10 Advanced Doubles Tips Most Players Never Learn

Alright, here are 10 simple concepts that will help upgrade your doubles game by the end of this video. These are the same types of things I teach my pro players, my ATP, my WTA, my old guys at Duke that I used to coach, all the way down to 3.5, it scales at all levels. So the first thing I want to talk about is the pinch. So I want to look at this player at the net right here. When you're pinching, your main objective is to cover all the way to your single sideline and then as much of the middle as possible given the angle of the baseline or in this case the returner. So when we play this point out, I'll play it once, and you can see that's obviously not ideal. Okay. So when we go back, we're looking at the starting position, that's already an issue. I would love his right foot to be right there so he's in the middle of the box. When we play this and we can see where the returner is, okay, he is in the singles court. This ball right here. Can he cover the singles line where he's standing? Yes. The problem is he can also probably cover some of this green. So if you were to use my fancy drawing tool, which I will, he can easily cover his singles line if he had his right foot there and his left foot there. So mission accomplished. My main job when I pinch or when I stay, it's the same thing, is to cover the singles line. Now if he had been in the correct spot, right foot, left foot, that means he probably could get a ball that even crossed there over the net. And as we know, when we play this out, he's not even remotely close to that ball, which is inefficient pinching. Now the example after this, we're going to watch this player at the net as a returner's partner. We're going to see a bad pinch, followed by an excellent pinch. So I'll play this out one time for you full speed. You can just watch, watch that guy on the far side of the net, you see a similar inefficient pinch, and then that missed volley we saw earlier, okay? So let's play it back here. Starting position is okay, we'll talk about that at a later time. All right, we can see this guy is outside the court. What is his job as the pincher? To cover all the way to his singles line and as much of the middle as possible. So given this angle here, he does have to slide towards the alley a touch. The problem is most people overdo that. So when we see this ball cross right there, okay that's even probably past the net, this should be an easy winner, just right there, boom, okay? So we were off balance and we were over covering exactly like the mistake before. Now I want you to watch again, he actually corrects this the next time. Look at this position, that's excellent. The person hitting the baseline shot is still very wide, and if you look, he can still cover this singles court right here. This is not a problem. So he is doing his job, covering his singles line, while maximizing the spot in the middle that he can cover. The problem is, he missed the volley. As a coach, I could live with that. So just to reiterate, when you are pinching at the net, you are covering your singles sideline and as much of the middle as possible based on the angle that your opponent is hitting from. So if you do this correctly, you're going to get a lot of balls in the middle. Most people would look at this and call it a poach, it's just an effective pinch. All right, so in the last clip I talked about bad starting position. This is my hottest take as a coach, maybe I'm a little unique on this one. I like the returner's partner to stand in the middle, which I like, so right now he is middle of the box width-wise, but I would want him closer. The main reason is you are at the net to play offense, and you're not going to be able to play offense if you start from here. You don't read the ball quickly enough, and you don't move quickly enough. Nobody really does. So we'll play this point out, see what we see here, a poach that we can't get to and his partner is absolutely screwed because he's out of position. So we're watching him at the net. Ball gets by the net guy. Look where he's starting his poach from. Now if you watch any of my other poaching videos, which we're actually not going to talk about too much today, his right foot needs to be landing about there for him to efficiently poach. Do we think there's any world where he can get that far in the court before this laser of a shot gets there? There's no chance. And it has nothing to do with his timing of his footwork or the way he's moving on the poach. It all starts with the starting position. So then when you see he's doing his best, look where his right foot is. It's right here. So he's too deep and he's late. Right? So this is actually a great ball to poach on. Right there. We can just put it right in that dude's stomach and end the point. Why did the poach fail? Because the starting position was incorrect. Everything about it I love outside of that. The footwork to the ball was correct. The ideal was correct. Move early. But again, when you start here, you are limiting your chances for offense. Now a lot of times people will say, well, we're trying to make sure we can cover that volley. You're not going to win a doubles match reflexing that volley 25 times. That's not how you win. It's not easy. Right? Also, if you start where I'd like you to right here, and you see the guy over here gets a volley and he's about to stick it. While he's loading up to hit the volley, you're allowed to move one step back and still play defense. So just because I like you up here, you can be reading that guy. Once you see it's by, you move forward and then you have the option to pinch or poach. If you see this guy's about to hit the volley from here, you can easily move back. So starting position is everything. If you start in a bad spot, it's going to be very, very difficult for you to get on offense. And just to drive this home, let's watch the second clip here. Again, we can see the same starting position, not ideal. And again, another poach that we don't get. Also, you know what? I'm going to throw you a bonus clip on this one. Crazy point. Okay. Let's watch it again. Starting position, not where I love. Okay. He closes. Look how far he has overslid. He's so far to the alley. So now he's out of the point. Like, he's going to try to make a poach right here. Boom. Again, he's late. Why is he late? Because he's so far. We've got to get that right foot. There. He's not even close. He's there. And he's a day and a half late. That's a problem. Okay. I get grief for this all the time. And to an extent, it's legitimate. When you're on offense, you usually want to play to the nearest opponent. So right now, we just want to stick that volley right at this dude. I get that. I love that. If there's an option, though, to hit the easiest winner of all time over here, we should take that. So sometimes people become robots and they just go, oh, I'm supposed to go with the net player. Not if you've got all this room right here. So, I see this all the time. He went at the net guy. Okay, good. Oh, there's a reflex. So if you hit it perfectly, great, you might win the point. But I can promise you as the net player there, I want you to go to me so I at least have a chance versus hitting that winner over here in the corner. So again, look where my boy is standing. You can see he needs to join my double school. We got another over pinch, even though he's done it correctly a couple times. He's sliding too far to the alley. You're just going to see this across the board. I see this with my three fives. I see this with D1 players. I see this with pros. You need to learn how to pinch effectively. And then we finally get a missed one. All right, this is a fun point. We got a bunch of things here. I wrote down poorly timed poach. We're going to talk about some of the baseline targets as well. We watch the player sprint to the net. He's eventually going to make a move here. He draws in there. So let's go back, play this point out. Now, one thing for sure, when you play against two back, what you want to do, and ideally you're finding someone's backhand, but you're going through the middle. So both guys think they need to hit the ball and no one will come to the net. So we have this guy at the net who's offensive, and they would have zero players at the net. Once you go to one guy, and it's very obvious, if you took this down the line, I promise you, this player is going to try to run to the net. And now you've lost your advantage. So you always want to take that ground stroke through the middle, preferably to a backhand side, because there's less options. So this first one was really fast. Okay, nothing happened. He makes the same mistake again. He goes, ah, but I just go cross court. And now we've lost the advantage. We're one up. Now I wrote down poorly timed poaching here. Now you can see, again, there's a pinch. This is way overdoing it. We're covering into the doubles alley. We just need to cover to the singles court. He is over covering. Now watch this poach. This is the beauty of poaching. This is what I want everyone to understand. You don't have to be great at it. You just have to be average and have the courage to do it. So let's slow it down here. Again, this is not where I'd want you to start a poach from. So already, I think behind a ball, not doing an amazing job. We're leaving pretty early, right? He can see it. That's why he goes line. And guess what? He misses in the net. Why? Because he's making him do something different and he's putting pressure. You guys all tell me this is the easiest thing in the world. So even though that poach was not perfectly timed and he can see the move, right? It's okay. You have the courage. This is the number one way you win poaching points is just by making them miss because they see that action. And by the way, if you're liking analysis like this, I do analysis on your video just like this in my online community. You can see we've got a bunch of people going. We got classroom videos. Honestly, a lot of it is stuff. I talk about but I go in more detail live call recordings. So this is where every week. I share a screen just like this. We talked about things. You guys are working on you ask Q&A. It's a very good time to learn as a group learn from others. I absolutely love it. All those times right here are in the calendar and then you see this little chat button up here. This is where players send me their individual videos. So they will send me questions throughout the week throughout the day. They will send me links to their video. I send them a screen recording just like this send it back to them. We shorten the feedback loop people have been getting so much better. If you look in the community tab, we actually have something for wins. So Lou just won a tournament. Shah just won a tournament. First 4-0 singles tourney win. We're crushing it. It's an absolute effing blast. So if you want to be in the community, there's a free trial seven days. You can check it out. You can send me video check out all the videos that are in here, but I'd love to have you in the community. I'd love to be screen recording just like this with your game to help you get better. All right. Let's check this point out. We were talking about what we do against two back here. We also talk about reading the lob nice little reflex volley. Nasty ball. Two back situation. Hopefully you saw that ball. Excellent. I love by the way that ball was deep. So if we're watching this point again, okay, we play it here. Our guy at the net. Let's watch. Do we think it was a good pinch? Just following up on that first thing. It's okay. Not terrible. Still over covering, right? This guy goes at the net player. Sick reflex volley. All good. Now, what do you think? I know you've already seen the point. When someone is running backwards behind the baseline on defense, it's going to be a lob. This is not complicated, right? So I like that he's following the ball. I probably if this was me, would go to there. Also, if I'm this guy, I can see my partner moving this way. And I'm probably going to move up a little bit and see if I'm going to be ready for a cross court lob. Because the last thing in the world I think this guy is going to do is rip a ball fast down the line. That is highly unlikely. So we get this lob. You can see he's a little bit close. He's a little bit late sliding over. And now we're going to be on this two back. Now, I just told you guys what you should do. Where should we go? Middle backhand. Guess what? You get a stokey gold star for this one. Perfect. This guy right here should be sliding over. And I'm sure they have not talked about what they're going to do. If he's right here, I don't think this is an inside out backhand angle winner opportunity. That's the beauty of a middle backhand. They can't really hit angles. So I love that they kept them both back. I would prefer this guy to be in the point more. Excellent job. All those compliments. There they go. Because now he goes cross court for no reason. And what do we have? We've got pressure. He's running in. And now he misses that ball. But that goes back to my point. We play through the middle to the backhand. It keeps them back, maintains your advantage. All right. Let's watch these three points. I want you to pay attention to the volley targets. Nice little volley winner. A missed backhand cross court. And another great finishing volley. So I'm just going to tell you this right now. This scales at almost every level. 3-0, 3-5, all the way up to D1, which you're watching right now. When people get easy volleys, it is easier to pull it across your body. So what I would like to see in this situation, once we see forehand volley, what's the coverage? I mean, I honestly think we should already be moving this way. This guy right here, you're in position. I know he's kind of falling over a little bit. He's ready for that volley. The volley winner you're going to give up is someone who's moving this way and hits a short little forehand inside-out angle that way. I mean, that's incredibly difficult. Now look at how easy this volley is. This is the easiest shot he can hit. By the way, also super predictable. Now you can see here further evidence of why people are going to do this. Now we've got the backhand volley. Do we think he's going to hit an inside-out angle over here? Absolutely not. It's easier to go across. That's what he wants to do. And you can see my boy, who I've kind of been harping on, he's already moving. He's reading that low below the net, cool angle. This one right here could go middle, which would be his ball. And again, if this guy wants the little saucy one inside-out there, we're going to give him that winner all day. People aren't going to try it, and people are not capable of hitting it. So again, I know he misses this wide. Even more evidence, like he's trying to find an angle that's not there because it's just easier to hit. And then this last ball, again, same thing. Once we see that forehand, I am taking off over here. And this guy in the middle should be sliding over. So again, is he going to get that ball? No. I know I did it once in college where I hit a nice little winner from way over here because I read the ball early. I've seen a couple highlights on Instagram. By the way, I was like the OG. Give me some credit for that. Read that. When people get easy volleys, they are likely to go cross-court. All right, so let's check this point out. I want you to watch this very classy volley winner. And this goes back to how you plan points out. So you always want to plan for where the space is going to be. So if we were to serve, in this case, it was backhand body. But if we're to serve wide, and we see the returner over here is going to be sliding to their right. Whether that was a wide forehand and they're hitting it from super wide or just an off-balance right there. By the way, can you draw a better circle? No, I can't. So where is the space going to be? If he's planning right here at the net, that's his volley winner. Now, again, we've always been taught, oh, we get an easy volley, stick it at the net guy. Well, not if we have like an eight-foot window for an easy volley winner. So this is something you can just think of before, right? This is not like some reflex. Hey, if it comes to my backhand, look at this canal that we got right here. Now, if you were to serve someone down the tee, right, this would go back to understanding that if they're there, where's the space? It would be right there. So we'd be looking at a forehand angle, right? So this is something to keep in mind when you call a play. Figure out where the serve is going. Figure out if the net player is pinching or poaching, and then that net player should plan that first ball. Of course, they'll have to adjust in the point, but I think you'll be stunned how often that space is available and you just get yourself an easy winner. All right, and two examples from my I-formation crowd. I wish I could show you positives. There's just not many out there, unfortunately. So let's learn from some inefficiencies if we can. By the way, they won both these points, all right? So a couple things. I've mentioned this a million times. If you're new to my channel, welcome to I-formation. Usually, the person in I should be covering cross-court, okay? And that means they're only covering cross-court to the singles line. So if someone hits an insane cross-court return in the alley, you clap your racket and we move on. So from this position, all he has to do to cover cross-court is basically just pop up, okay? It is a T serve, so I'm fine if his left foot is there and his right foot is there. But if you're drawing a line and you go, look, by the way, another amazing line, where's that crossing the net? Right around there, we can take a step and get that. And by the way, that's an amazing return. That's on the singles line. So we just have to pop up. Now, when we see this, is there any world where we should be rewarding someone for hitting that return right down the middle? The main reason why you go I, there's two reasons. Number one is you're in the middle of the court. Theoretically, it's confusing. Oh, should the returner go cross-line? You're giving them indecision. Right. The real reason why you go I-formation is to take away the middle. And so if we're playing I and someone can get away with that return without getting punished, we're doing something inefficient. In this case, we're just overrunning towards the cross-court. And again, we already know that guy shanks the ball. All right, let's watch again. So it's okay to cover the line occasionally in the I-formation on low-value points. It's very difficult to run all the way over here and cover that singles line. So it's not an amazing play call. But now look, we're running away from the middle. Where is that ball? I'm going to highlight it with my amazing drawing tool that I've been dazzling you all with so far. That's not good enough, right? So the whole point of that I-formation is to take away that return. And that's two points, by the way. I think it was like in a three or four point span where we have let this guy hit a return dead down the middle and get a massive reward. So when you go I-formation, the two things, this is, by the way, amazing starting position. You should be covering cross-court most often. And you should just be popping up. So you should stay in this little circle right about here and then just read and react to the ball. From there, you can probably stick your racket out, cover that, and you can cover that. And now you're forcing your opponent to hit some type of quality return. But you are also telling them, if you go down the middle, I'm finishing this point 100%. So pay attention to that. I-formation is an amazing play. Usually cover the cross-court, pop straight up.