sunday you can email me will at the tennis tribe dot com . And I appreciate you all for listening and I will talk to you soon .