Episode 9: The Roles on the Court

How has life been crazy this week? Well, this week is all the end of the year parties, wrapping up getting presents, wrapping them, teacher gifts, Christmas field trips. Elli sliced her thumb off while I was trying to make ham/mashed potatoes/gravy for a small group Christmas dinner. Blood dripping everywhere, down her arm, on the floor, on her feet. I’m cool under pressure but she was freaking. Thankfully no stitches….then influenza A the next day…..

Today we are going to talk through something we briefly mentioned in our last podcast and that is the right/left sided player in a typical two right handed team. Now as of right now, I’ve only really ever played like this in mixed, but I know it’s how higher level gendered doubles play too. So this really is going to be a 4.0+ strategy, or at least I didn’t see it much in the 3.5 level. And really it becomes more and more evident the higher you go, so watch 4.5 and beyond and you’ll really notice it.

For the sake of discussion, do you think we should call it the alpha and beta player? Is that offensive?

Basically in mixed doubles, (with two right handed players?) my male partner, Matt, Josh, Jeff, Troy (I’ll just name everyone I’ve ever partnered with), I fully expect them to cover most of the court. Maybe not most. But a lot of it. This is not 50/50. When the ball is near them, they get it. In fact, I try not to take most overheads either unless it is literally over my forehand by the deuce sideline because my overheads are going to be infinitely more ineffective than a guy. In fact a male’s rotator musculature is nearly 50% stronger than a woman’s which gives them far more power in overheads than womens, which is why men have much stronger serves in tennis than women. Another reason why pb is the great equalizer in men/women because we don’t start off with an overhead serve. (120mph for men 105mph for women) ground strokes are actually fairly comparable (men 71-83mph and women 70-79mph).

Anyway, that was a nice rabbit trail. My point is, while women are typically the target in mixed doubles, the men’s job is to clog up the court so that it’s actually hard to target the woman because the man’s forehand is getting everything and if they finally hit it to me, it’s either out, or to my forehand.

However, I need to be good enough to handle a lot of action because I will still get targeted. So I’m here to keep the ball low, cross court dink (usually with the other female). I fully expect my male partner to be anticipating a poach and reaching in when he can, even if the ball is literally in front of me. And when a ball is left high (or I see the guy across from me start cheating and exposing his line), one of us hopefully puts it away, or at least surprises them for the next ball to put away. Matt, how many times have you exposed your line over there on the left and gotten beaten? It happens! I’m always looking at that spot ready to pounce when I see a guy cheat over. Often I see one poach attempt from the guy and I’m ready to hit it behind him all day long. Although, Matt will bait people and anticipate that and drive it right back, and I’ve been on the receiving end of that. In fact, often a guy will cheat over, wait for me to try to nail his backhand down the line, and I get an erne in my face.

So, all that to say, tournament play at the higher levels is not 50/50. If you’re interested in advancing your game, you and your partner will need to figure this out. And it takes some time to practice those roles. One of our friends even said in a tournament we were in that “the right side takes a different mind set so shout out to people who play the right side”. And I’m like “shout out to people to play the left side” because that’s hard for me, I’m not used to it at all. I would love to get better at it, I think I would be good because I’m quick and I move well, I think I would be able to cover a lot of the court, I just haven’t done it and I would have to work on a more powerful forehand. I’m not sure I have a ton of time for that. And playing the right side takes a lot of trust in your partner, so playing the left side means my partner has to trust me! I think I’ll need to get more consistent if I ever want to be a left sided player.

The system is designed to play into the left-sider’s forehand -Collin Johns