There is a link to a John Cincola video below. He talks about the play of the third shot.
He characterizes the play as "being a way to protect your partner" and "being a good partner." Those are accurate descriptions, but I like to think of it as "blocking the shot your opponents want to hit."
I'm going to talk about how act when your partner is going to hit the third shot. I've written about this before and my thinking has been in flux, but I've come to a conclusion and it matches what Cincola says. I think I'm on solid ground here. :-)
But John has a method and I think it's a great starting point with much flexibility. OK, enough introduction, let's set the scene and run through the three cases.
General Setting: you are on the left of the court and the ball is coming to your partner to hit the third shot. We will talk about what you should be doing.
John's rule of thumb:
Step ahead of partner by two or three steps forward and also one step closer to the center line and then stop.
Rotate your feet a bit so that you can easily watch partner hit the ball.
Case 1: best case, partner hits a good drop cross court in front of you. You continue to advance to the kitchen line and be prepared to block a shot that will go through the middle of the court and at partner's feet.
Case 2: Partner hits a bad drop shot, i.e., one that's too deep. You take a step backwards and get ready to defend a shot at your feet.
Case 3: Partner drives the third. You want to face the player hitting the fourth shot, but you don't want to advance nor retreat. But split step and be ready to defend or pounce depending on what the opponents do.
And that's about it. You assume a moderately aggressive position, favor the middle a bit and then depending on partner's shot quality, you will stay, advance, or retreat.
What you don't do, is to advance all the way up to the kitchen before you assess the quality of your partner's shot. This is a very common play of aggressive intermediate players. It works well in most games, but it won't work as the skill levels get better.
And, worst of all, you don't sit back on the baseline and see what's going to happen. PB is about moving to the kitchen and the third shot and how you play it is vital to the serving team.
I mentioned that I thought/think of this as blocking opponents' best shot. And that usually means getting in as far as possible and blocking the direction of the shot that the opponents would like to hit. This is usually at the feet of the player further back in the court. Doing this makes the opponents do things they would prefer not to, for example trying to hit a sideline instead of a high percentage middle shot.
Here is the link to John Cincola's video. He has a lot of videos on YouTube and the content and delivery is very good, highly recommended.
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