Hi and welcome to the Essential Tennis Podcast, your place for free, expert, tennis instruction that can truly help you improve your game. Welcome to episode number 411 of the Essential Tennis Podcast. Today we're going to talk about 3 advanced doubles tactics that you can
use to win more matches and we're going to later these. We're going to talk about the squeeze, we're going to talk about the catch, and we're going to talk about the fake, and how you can elator them one after the other to elevate your level of doubles, to put more pressure on your opponents, to take charge and dictate more on the courts, and of course
to win more matches. As I coach doubles more and more, I really love doubles, by the way, I'm more of a doubles player than a singles player personally, and I love the games within the game that often happens in doubles because you have the contrast of frequently a net player
who's an attacker and a baseline player who's a defender, figuring out the patterns and the different flow of how the ball travels back and forth, and starting to pick up on those patterns to anticipate and put yourself in the right place at the right time is a huge differentiator between an advanced high level doubles player and a regular everyday player that you kind of see at your local courts at park or club or whatever. Average doubles
players are just playing straight up. They know what's usually what should be available and they hit it there and it's available. They know what's typically not available, so they don't hit it there, they play it safe, and have everybody on all four players on the court having that same attitude leads to long boring points where the two net players are just hanging out, watching the ball travel back and forth, the two baselineers are just
rallying back and forth. Maybe it's a little bit of a lob fest or there's some drives in there as well. The two baseline players are too intimidated by the transition game to come forward to the net and they're too afraid of the lob to come forward to the net as well. The net players are too afraid and embarrassed of getting burned down their alley, so they're
playing it safe. The whole middle of the court is left wide open all the time, and that's what results in these slow, boring points where the net players can hang out and take a seat. Look at each other and have a conversation while the two baseline players carry on with their ground stroke rally. What we're going to talk about today is going to be the antidote to that. These different concepts play off of each other. I'm going to play it by ear
a little bit. I'll probably riff off of these topics a bunch and make some connections here. Let's go ahead and dive into layer one, which is the squeeze. I want you to imagine that boring point where the serve goes in play, the returner hits cross court because it's where you're supposed to hit your return and doubles. The server stays back, hits another ball across court, and then the returner hits another ball across court and so on and
so forth. Unfortunately, doubles players have decided up to a certain level that getting beat down their alley is the worst thing that can possibly happen. You know what I'm talking about? When somebody is leaning a little bit or they're thinking about poaching or the returner just goes big and crushes the ball down the alley. They're successful
and they pass the net player and it goes in the alley. Everybody on the court, everybody watching is like, oh, I get some big like burn or some big fail by the net player that
they got beat down their alley. When the reality is the last place on the court that you want to leave exposed and open is the easiest shot and the easiest shot on the court by far is just hitting through the center of the courts, meaning literally right over the middle of the nets, which is the lowest point directly to the opposite corner, which is the longest
chunk of court from corner to corner cross courts. When you as the net player guard your alley and leave the middle, you are making life for your opponent easier and your job description as the net player job description number one is make the baseline players job is difficult as possible. Be in their face, be in their head, make them second guess everything. But if instead you are socially pressured to make sure that the last thing that ever happens
is you don't get the last thing that ever happens is getting beat down your alley. Well, you are going to favor leaning towards the alley, which means you're going to do that at the expense of covering the middle. Here's the thing. Side line to side line from alley to alley is 36 feet. That's almost a four story building. Just think about that for a second from alley to alley. It's a lot of courts. You cannot be in your alley
and the middle at the same time. I know that sounds like a like the most obvious statement of the decade, but just consider that for a moment. You cannot effectively cover your alley in air quotes and be a force in the middle of the net to pressure that baseline player at the same time. At a certain point, you have to give up some of the alley to gain
coverage of some of the middle. Now, it's a balancing act. I will be the first one to tell you that if you take my advice and you lean towards the middle, you guess what? You will give up some points down your alley. And guess what? That is okay. It's okay to get now. I know I know your partner is going to give you the stink guy. I know your partner is going to throw their hands up in the air. I know your partner is going to
complain and tell you to cover your alley. And I've got this covered over here. And I am telling you that if you want to make it out of that level of play, you have to at some point gain some courage. You have to at some point develop some confidence in leaving that low percentage target in exchange for covering some of a high percentage target. The alley for that baseline player is very difficult, relatively speaking. The court is
shorter than that is higher. It's more difficult to change direction and take a cross court ball and send it down the line. The timing is very difficult. If you're a little bit late on the down the line shot, you end up missing wide. There's a million reasons why it's a hard shot. He didn't cross court is much easier. And how do most points end in tennis? What is the answer? How do most points in tennis end from peer beginner all the
way up to the players on TV? Most points end with an error with somebody just making a mistake. So if you go out, if you go throughout your tennis career, covering a difficult shot and leaving exposed an easy shot, you are just upside down with your prioritization because most points end with an error. You actually want to leave exposed some of the low percentage targets. And this is kind of a core critical strategy principle here for doubles. Because
the court is so wide, you can't cover both effectively all the time. And so the only way to be a force in the middle is to leave some of the alley. And when you leave the alley, you're leaving a lower percentage shot and you're covering a higher percentage shot. Now I'm not telling you you won't get beat down the alley. You will. But here comes another core principle. Listen carefully to this question. How many points out of a hundred do you need
to win in order to win a tennis match? What percentage of the overall points in any given match do you need to win in order to have a very high likelihood of winning that match? Is it 80%? 8 out of 10? Is it 70%? You know, 7 out of 10 points? It's 51%. If you win 51% of the points, you have a very high statistical probability of winning the match. Now occasionally, the player or players since we're talking about doubles with 49% of the points could win
a match. It does happen sometimes. But it's pretty unlikely. If you want to be really, really safe, you can move up to like 53%. Or 54%. If you want 54% of the points in any given match, you have a highly, highly likely probability of winning that match. It's probably 54%. You're probably 95, 96, 97% likely to win that match. Is it technically so possible to lose probably if you lose all the exact wrong points and you win all the meaningless
ones is probably technically possible. But the point is we just need slightly more than half the points to come away the winner. So the goal with our tactics and the goals are positioning and the goal is what we cover and what we don't cover should never be to not lose any points. Are you tracking with me? The goal should never be to not lose any like if you're trying to find a magic place on the courts where if I just stand right
here and cover this spot, I won't lose any points. Well, of course, that's ridiculous. Nobody would ever say that out loud. And yet all across the world countless doubles matches every day. The tactics and the strategies and the positions being optimized for do not make any sense in terms of the statistics of actually winning a match. It makes no sense to cover the most difficult shot with high certainty and high probability by like literally
standing on the edge of the alley so that they're not going to get me. They're not going to pass me down my alley. And on the back end of that, it's critical to understand that you can't make that decision in a vacuum without affecting other things on the courts. You can't stand and cover your alley without leaving exposed the center. And the center is the last place on the court you want to leave open. The only way to shift that is to
start to squeeze. That's play number one. What I look for in a server's partner. So imagine your partner serving. I want to see like a bare minimum service partner right dead in the center of the service box of their half of the court. So if your partner serving on the do side, you're covering the ad side. You should be in the middle of the ad side service box on your side of the courts. That means in effect that we are leaving the alley
exposed. Now the alley is only four and a half feet wide. So we're leaving that four and a half foot chunk of space. And by the way, if you take just one step, you know, to your left and that scenario and put your arm out to the left, you can cover part of it. But under no circumstances, do you ever want to cover the entire alley? Because if with
one step and one reach of your racket, you have the whole alley shut down. It means that it's at the expense of being able to influence the point in the center of the court at all. It's it's given take. You can't cover the alley effectively and cover the middle effectively. So what I prefer to see is the service partner a little closer to the central line than they are to the singles side line just by like a foot or two. That sounds like
a very clear visual message to the returner that some of the alley is open. And what this does is it opens up the door to being able to manipulate them to being able to fake, to being able to poach with much more efficacy, much more easily reach balls in the middle of the courts, all of which puts a tremendous amount of stress and pressure on the baseline player on the other side. If on the other hand, you play it safe and you lock down that alley
and you just shut it down. Well, now on the flip side of that decision, we're leaving the middle wide open. We take away our ability to easily poach. We leave ourselves much more work and much much more court to have to cover in order to cut off that same ball going through the middle. And we shut down any possibility in any kind of threat or a question mark. I'm sorry, let me rephrase that by covering all of the alley, we take away all
the question marks that that baseline player on the other side might have. They're no longer wondering, I wonder if the alley is a good shot. There's no question because you're just standing there covering the whole thing. And they're no longer asking themselves a question, I wonder if they're going to poach here because you're so far away and so out of the poaching game, which is obviously all about being a force in the middle. So
what you want to start doing is timing a squeeze towards the middle. What I mean by squeeze is tactically, when it makes sense intelligently with the patterns of the point, start shifting towards the middle proactively just before the ball gets hit by the baseline player on the other side. And yes, that will leave some alley exposed. And we have to do that if we're going to be more of a factor in the match. And if we're going to start dictating
play and telling our opponent, you can hit here, you can hit there. If instead you just lock down the alley, there's no question marks. There's no worries. There's no concerns. It's very obvious what's happening. And you leave them the easiest, highest percentage shot to hit. At most points, end with an error. And so if we just leave them the easiest target, we're making their job super, super easy. And we're locking down with great certainty,
the toughest shot on the courts. It doesn't make any sense. But this is how the vast majority of doubles is being played. So your task is to start leaving that comfort zone of covering the alley one or two percent more at a time until you find the place where that baseline
player starts to actually try to catch you. And so as the match progresses, and as they receive serves or ground strokes or whatever from the baseline, you should make it your your like goal to get beat down the alley by squeezing a little further and a little sooner and a little further and a little sooner until they finally try to beat you. In fact, I would say until they finally do beat you. Because guess what? They're not going
to make it every time they try it. If they try it and hit the net, well, that's fantastic. You just won the point for your team without even having to hit the ball. And if they try to beat you down the alley and they miss long and they try to beat you down the alley or they miss wide or they try to beat you down the alley and they hit it to you and you put the volley away. Guess what? That's five different ways that you can win by leaving
the alley exposed. None of which are on the table if you just go stand in the alley. Do you understand that? By squeezing and leaving a little earlier and starting a little further towards the middle, you open the door for many other ways to win points. Now you also open the door for one way to lose the point, which is they go for it and they make it. But remember, what percentage of the total points do we need to win in order to win the
match? About 51, 52, 53, get up to 54 and it's in the bag. So this is not a question of will I get beat down the alley? It's not. It's a question of when they try to beat me down the alley, can I win six out of those 10 points? Either because they miss the shot or because I still get the ball and I'm able to win the point. And if you get 60 percent, if you get six out of 10 of those attempts, man, it's locked up. The match is
in the bag. At least the points that you got involved in because of your squeezing towards the middle. So look for opportunities to squeeze and be bold, be aggressive, let them see it, let them try to beat you. And if your partner gives you the staring up towards the heavens, like throwing their hands up in the air and they give you the side eye because you get beat down the alley, just take solace and the fact that you are playing good doubles.
And good doubles means leaving some of the alley exposed and leaving some of the alley exposed means you're going to get beat down the alley sometimes. I would really encourage you to just keep a tally in your head of the number of times that they try and the number of times that they actually succeed. And if just one more time than they succeed, they fail. In other words, if they try to beat you 10 times and only four times they actually
succeed and passing you down the alley, you're ahead. And you're actually a force for good for your team. Even though you got beat down the alley four times, if the other six they missed or you intercept the ball and you end up pointing the points, you're and you're crushing it. You're doing fantastic. So strategy number one is to use the squeeze, use it often use it early. And we're sending the message to the other team that I am willing
and able to leave the comfort zone of covering the alley. And I'm willing and able to go into the unknown and take a risk for the greater good of my team. And if if instead you're sending them the message loud and clear that I am not willing to risk anything and I'm just going to stand over here and make sure that I don't get embarrassed by shot down the alley,
you just made their job today so much easier. Do not allow them to have an easy day. It is your duty as the net player to make their job difficult and not be predictable and cover a very difficult shot with high degree of certainty. Okay. So that is strategy number one is squeeze. I just spent a lot of time kind of unpacking that and talking about the implications and the percentages and so on and so forth because it's kind of the foundation
of everything in advanced doubles. And the game within the game doesn't get played if everybody knows what everybody else is doing. If everybody reliably covers the alley, there is no game within the game. There is no there is no daring. There is there is no temptation. There is no question mark about, oh man, is he going to is he going to poach or is he going to fake or is he going to stay? I don't know. If you just played predictable
cover your alley doubles, it takes away the game within the game. Everything becomes predictable. And again, the job of our opponents just becomes really, really easy. So when you watch professional doubles or college doubles or any high let's say 4 5 5 0 and above doubles, players get beat by down the line shots frequently. And the reason why they get beat down the down their alley frequently isn't because the baseline player is just hitting highlight real 100
mile an hour, you know, slaps down the line. It's because the opposing net player is being bold and aggressive and assertive and early with all kinds of different moves and looks and timings and starting positions and poaches and fakes. And so as as that net player does all kinds of sneaky tricky things, they naturally leave some space available down the line. And the more often they do that, the more likely a down the line shot is going to come
into play. And high level doubles players don't get discouraged by that. In fact, high level doubles players, the first time their opponent goes down the alley successfully, they're thinking, listen carefully to what I'm about to say. High level doubles players when they get beat down the alley, say to themselves, that is fantastic because they know that their opponent is paying close attention to what they're doing and they're
respecting their moves and their movements. And actively now we are front and center in our opponent's mind, which means that we now have the ability to manipulate their targets and their patterns where they try to hit where they try to avoid now that we are on their radar successfully as the net player, we can be the puppet master if we can stay one step ahead of them. Now, if we can't, then we might lose. Okay? But the alternative is not
ever be on their radar and just give a very good player a very easy target. And sure, we might lose that way too, but when we're on their radar, at least it's on our terms, at least we're forcing them in a more difficult decisions, at least we're forcing them in a more difficult targets. And now we might lose, but at least we can go down with the ship if we have the confidence and the assertiveness to try to take control up at the net. So the
choice is yours. I guess the very good opponent, we might be a loss either way. The question is, are we going to lose on our terms or are we going to lose on their terms? So tactic number two is what I referred to as the catch. And this is when your opponent is really aggressive at the net and you're back at the baseline, frequently it is the best play to go ahead and go down the line and send the message on the other side of the equation
that I see you. I read what you're doing and I am willing to try the lower percentage shot. Now some of you listening don't need any encouragement to do that. And you love the thrill of trying that low percentage shot. And at the first hint of a poach, you're slapping out ball down the alley and please don't misunderstand. I'm not saying this
in like a derogatory way or saying like you're a bad player or anything like that. Just pointing out different players need different levels of like encouragement or not to go down the line and against a player who's very assertive, who's very proactive, who's very active up around the net, you have to be able to send the message. I am willing
to go down your alley. So when you're playing against somebody who is doing a lot of squeezing, you can use a lob down the line, you can use a drive down the line, you can use a soft
short ball. If you're coming in behind a serve or coming in behind a return and you've got a ball coming down at your feet and you're playing like a half-file or a low-valley, it's critically important that you get comfortable taking that ball and redirecting it down the line because if you can't, a good net player is going to pick up on that inability and they're going to make your life miserable by consistently just popping up in the middle
of the net and putting the ball away whenever you have a difficult shot like that. So against a high level net opponent in doubles, you have to be able to catch them by taking volleys down the line, half volleys down the line, ground strokes down the line, lobs down the
line. So please, please practice those shots and in particular shots from around No Man's Land because that's when a good net player is going to use the squeeze against you and first of all, like layer one is make them use the squeeze successfully several times first
before you try going down the line. If you're too sugar happy and all they have to do is just kind of do a head fake like towards the middle and then you slam it down the line, a, you're going to make a lot of unforcers that way, b, you're probably playing right into the hands of that net player who wants the ball and now you're just hitting it towards them on their terms and that's the last thing that we want against a good net player and
good doubles team. So have those direction changes at your disposal but save them for when you need to use them. If you're just changing direction like just to be fancy and just to like mix it up, how do most points end? Well, with an error with a mistake of some kind, so don't be the player who's trying to be like super sneaky and make sure that you know, we're always changing it up and using different targets every time it's that's
completely unnecessary. Unless our opponents are really that good and that active at the net and now we have to mix things up because it's on their terms. We should only be taking a low percentage approach when we're forced to by a really active and aggressive net player and that's when we want to catch them by going down the line, telling them, yes, I see
you moving, yes, I'm willing and yes, I am able to catch you. Otherwise, they will make your life super miserable by continuing to pick off our shots that travels through the middle of the court. Okay, so once, so okay, so let's pivot again. Now we're, so we just talked about being in the position of either the baseline player or like a transitioning player from the baseline up to the net and we've got a net opponent who's doing the squeeze
to us. Now let's put ourselves back in the net players position again and I want you to pretend that we've done a bunch of squeezing. We've been brave. We've inch by inch, we've shifted closer towards the middle, started leaving earlier, started closer and closer to the center right out of the gate from our starting position, combination of the two
or moving more and now we're on the radar of that baseline player. We know we're on their radar when they catch us successfully and not only is that not necessarily a bad thing, it can be like I said a minute ago a very, very good thing because it opens the door for
the fake. When I teach clinics, a lot of times players will, they think they're faking and they might actually be moving a significant amount towards the middle and they might actually even do it at the right time, but it's completely useless because the person on the baseline
on the other side, they might see it and they might know that a fake is being done, but they don't respect it and they don't respect it because that net player is so conservative with their starting position and they're so timid with their movements and they're so careful to not leave any alley exposed that the fake becomes completely nullified because there isn't enough bravery and there isn't enough movement and there isn't enough anticipation
from the net player to make the baseline player care whether they're faking or not. So it might be the best fake in the world, but if the net player hasn't established that they're willing and able to go clear across the net and pick off a ball and put it away, it's going to be completely ineffective. A fake is only as useful as a poach is effective. A
fake is only useful as much as you're able to get on their radar. If you're not on their radar and you're not an actual threat at the net, then a fake is not going to do any good because your opponent's just going to ignore and be like, okay, I guess they're faking with doesn't matter. Doesn't matter because they're starting from the alley. There's no way they can just hit, there's no way they can intercept a decent cross-squared shot. So
I'm just going to hit a cross-squared. Why would I try to beat them down the alley when they're faking when I've got all of this real estate available to me cross-squared to just safely and consistently and reliably just hit the ball and play cross-squared? I've got a baseline player over there. There's no pressure, no stress, like nobody over there can put the ball away. Why would I hit it towards the net player if I don't have to?
So that's why we started with the squeeze. The squeeze will send the message to our baseline opponents. You have to be able to catch me. You have to be able to change direction and go down the line because if you don't, I will continue to intercept the ball and slam the ball at your partner up at the net. And until you prove to them that you are willing
and able to do that, your fakes will be completely ineffective. So if you feel like in the past, you've tried to deploy the fake, but it just doesn't, like they just don't hit you the ball the way you want them to, then either your fake is way too small and it's not catching their eye or it's way too late. And so again, you're not catching their eye because you're not actually doing any kind of movement until they're already hitting the ball. And so
it's too, like even if they see you moving, it's not until after they hit. And so they can't choose to hit you the ball in the first place. Or it's plenty early and it's plenty big, but you're starting from such a conservative spot and you've shown so little willingness to actually make a real move across to the middle of the court that they just
don't care. And they're just going to keep hitting the ball across court because you haven't demonstrated the efficacy in your poaching for them to even be concerned that you're moving or not. It doesn't matter because you haven't shown a high enough level of skill in your actual poaching. So that's why these are layered. Layer one is do the squeeze. Later two, when you're being squeezed on is to catch your opponents. And in layer three is once your opponents have caught you because of your
squeezing, now you deploy the fake. And ideally, listen carefully to this. Ideally, you deploy the fake immediately after you've been caught squeezing. So imagine you start really aggressively towards the middle. And right before they hit you squeeze and you try to take away even more of the center. And your opponent on the baseline hits the ball down the line
and successfully passes you clean and fist pumps. And it's like, yes, I got them. The very next time, probably two points later, the very next time that player is back on the baseline, you throw in the biggest earliest fake you possibly can. And because on the previous point on that side, they just beat you clean down the line. And they're so high and congratulating
themselves still for that sweet highlight shot down the alley. They're going to say to themselves immediately, yes, I have another opportunity to embarrass them again and be a hero and be on the highlight reel. Here we go. I like they're going again. This is my chance. And you play right into their confidence and right into the success, the fresh success that they just had by throwing in a fake. And if you layer it by squeezing first, then eventually
finally getting caught. And then immediately after getting caught, you throw in a fake, which means you make a move right before they swing towards the middle. And then right as they start to swing, you go back again towards the alley, you will elicit so many down the line shots. And if you time it well, you will be standing right there with a smile on your face to intercept the ball at the net and hit it right at the feet of their partner
who is also at the net. And that's how you can strategically manipulate that baseline player. And I promise you, after they try to beat you and you successfully fake, they're going to be embarrassed, you know, maybe not outwardly, but they're going to think, oh, man, I just felt right, I just felt right into that. Like a man, they set the trap. I took the bait and they they intercepted. Man, they just totally played me for a fool
there. And now there's the question marks. Now there's the uncertainty. Now there's the fear of, oh man, where are they going to, are they going to be in the middle? Are they covering the alley? I just don't, is the middle open? Is the alley open? I don't know. Where is safe? And where is not safe? And now you are the one who's firmly in control of the match. And at what percentage do we need? We don't need to win all the points.
We're just 60%, 6 out of 10, we are way out in the lead. And there's no chance for us to lose the match if we can just win 6 out of 10 points. So give them those, give them the four down the alley in exchange for the uncertainty in exchange for the intimidation in exchange for the pressure that we put on that baseline player. This is how high level doubles players see the match. Not through the lens of being protective and safe and
locking down low percentage shots. It's through the lens of being bold and being aggressive, being anticipatory, being one step ahead of their opponents. You can only be one step ahead of your opponent if you actually have the bravery to do something out of the ordinary. Kind of by definition, you can't be one step ahead of them if what you do is predictable. If what you do is predictable, they're on the same page as you all the time, the entire
match. And that's how they can win the easiest by having no question marks, no concerns, no uncertainties, just easy targets, predictable spots to hit to, lots of margin for air. Now you have a big uphill battle. So, later these, the squeeze, the catch, the fake, and then cycle them. Once a fake has worked, that reopens the door for a poach because the baseline player say to themselves, oh, I see what you did there. You're not going to catch me with
that again. And on the next point, you can make an early poach towards the middle. And if they see that early move, they're thinking, you know what, the prey faking again. I'm just going to hit cross court. And then you can just be standing there in the middle of the net, intercepting the ball. And now you're really in their head. Another really plain from a place of fear and uncertainty. And man, that's the position you want to be in
as a doubles player. All right, hopefully this gives you some ideas. Hopefully, hopefully this kind of re. Let's sort of looking for reprioritizes things a little bit. Hopefully it gives you a little bit different perspective on what your mindset should be during points. Hopefully it's super helpful. Thanks so much for listening today. Really appreciate having you as a listener. Keep up to great work on your game. And I'll talk to you next time on the Essential Tennis Podcast.
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