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 401 of the Essential
Tennis Podcast. Today we're going to talk about how to STEAL Doubles Points and we're going to do that through poaching effectively at the right time from the right place and if you're not good at that, then you're probably tired of never getting the ball when you're at the net and doubles and or maybe you're tired of Doubles Points glass team forever.
And it goes from baseline player to baseline player and you just kind of stand there and watch the ball go back and forth and you feel like maybe you're making some moves to kind of get involved and like intercept the ball. But if you're playing really long points and nobody's hitting you the ball, then you need this episode of the podcast. This is exactly
the guidance that you need. What we're going to talk about today. When you apply the different specific movements and like positions we're going to talk about today, you're going to basically, I mean, not basically, I mean, you're literally going to just appear in exactly the right place at exactly the right time and that's what's going to allow you to STEAL points from your opponents. You're not going to wait for them to give you an opportunity.
We're going to take that opportunity forcefully on our own accord. We're not going to wait for permission. We're going to go get the stinking ball. So couple kind of ground rules or elements to get out of the way first and foremost. It's critical to understand what we're dealing with here. And I think it's very poorly understood how big the Doubles Court is. I want you to kind of picture in your mind, playing the net and doubles, close your eyes
if you can't, if you're driving, don't close your eyes. But visualize yourself, ethynet and doubles. And I want you to kind of look from left to right and look from side, side line to side line, make a guess how wide the Doubles Court is. Like how many feet is the doubles court from side line to side line? Just pick a number in your head. The answer is 36 feet wide. It's like almost a four-story building wide. How much width there is to cover
between you and your partner. Now, if you're about six feet tall, then you've got about a six foot reach or, you know, wingspan, you know, give or take with the length of your racket, which means there would need to be six of you at full reach, side to side, like other tip to finger tip to cover the entire court. So number one, it's critical to understand that you cannot be in two places at one time. I know the most obvious thing I'm going
to say today. So you cannot cover your alley and be a force in the middle. You can't. At some point, you're going to have to do something brave. You're going to have to leave your side of the court if you want to actually be impactful somewhere else on the court.
Again, kind of obvious statement. But what I see over and over and over and over and over and over again, as I watch every day of players play doubles, is they just that a lot of times they'll be kind of lukewarm and home base is just covering their alley, you know, in air quotes. Just staying closer to their alley than they are to the middle and just kind of making that maybe it may two feet, you know, to the left and two feet to the right.
And they'll kind of like shuffle, you know, back and forth. There's there's some movement. But not enough to actually intercept any balls because here's the thing. If you kind of do what I just said, you move like two or three feet left and two or three feet right, well, we're occupying about six or seven feet of space. Where does that leave our opponent?
Like 25 or 30 feet to hit around us. And nobody on the other side of the court from the baseline is going to just hit the ball to us because they understand that we're close to the net in an offensive position. And we're hoping we get the ball so we put it away. So you have to destroy that six foot, you know, little slot that you're playing in and kind of shuffling back and forth and going like two, three feet this way and two, three
feet that way. If you go a little bit outside of that, two or three foot, you know, range in both directions, it's pretty likely you're going to get beat down the alley. And we're going to talk about why in a second, you've got to a, time it correctly and b, make a big bold move at the appropriate time in order to really be impactful and be a big asset to your team. So mistake number one that doubles players make is being way too conservative.
So they'll either start way too close to their alley. And by the way, the right place to stand is not covering your entire alley. Your home base in a net position should give up some of the alley. If you're not giving up any of the alley, like just from your standard kind of starting position, then you're not ever going to have very much opportunity towards the center of the court. So a, we need to be a little bit brave with our starting position
to begin with. You should be at minimum halfway between the single side line and the center service line. So in other words, the service box, you at minimum should be in the center of the service box, not any closer to the alley than you are to the center. And if you watch very high level doubles players and professional players, they're typically a little bit closer towards the middle than they are towards the alley on average. There's
going to be a lot, there's lots of variation once the point gets started. But on average, without the ball, like traveling back and forth and angles and stuff like that on average, they're a little bit closer to the center than they are to the alley. So big mistake number one is doubles players are way too conservative with their starting position and their way too conservative about never leaving their home base to begin with. And they don't really
travel very far away from a home base period. And so they're starting from a conservative spot, they're conservative with their movement. And if you experience a lot of very long points without getting involved, you are probably doing both of those things. If you occasionally get involved, then you're probably doing okay with one of those or the other, but you're not going to get consistently involved in a doubles match unless you do both things well.
You have a little bit of bravery with your starting position and you have a little bit of bravery with leaving that starting position and going someplace else. Okay. So those are just kind of like the ground rules and like the starting factors that we need to embrace, at least a little bit if we're going to be able to make this transformation. Now, the other big mistake that players make is they kind of work up the courage, okay, I'm going
to finally, I'm going to leave the alley, I'm going to go towards the middle. And when they do it, they telegraph their intention way too early. And so it makes it so obvious because they're normally very conservative and they stay very close to the alley and they generally don't deviate or wander too far from their home base. And then all of a sudden the other baseline player is getting ready to hit and the other net player, let's say you,
you're already going towards the middle before they even make their swing. And now of course the baseline player is going to go down the alley, you're going to get beat, you're going to be embarrassed, your partner is going to give you like the eye roll. And now you're just going to go right back to home base again for the next 40 points in a row because you're so embarrassed that you got beat down the alley. Does that sound familiar? To some
of you, it sounds like way too familiar. It's others of you, hopefully not super familiar. But you're still going to get some benefit out of the description I'm about to talk about. So how do high level players get so many balls in the middle of the courts? It's not just because they're athletic and fast. Although that's part of the equation. Like don't get me wrong. It'd be helpful if we can cover more a court just with raw speed. But the starting position
and the timing is critical. So starting position we already covered that is we want to at minimum be in the center of the service box. If not maybe on average a little closer to the towards the central line. But number two, when we decide to make our move, the timing needs to be before the ball is hit. But after our opponent's swing has started. Let me say that again. You want to leave and go towards the middle before the ball gets hit. But after
your opponent begins their forward swing. This is critical. If you wait until after the ball gets hit and then you run towards the middle, you're not going to cover very much courts and you're not going to be very involved in the center of the courts. The sweet spot, the magic time to go and I've been studying pro doubles for a long time now. And I see this pattern over and over and over again. Professional doubles players are making their
move towards the middle. Right is their opponent on the other baseline. Initiates the forward swing of their racket. What does that signify when the racket starts moving forwards? It means that the player holding the racket has chosen their target and chosen their timing and they are committed to where they're going to hit the ball. That is the moment that we start our move. So if we do it well, we're leaving a little before they hit the ball,
but after they've already committed to their target. And so maybe you're thinking yourself, well, yeah, that means that they might see me. Yes. And we actually kind of want that. If they've already initiated their swing and they've already committed to a certain timing and a certain target, it would actually be great if they see us moving a split second before they hit the ball. Because all that all that can possibly do is distract them
and make them uncomfortable about what's about to happen. It's going to throw them off their concentration. Maybe cause them to try to change their target, even though they've already initiated their swing. Like only bad things can happen at that point if they do see us. But frequently what happens is if you nail that timing perfectly, you get a little bit of extra time to go towards the middle because you're leaving before they
hit the ball. But if they're a good player and they're really focused on hitting the ball well, their attention is going to be on the ball and not on you at that critical point when they start their swing. And so if you time this just right, a, you get extra time to go towards the middle, but b, oftentimes you end up just being totally invisible to that player hitting the ball and they don't know that you've started moving until after
they've hit the ball. And by then you've already made it four or five, six feet towards the middle and they're totally helpless and powerless just watching the ball travel towards exactly the direction that you're moving. So again, one more time, the magic timing is to leave and push towards the middle before they hit the ball and just after they start their forward motion. So, you know, how much time is that realistically? I don't know,
maybe a quarter of a second. And I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but in tennis, that's a lot. It takes, it takes the ball about a second and a half or two seconds to travel from side to side, you know, back and forth and, and like a baseline rally. So let's say two seconds. So let's kind of pick the longer one. We're gaining, we're just stealing 25%. You know, let's say it's a, I'm sorry, while we're stealing an eighth of the total
time back and forth, what is that 12, 12 and a half percent? That's a big chunk of time that we're just grabbing and taking for ourselves. And it gives us that much more space to be able to move towards the middle. Now, one more critical mindset piece here is if you begin that push towards the middle before they hit the ball, which is the best time, what you're doing is you're actively leaving your alley before you know where the ball is going. So
we're giving something up on purpose. Now, where did most shots go and doubles? Most shots go through the center of the courts right over the middle of the net. Most ground strokes go cross courts. And so we're using that knowledge to our advantage and we're
making a gamble here. We are. We're making an educated guess. And by the way, you want to selectively use this when you see that that baseline player is getting maybe pushed back a little bit or they're getting stretched out a little bit or it's almost bouncing twice and they're reaching and stretching kind of scraping the racket. You know, some kind of challenge or your partner just had a really hard deep shot and they're taking
it right off the bounce. All situations or maybe the ball is bouncing up high. All situations where you should be waiting like more of a weighted mentality towards this would be a great time to selectively do this. If you do this every time, they're just going to anticipate it and they're going to start hitting down the line and you're going to get beats.
But if you sprinkle it in in strategically leveraged situations where that baseline is under a little bit of pressure and stress and you start from a brave position to begin with and you time your movement a little bit before they hit the ball right after they begin their swing. Now we've got a magic combination of three elements that's going to equal you intercepting a ton of shots in the middle of the courts and without your baseline
opponent being able to do anything about it. Now they can start to guess themselves and be like, oh man, they're just a monster up there at the net. I'm going to have to hit something down the line so that they respect my down the line shot and so you very well may get beat down the line. My next episode is going to address that by the way. It's impossible to cover both places at once. So I want to be just very upfront and transparent
in saying that we are giving something up. We are leaving our side of the court exposed in exchange for statistically huge opportunities as that ball goes through the center of the courts or rather over the middle of the net is a better way of saying it. So this is not a guarantee. Please hear me loud and clear. I'm not telling you there's certain success on the other end of this. But I'm going to address that in the next episode of the podcast.
This is just kind of the nuts and bolts of starting position and timing and if you start throwing this in intelligently at the right time so that baseline player is a little bit off balance or a little bit challenged, you're going to have huge opportunities in the middle of the net. That's exactly what your job is as the net player in a doubles team.
Your job is to inject yourself in between your opponents and your partner back behind you and just steal as many as what poach means right like illegally take or steal kill you know whatever in the in the case of hunting. We're taking something that we're not supposed to take and it's only possible if we show some bravery with our starting position and our
time. So this is how to do it. Hopefully this is helpful experiment with it have some fun with it and remember you will get beat sometimes and you're supposed to and that's okay. I'm going to pick up right there in the next episode of the podcast until them. If you appreciate the free resources and guidance please check out my friends at dietimsports.com use code ET15 you get 15% off balls rackets strings. I just tried the new Nova line of
rackets absolutely love them. Maybe I'll do kind of a review of them in the near future. Currently I'm using the elevate tour. It's a very much like a pro staff kind of old school kind of racket. Love the feel of it. I'm using solstice black string 18 gauge. It's a poly. It's a shaped poly. That's the string I'm using right now and I'm using their balls their extra duty balls in my teaching basket. Been using them for years. Huge fan of all
their products. So if you need any gear and you want to help support the show use code ET15. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you again next time. For more free game improving instruction be sure to check out essential tennis.com where you'll find hundreds of video audio and written lessons. Also be sure to subscribe to essential tennis on iTunes and YouTube where we are the number one resource in the world
providing passionate instruction for passionate tennis players. Thank you so much for listening today. Take care and good luck with your tennis.