The Importance of Doubles in High School Tennis

When I began coaching high school tennis, I soon learned that your doubles is the key to achieving maximum success.

Why? Because your overall win-loss record in the singles is mainly a function of the quality of singles players you're blessed with. As a coach, generally, there isn't a lot you can do during the season to affect it.

For example, I was coaching in a fairly small school that went up against outstanding big ones in two states. Almost every big school has one outstanding singles player. So, we rarely fared well at No. 1 Singles. And there wasn't anything we could do about that.

The rest of the way down the ladder, it was a matter of depth, and in that category we generally fared well, because it was a good tennis town and many good tennis players chose that school.

Still, we were dissatisfied with our performance. We felt we could beat the State Champions of Minnesota, but we just kept loosing those dual meets. We kept losing the No. 1 Singles and both doubles matches when playing in Minnesota.

Our problem was that we played half our meets in Wisconsin and half in Minnesota. Wisconsin had a 6-3 format in which you could use your six singles players again in the doubles round. Minnesota had a 3-2 format with one round of play that required seven different players to fill the three singles and two doubles slots.

To really confuse things, our State Tournament format was 2 and 2. And invitationals in both states came in many different formats.

The bottom line is that we had to constantly reshuffle our lineup and doubles partners. That was a disadvantage that didn't hurt us much in Wisconsin, but it killed us in Minnesota, because those Minnesota doubles teams were doubles specialists who played with the same partner virtually every day of the season.

In fact, I learned the Switch Trick from one of those little devils! She must have played it on our No.1 Doubles team 50 times during her high school career. Till one day I happened to be in exactly the right spot to see what she was doing, and that was end of that.

Then I started to wonder how many more tricks these wily Minnesota doubles specialists knew that we didn't and that you couldn't find in any book or get in any lesson.

I looked at the statistics and decided that we had to start breaking even in the Minnesota doubles events to beat those rivals. For, realistically, there was no way to increase our percentage of singles match wins. The key to more team wins was to stop getting skunked in Minnesota doubles.

That in-season coaching CAN affect.

So I developed a team system for doubles play. (This system eventually grew into Operation Doubles.) The idea was that, knowing the system, you could go out into a doubles match on any given day with a teammate you had never partnered with before and know what to expect from each other.

It was simple: how to handle lobs, the Switch Trick Play and lob plays to avoid the Switch Trick. A little poaching. And the proper eyework and footwork at net.

I was actually surprised at what a big difference these few team conventions made. Our players really did go out there and play much better doubles, simply because every player on our team could be counted on to do certain things a certain way, no matter whom they were playing doubles with today. It made partners look like they had played together for a long time.

Moreover, actually teaching them proper eyework and footwork at net, plus the Switch Trick, and the No-Switch and Safe-Switch lob plays had a tremendous impact. Much bigger than the goal I had set: we didn't just break even in the doubles event; we were usually sweeping it now.

And that was in Minnesota. In Wisconsin, you just didn't win a doubles match against us. Ever. I was as surprised about that as anyone.

Where this really made a difference in overall success was at the State Tournament. We were often outmatched by Milwaukee area tennis powerhouses. Since doubles is more a game of strategy than skill, our doubles teams often beat Milwaukee area teams comprised of much higher ranked players. These seemed like huge upsets, but they weren't, because we could repeat those victories year after year. Especially on my boys team, which lacked enough highly ranked players but always had plenty of good, competitive athletes.

Result? Our players were just much better doubles players and therefore beat doubles teams comprised of better tennis players.

Which is very satisfying. That's when you know that your team is fulfilling its potential.