Tournament Fun and Games

 So you are going to play in a tournament.  How do you beat the team in front of you?  

While I've not played in tournaments, I'm quite interested in how your team should quickly (shall I repeat that?) figure out how to play against the next team.  Nothing worse than being down early and no clue how to turn it around.

Let me suggest the following.

During the first points when returning serves, try this as a set play.  Hit the ball cross court so that the ball is in front of your partner at the net.  You advance up the middle of the court to cover the middle.  

Do that on both sides of the court and for each player.  Think of it as squeezing your opponents off of the court.

What you are interested in finding out is the relative strengths of the backhands of each players.  See if they like to return cross court or up the middle or are drivers or lobbers.  

If it works well, then you can keep doing it, though I would play to the middle a bunch as I don't want to be too predictive.

A couple of things to keep in mind.  Watch out for lefties as the backhand will not be in the proper place (tongue in cheek here a bit).  You would like to learn what each player will do with a backhand and forehand shot.  In the early part of a game they will probably hit their normal shot.  This is valuable information as it provides a map to defense and under pressure it's very likely they will hit their usual shot.  

You would like to find glaring weaknesses, but baring that, there may be some tendencies that will allow you to predict the flow of future points.  If there is an early time out, be prepared to discuss observations with partner. 

What you might find in mixed is that the guy will drive the ball at your partner and the gal will hit it cross court.  Use that tendency to control future points based on your strengths.  For example if your partner blocks well, then you don't fear a drive at her.  And cross court shots can be poached.  

Also drivers of the ball tend to hit a lot of out balls, so evaluate their shot types with respect to hitting it out.  If there is a lot of top spin on the shots, they tend to stay in, but someone who hits a hard cut, will sail a lot of them long.  

A great discussion with partner prior to the game would be to try some of the above and see what you learned from it.

How about serves?  Pro Tip: serves are vital if not sacred.  You've fought to get the ball so don't quickly hit a serve into the net.  This is your only chance to score points and if you don't score you will not win the match.  Serious stuff.

 Take a breath and a half second of time make sure it's in.  Deep is usually better than shallow, watch where your opps setup in re the baseline.  And then there is the forehand backhand question.  Feel free to add in some spins as you can use them to move the opponents around.  A good serve requires an opponent to move her feet, a great serve might be straight at the body and force an awkward shot.

Finally variety is useful.  Even if you have a great serve the players will learn quickly how to get it back, so soft and hard, up the middle and off to the side are good things to do.  We don't want comfortable opponents who know where the ball is going.

Have I mentioned that getting the serve in is important?  Well, it still is and getting it in is more important than all the other stuff.