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Doubles and Mixed Doubles 3: To Open the Court Previous Page
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 To open the court by going on the outside of the team two shots are logical:
1. The straight passing shot down the alley past the player in front of you, which, if played, must be a fast flat drive.
2. A slow cross-court, sharply angled shot, which can be either a slow drive, flat or topspin, or a slow slice.
Both shots must be low and short. The straight shot, either off service or in play, verges on an attempt to win, and is always very aggressively hit. It should not be played as often as the cross-court, since to succeed it needs an element of surprise. The cross-court shot is definitely an attempt to make the opponents volley up so you can win on the next shot, and do es not carry the same chance to win outright as the straight shot.
The most used, and certainly the most popular, shot is the one down the centre between the two opponents.
There are several reasons for this:
1. It is easier to hit and carries less risk of error.
2. It may cause uncertainty between the other two men as to which should play it, so that perhaps both men will let it go, or both will try for it and clash, either of which tends to break up their teamwork and confidence.
3. It provides less angle for the opponents to hit for, and is apt to give you a chance for a winner on the next shot to a sideline, since both men have been pulled in to the centre.
If you decide to open up the court by going over the opposing team, the only shot is the Iob. It is difficult to drive a team away from the net by lobbing but it can be done. Lob high and deep and often, but the moment you sense a tendency in your opponents to hang back and wait for the Iob, shift at once to the drive and go in yourself. If at any time you succeed in getting a Iob over your opponents' heads, so they are compelled to drop it and hit it off the bound, go in to the net at once, one player clasing the straight shot and the other clasing the centre of the court. Give them the cross-court angle to hit at. They will make one and miss ten, trying it.
Once you have made an opening in your opponents' court. In doubles, go out for your shot at once. There is not time, or room in the court, to continue manoeuvring them around. Remember always that average pace, except on your service return, is not good. It calls for increased speed, or a really slow delicate pace, to win. Every shot that you play should have the definite object of either winning outright or assisting you in gaining the net position where you can win outright. Doubles is a game of much less depth to the ground strokes than singles. The sharp-angled shot, the fast-dropping drive, the short, slow slice, are used far more than the full long sweeping drive or deep-floating chop. The tempo of doubles is much faster than singles, and many more risks should be taken.
In general, doubles shots are made with a shorter backswing from a position closer in on the ball; of ten theyare even hit on the rise, particularly on return of service. This is due to the necessity to get to the net if possible. There is little defence in doubles, beyand the use of the high Iab.
There is one extremely valuable tactic for doubles. That is to decide which of your opponents is more apt to break, then start from the very beginning of the match to pick on him. Play him continuously, cutting his partner out of action as much as possible. This will result in the man you play tiring, nervously and physically, while his partner is apt to get overanxious and make the mistake of attempting to play shots he would do better to let alone. This may cause friction between the players and break up their teamwork.
If you find a hole in a doubles team, pick on it every chance you get, because nothing will break up the morale of a team so quickly as for one man continually to miss the same shot. The place where most teams break is overhead, and if you start one man missing his smashes, lob him to death. Lob to him at every logical chance. An overhead, more than any other shot, depends on confidence. Once you shatter a player's confidence, you will see his overhead lose all its sting if it does go in, but most of the time it will miss. If you find a player with a really weak service that sits up and asks to be hit, then I suggest picking on his partner at the net. Pound the ball by him, and also right at him. You will find that his volley win quickly break up under the barrage, and a spirit of umest will invade their team, particularly on the weak service. A doubles team is a little like a dam that holds back water. One little crack in the solidarity of the team, and quickly the breach widens until a flood of errors carries them down to defeat.
Mixed doubles is well named. lt is neither fish, flesh, nor fowl. The moment you attempt to pit a man and a woman against each other on equal terms on a tennis court, something goes lopsided somewhere. No woman ever has been or ever will be able to play on equal terms with a top-flight man. She may be just as good a tennis player, hit a balI with as good strokes, and know as much about the game, but from a purely physical angle she can't hit as hard, run as fast, or last as long. Only two women have ever approached playing even with men in mixed doubles. They were Suzanne Lenglen and Alice Marble, who could come to the net and volley and smash with the men, owing to their remarkable speed of foot. Even the incomparable Suzanne and Our Alice, great as they were, could not quite meet the requirements of the greatest men.
Such marvellous stars as Helen Wills Roark, Helen Jacobs, Pauline Betz, and the two best women doubles players in the world today, Margaret Osbome du Pont and Louise Brough, are not in the dass with the top men in doubles. Therefore, mixed doubles, with a team made up of a man and a women, must necessarily be a lopsided and arather unequal game. There is always a great discussion raging as to where the woman should play, and how much she should do. I endeared myself to all my mixed doubles partners by answering the question of where she should play quite truthfully-wherever she would be least in the way. The whole theory of winning at mixed doubles is rather unfair and definitely ungallant.
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