My 3 Most Important Tennis Doubles Drills - NO COACH NEEDED!

Do you want to improve your doubles game? We all know that it's really tough to get four people together with everybody's busy schedule. So the next best thing and actually in my mind often better thing is to get together with your doubles partner or any player who wants to get better at doubles and do the three drills that I'm going to show you in this video because they are an absolute standard of most top doubles players. And as a bonus, I'll also show you the variations if you have three players on court how to do those drills. Nothing is more frustrating than missing an approach shot or missing the first volley. So making these two first crucial shots is exactly what the first drill is working on. Both players start at the baseline cross court from one another and one player intentionally feeds a ball short into their partner's service box, which is basically an invitation to come in. That player then does come in and you play the point out cross court. Nice. So a really good move on Christina's part is to get the ball down to Joy's feet so that Joy has to lift the ball. It's a little slower and that opens options. Unfortunately too perfect. But you saw that's the right play because the only thing she can do is lift it. Okay if she plays it as perfectly then fine. If by accident the feet is deeper than the service line, do stop the play and do it over because I don't want you to ingrain bad habits because you wouldn't want to take a ball that does not allow you to come in to good first volley position, which is roughly one step or so inside the service box. Details to work on then. Take a good opportunity those shorter balls and come on in. Make sure that you split step as your opponent is about to hit and make sure that you follow up your first approach shot cross court. Meaning that after you hit your approach shot, forehand or backhand doesn't matter, you follow it straight up towards where you're attacking so that you are getting into your ideal first volley position inside the service box and onto your bisector of an angle. And of course the correct split step timing enables you then to cover the seemingly open side right here. You can play it for points, you can play it for time. Go ahead and alternate the feet and if you have a third person then that player jumps in at the partner of the feeding person of the player that gives the invitation basically because as the other player is coming in my job then is to scoot back because my partner has to play defense and see if I can then potentially bound forward and intercept that lower ball that they have to lift. If I see a high racket on the other side, I better just hunker down and play defense because that ball should go to my feet. On the last one and this is when you're in this position, this is your job. If she manages to get the ball down to Joy's feet like that when she's off balance and she pops the ball up, I need to move forward and then obviously if you have three players you rotate around until everybody has been in every position on both sides of the court. Next drill is quick hand volleys. Both players start opposite of one another cross court on the service line. One starts with a friendly feed and then your goal is to close in and of course try to win the point but you cannot close in on just anything. You do close in when you manage to get the ball down to the other person's feet or you see my racket as your opponent when you see my racket below the net line because that means that I have to lift the ball it's a little higher you can close in and hit a really aggressive volley. If you see on the other hand that my racket is up that is when you're not closing in unless you like pain. Do not close in that is when you hunker down and play defense. If you're looking at those cues racket below the net line or racket up here you can already start reading before I even make contact with the ball and that allows you the time to make a good choice. If you have three players the third player can join either one of these players and works on the exact same things the split stepping and being ready and staying involved in the exchange because what happens a whole lot in real double scenarios is that if they start those cross court volley duels at some point this person totally checks out and is not ready so you keep working on making the same decisions your split steps and you're reading what type of ball could potentially come and of course then you rotate around again until everybody has been in every position. The third drill is called clobber them and or that's what I call them. One player starts on the service line one player opposite cross court at the baseline the net player is deliberately feeding a sitter for the baseliner who then moves up and absolutely drills the ball yep right here at me. Ideally of course at the feet unless you really don't like the net player then you go for other body parts but ideally you want to go to the feet and then you play the point out so my job here is to get ready get low have a super stable balance position here and make sure that I'm just reflexing the ball back. What a lot of players do when by accident one of these sitters is being hit they start moving back and when you're moving back you can't play defense a tiny detail when you're ready to almost get hit again you're not backing up what you do want to do in your ready position here is favor your backhand a little bit more so that you're not waiting for the ball out here but you're actually kind of having your racket set a little bit more on the if your opposite player drills the ball too for me as a right-hander my right hand body side I can reflex here with that sickle movement or motion whatever you want to call it I can't get out of the way really well here so here I can still reflex the ball back probably not going to be great but at least I defended my life when you played for points the net player wins when they make it first to five the baseline player wins when they get to 11 first because yeah truth is the net player should not win this a whole lot and again if you have three players the duo is together up at net let me know down in the comments which one is your favorite and also share that with whoever you want to do these drills with