Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Q&A: Should doubles players shift "as a unit?"

You often hear this advice given in terms of the analogy that doubles players should pretend they are tied together by a rope.

I think I recall where this Tennis Commandment came from. I recall reading it in a doubles book quite a few years ago. If I remember correctly though, the author was talking about playing Both-Up. Which makes more sense. At least it made sense to me then, and I don't recall what he said well enough to comment further.

But nowadays, you hear this going around and coming around as a general rule about how to play doubles. And it's just wrong. At least as often as not, if you shift laterally in the same direction as your partner, one of you is shifting the wrong direction.

Here is an example. Most points, even at the highest levels of the game, involve a rally with both teams in the Up-and-Back Formation. The baseliners are exchanging crosscourt drives.

Every angle you feed your opponent gives him a sharper angle of return, so what happens? The angle of the shots in this rally increases. You have some sharply angled crosscourt shots going back and forth.

If your baseliner hits a sharply angled crosscourt shot, your net player must shift toward his alley to guard against the alley-shot return. And the LAST thing your baseliner should do is recover in the same direction (toward center). That's the most common positioning error doubles players make.

Zap - there goes a crosscout a winner. But it shouldn't have been a winner, because instead of moving toward center, your baseliner should have moved out wide, into the alley, or perhaps even wide of it, to await that shot.

But, Clueless watches that crosscourt winner come back at a wicked angle and wonders how his opponent could hit such a sharply angled shot.

It was easy. Clueless FED him a sharply angled shot with that nasty angle of return. Then Clueless failed to position wide enough for that return. Instead of recovering TOWARD HIS ALLEY, he recovered toward center, leaving an opening as big as a barn door on his alley side.

The angle of return. The angle of return. The angle of return is what determines which direction you should move. No no-brainer rote rule will do.

Watch good singles players. When they hit a sharply angled crosscourt shot to their left, which direction do they recover? Toward their right. The closer they hit to the left alley, the closer to their right alley they position for that shot's return.

There's no arguing with the angle of return. It's geometry, Natural Law. Logic. Trumps any authority figure one might parrot.

In general, as the baseliner in up-and-back doubles, always position wider than you think you need to. Err to the crosscourt side. Watch out for that sharply angled crosscourt shot. Way too many of them go for clean winners in doubles, just because the baseliner thinks he should position inside the sidelines.

The opposite scenario is true too. If you center the ball in your opponents' court (as with a lob), both you and your partner shift toward center. Again, you're moving opposite directions, not as a unit. And this is true even when you're playing both-up or both-back.

I'm not saying that there aren't times you should shift the same direction, but more often not, that advice would be wrong.

Just another example of why you must use your own head and not just swallow whole everything you hear. If some tennis adage doesn't make sense to you, doubt it. Because there's a lot of junk going around out there.

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