It never ceases to amaze me how many tennis matches can be turned from losses into victories by recognizing patterns and matchups and changing things around to take advantage.
Of course, this is the basis of my whole theory of smart tennis and, if you're interested in learning more, then you can click on the image of my tennis book for more info.
Recently, my Sunday night doubles team has been in the league playoffs. My partner and I are playing first doubles. We've won two consecutive matches where we've lost the first set, won a close second, and then blown out the other team in the third set.
Last week we were playing a team that seemed pretty solid. They both had good serves and good returns. In particular, their deuce court returner had a very good two handed backhand return that he could hit inside out. We serve him down the middle and to his body in the first set and he kept hitting good returns.
Their ad side returner was a tall guy with a huge forehand. We obviously tried to get to his backhand but he was running around everything to hit his forehand.
And, since he was tall with good range, he could cover the down the middle serve when we tried to fool him.
We lost the first set and were struggling to hold serve.
To begin the second set I decided to make a few strategic changes. I decided to serve the deuce court returner wide to his firehand with my kick slice serve. This serve slices out wide but also has some topspin so that it bounces high.
The guy could not handle it. He kept ripping the return hard but couldn't keep the ball in play. Whereas on his backhand he took the ball early before it bounced high, on the forehand he let it get up too high and then didn't have the technique to generate enough topspin to keep the ball in play.
He gave us no trouble the rest of the match.
On the ad side, I decided to stand as far wide as I could and to turn my back even further away from the net in my starting serving position. I was determined to get the ball wide to the returner's backhand even if I gave up some disguise and some ability to go down the middle.
Well, this worked like a charm too. I told my partner what was working and he went to the same strategy.
They never made any counter adjustments and we cruised 6-1 in the third.
Glenn Sheiner M.D. - author of Insider Tennis Strategies A Tennis Ebook All About Tennis Strategy guaranteed to make you a smarter tennis player and take your tennis to the next level.
Plus, I've edited some pages on my web site about tennis strategy
tennis mental toughness
tennis playing tips to improve your game
tennis tactics and singles strategies to improve your game
how to play winning tennis
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