Playing Small

One interesting and under-appreciated aspect of sports is the degree to which — all things being equal — success flows from the strategic occupancy of space. Think about the over-rotation of a baseball defense to an extreme pull hitter. Think about what goes on in a football game: linemen and linebackers (in addition to all their other tasks) creating or filling passing lanes. Think about a good singles tennis player recovering to the area where his opponent is most likely to hit the next ball.

So why do many otherwise competent club doubles players begin so many points out of position?

Before I knock vibration dampers out of joint, let me make a few pre-emptive clarifications. First, I’m not talking right now about people who get worked out of position during a point, but rather about those who begin the point in a location that puts the team at a disadvantage. Second, I don’t claim to be flawless in this regard myself, but at least give me credit for thinking about it. Third, this tendency can manifest itself in people who know many other aspects of the game quite well, but that doesn’t mean they’re not hurting their chances of winning.

This situation came to mind recently when I was partnered with B.P., a better player than I, against a teaching pro (T.P.) and a regular Joe like myself (R.J.). The teaching pro was the best player on the court but is not completely dominant. R.J. is someone a bit older than I whom I beat easily in singles but who’s much more competitive with me in doubles, partly because his court position is generally excellent. B.P. has great skills and is a strong singles player. In fact, I’ve never beaten him on the singles court, and at times I've fallen to him quite badly indeed.

B.P. rarely plays in this game, and I don’t think I’ve ever played dubs with him in any other venue, but after we got drubbed fairly handily in two sets (3 and 3), it occurred to me that I’ve only seen him win one set in doubles (with me or against me) out of eight or nine played in total. On the singles court he plays big (you look up and he seems to be everywhere), but on the doubles court he was playing small (completely out of too many points). How can that be when — with the exception of this day, which featured T.P. — on paper he’s always been the best player in the game? Well, as Brad Gilbert famously said, tennis is not played on paper. It’s played on a tennis court.

When I went to serve, I noticed that my partner, B.P., was guarding the alley. This startled me a little because (1) one shouldn’t expect many return attempts down the alley unless it’s being blatantly vacated by the net player (say on a planned poach); and (2) I expected my partner, who has better skills than I, to be an active participant in defense of my service games.

During the first service game, sure enough, our opponent on the deuce court lobbed most every return over my partner’s head as I was charging the net. My partner, rather than adjust his position one iota, blamed me for not serving hard enough. On the ad court, our opponent easily returned cross-court to me — not winners but balls that my partner, stuck guarding the alley, had no chance to lay a racket upon.

In my opinion, my partner, B.P., should have been standing a giant step (two or three feet) into the service box rather than a foot from the singles line, where he’d planted himself. I tried waving him over once and he threw me a dirty look and took a reluctant half step toward the center, immediately retreating to his original position on the next point. Needless to say, we lost that game.

We lost my next service game, too, I think.

In fact, we lost all but one of my service games, if I recall correctly. By the end, I was double faulting like mad, trying to overcompensate for the fact that I was playing two-on-one during my service games, my net man barely moving toward any of our opponents’ returns up the middle — and how could he? He was too far away from the trajectory!

Now, let me point out that I don’t claim to have a dominating serve. A dominating serve by definition would have negated any issues with regard to my partner’s court position. If you have a dominating serve, your partner can just take a seat on the bench for all anyone cares. That's not the case for me. I need my partner on the court.

And let me quickly add that I missed my share of shots during the match (everyone on court, including T.P., missed his share) and I probably even missed some shots as a result of getting myself out of position. Furthermore, there’s really no excuse for all the double faults I poured in at the end. I wish I had half the head for competition that B.P. has.

And yet, I often do hold my serve. Nobody was ripping winners off of it during that match. It was simply the case that I could not single-handedly overcome my partner’s net position against challenging opponents.

In doubles I serve by the book, which is to say eighty percent of the time up the tee in order to limit sharp angle shots coming back. Since we were playing without poach signals, my net man should be cheating more toward the center line and only sliding to the alley when my serve goes out wide. It’s not that he didn’t move once the point started, but when the toss went up he wasn't in a position to influence our opponents’ returns. Not ever.

The net man, properly positioned, should be putting pressure on the returner by narrowing the space into which the returner hopes to hit, thus taking away the returner’s margin for error on high-percentage targets and enabling his own partner more easily to cover the remaining court. If there is no threat of a poach, the pressure on the returner diminishes greatly. The way we were playing this match, I felt that our opponents had a gap the size of the New Jersey Turnpike in which to return my serves. And guess who had to cover all four lanes of that turnpike!

When we got to the third set (which we didn’t complete), I asked my partner (who was razzing me for all of my double faults — fair enough) if he wouldn’t mind trying it my way and taking “a more aggressive position” at the net. He responded not by moving toward the middle of the court where most returns go but by taking a step forward, thus exposing even more of the court! Needless to say, this undermined me so much that losing the game at love practically became a foregone conclusion. There would be no pressure on my opponents unless I started ripping service winners, and, like I kind of said already, Roger Federer I ain’t.

So let me boil this down to a simple point. If you’re the net man and you set up in such a way that the returner only expects you to lay a racket on his mis-hits, then you’re leaving open too much court. You’re not helping your partner and, ultimately, you’re not helping yourself. You may have a big game in other respects, but as far as occupying space on the court is concerned, you're playing too small.