Shot Selections

 I played with one of the intermediate players the other day, with whom I've never played before.  His shot selection was very different than mine.  I'm not saying worse, but different.

This is a topic that worthy of discussion.  Some of it comes down to style and what shots you're comfortable hitting, which probably means the ones you expect to return some value and not go out. 

I've touched on this before.  I see a lot of shots that would win the point, but go wide, which is fine for me, but not good for the guy that hit them.  First principle is make sure the ball is going to go in.  (I will digress a bit for the sake of completeness -- there are a lot of situations where your opponent is not in a good position to judge whether a ball is going out and if you recognize those conditions you can deliberately hit a ball that is not going to stay in, but you expect your opponent will have to hit it.  A lot of hard shots at someone in the transition area come to mind and a player a step or two into the court will swing at everything that is close.  I not studied it much, but this seems to be a useful area of understanding.  Perhaps another post down the line.)

Second suggestion would be to hit a shot that is safe.  Dinks that are deep in the kitchen (close to the net) can't be attacked effectively.    Also on service returns, a low shot that lands mid-court is usually a good one especially between opponents who may fight over the ball.

Third shots...  I will drop almost all the time.  That is my style and the game I like to play.  Not everyone plays like this -- shocking, I know.  My partner for this occasion, liked the third shot lob and he hit few of them.  That shot would never occur to me.  It was reasonably effective, but since it was done from deep in the court, the opponents had no problems chasing them down.  They didn't hit winners off the lobs, but I don't know if they allowed us to get to the kitchen either.  The shot selection was more a surprise to me than anything else.  I clearly don't have enough imagination for this game.

Generally, one of the other situations that I find a dink to be "the proper shot," is from near the kitchen line but not at it.  Or even from the kitchen line when partner is not at the kitchen line.  I see the dink as a tool to get to parity and it seems if the team is not at kitchen line, and I mean both players, then you are still at a disadvantage and a good dink is an effective way to achieve parity.

One other situation comes up on every point and that is where to hit the second shot.  The traditional target is a touch left of center and deep.  I have nothing against this target and I use it almost always.  There is another thought here.  Suppose a team decides to try and split the opponents - a worthy goal -- and to do that, hit the second shot to a sideline.  

A sideline shot requires that your team shift towards the sideline in question.  The down the line shot has to be fully covered and the other player needs to cover the middle and that usually means straddling the T at the kitchen line.  Yes, this opens up a cross court shot to the far sideline, but there is not much depth there as the sideline is at an angle to the shot.  It would also be a longer shot; if it's hard, it goes out and difficult to execute, all of which means it is not something to worry about excessively.

So the second shot is to the sideline and where will the third shot go?  The idea here is that angles may be opened that you wouldn't get from a center shot.  There are many choices.  You can drive the next shots deep into the same corner, or start moving the opponents back and forth, which may create a middle space if the opponents don't shift back to cover it.  I would expect that good partnerships will have discussed this sequence and maybe on a game by game basis if they are seeking to pound a single player exclusively.

Note that as the shots change from sideline to sideline, both of the teams need to adjust coverage.  If you watch the pros, they are always moving and shifting positions.

Also a fourth or sixth shot that is mid court and low may often be popped up and can be swatted away at an angle.  This would be the optimum condition.

I watched a couple of games looking for this variation.  The sideline shot was quite effective by itself, I didn't a lot of shifting by the receivers to take advantage of angle.  It wasn't needed much actually.  It didn't come up much and I'd like to see more of these points to evaluate its effectiveness.