What’s More Important When Lobbing? Height or Depth? (Tennis Doubles Strategy Explained) 

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My high school coach (grant was decades ago) always instilled on us to let the ball bounce prior to hitting an overhead. This allowed you to step into the shot.

Lobbing super high also forces them to make a decision, always a good thing, take out of the air or bounce it. Also gives you more time to prepare to defend.

This a great tip! Most impressed as where to recover because many times the team that lobs simply holds their current positions and doesn’t move at all, just awaits the opponents next shot, often being out of position.

I really learned a lot about doubles strategy thanks to you. I've been playing for many years but turns out we never really got coached the right way, or bothered to learn it ourselves.

Hi Ryan your tips are awesome and so helpful. Much love from Australia.

I like this idea. You can see the ball bounce high and fast even though the previous shot was not hit hard (just up).. I hit the ceiling of the indoor tennis place here a couple of times. I guess I had the right idea. 🤠

Nice tip. I think if I were the net player I would not smatch that hard. I will drop it just near the net since all the opponent players are already far back. What is your recommendation for overhead smatch in this situation? I practice my lob whenever I need to pass the balls to them to start the next serve in recrational match.

Good video! I did team practices a lot with my USTA teams and lobs and overheads were not practiced. I attended practices where the coach will occasionally say lob it and every lob would either be left short and low, whiffed, botched, or hit a mile out. They ask why we miss them and say it is the easiest shot in the world. For overheads they would say it is the same technique as the serve and they would use that as a reason to not practice. They often don't or barely practice the serve. Maybe get to it with 5 minutes left in a 1.5 hour lesson. Overheads are either spiked into the net or botched quite often too. For overhead versus serve, there is a difference. With a serve, you can control the height and the ball position, take your time getting in position, and have plenty of time to think about it. For the overhead, you have to recognize the opportunity and move to get into position during the intensity of a point within a few short seconds unless you take it off the bounce which our coaches told us not to do since it allowed the other team more time to get into a better defensive position.

This the Stanford tennis center. I go and watch the men and women’s teams all the time. The red shirt guy that hit the smash out is Arthur Fery from Britain ranked about 260 in ATP singles.

How do you decide when to lob, when to "involve your opponent in the point" by hitting it at the net player, or when to go for a passing shot?

had this exact lob today in my USTA match, I ran back for a lob, threw up a really high lob, opponent A tried to hit it our out of the air and missed entirely, opponent B then hit an overhead for a winner! Didn't work out for us but it should have!

Great advice as always! So, assuming you are on the receiving side of someone following your suggestion to lob super high, what do you consider to be a more difficult or low percentage shot: attempting to hit the overhead, or letting it bounce first and then hit?

5:20 when you lob, focus more on the height instead of depth Why? Have at least 2s to be prepared for the upcoming overhead

Excellent video

time to practice hitting those high lobs! thanks for the tips

lob super high and let it bounce? about two months ago. And I practice overheads a lot. So you're right, not that frequently.

Interesting use of the singles stick

Great doubles tip 👌

Not sure this video is a good example, as the red guys face the sun. I totally agree with height over depth when defending, but topspin offensive lobs seem to work much better with depth. My question to Ryan is how to hit overhead when you have the sun in your face. Do you practice hitting overhead sideways?

Do you hit your return lobs super high as well?

What if you’re always hitting your lobs short? 🤔

Well, it's winter season. In Germany we play indoors, the roof is too low to play such balls. Smashing balls after bounce is less complicated than directly. But all shots have a rate of error. For this one failed smash you could have found lots of successful ones. So what is this video actually about? Somebody missed an easy shot. Happens. Big deal.