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TENNIS DOUBLES: COVERING THE COURT AS A TEAM

Last week we had a look at the basic starting position in doubles.

Basic Doubles Starting Position

As soon as a serve has been played it becomes a simple question of covering the angles. For those of you who always flunked math in High School, don’t worry, this is much easier!

Let’s first see what happens if S hits a serve to the sideline.

Tennis Serve to Sideline

The next picture shows the most extreme shots/angles R can make in this position.

Extreme Shot Angles R Can Make

Now we divide this ‘funnel’ into 2 halves and put both players in the middle of ‘their’ half.

That sounds complicated, but it looks like this:

Funnel Half

X covers both his alley and the middle S covers his/her side + the sharply angled return.

When the serve would have gone down the middle it would have looked something like this:

Down the Middle

As you can see X and S are again covering half of all possible returns on this serve.

But notice: This time it’s much easier for X and S to cover the field. In addition X can afford to take position closer to the middle line and has a better chance to intercept the return.

So from a positional point of view for a team it would be best to serve down the middle of the court.

However there can be advantages in serving wide such as:

• Someone having his or her bad shot at that side

• Someone having difficulty getting to the angled serve

• Using this serve as a variation to keep your opponent from ‘knowing’ where you will serve.

Okay, that’s all for now.

Let’s play doubles and HAVE FUN!

Mark Luyk 18 Tennis Tips

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