Doubles Play

As I mentioned in my last blog, I belong to the Mountain Park Racquet Club in Lake Oswego Oregon. On Wednesday nights they have something called men’s drop in. Basically all courts are reserved for male club members. The pro in charge tries to line up players with the same level of play. All play is in the doubles format.

During my play, I began to implement the serve and volley strategies I learned from my previous lesson – which was:

On my serve I would have a definite strategy i.e.

Determine the target for my first serve
Out wide
Down the T
Into the body

Determine where to place my first volley
At the net player
At the return of serve player
Down the middle
Etc.

I found that having this type of strategy before each serve definitely helped my game. It is far better than serving to wherever it happen to land and then playing from the baseline.

When I lost a point on my first serve, it was generally because I did not execute my plan or my net partner missed his shot. I won about 75% of my serves using this strategy for the first time.

One thing I did notice is that I kept the receivers on the defensive because I changed direction on each of my first serves. This type of serve and volley strategy does require that you have a first serve that you can con control where it goes.

As far as my second serve is concerned – I generally stayed back and took the return from the base line. I am learning to use a kick serve for my second serve and I do not have much pop on it yet.