Winning Strategies

       A few years     ago    I was invited to sub in a friend’s doubles game.  I knew his other partners and was paired with the weakest of the players, though I may no longer have been the best of the 4 of us.  However, you know how pride is, I sure wanted to win.  Anyway as things went along almost no serves were returned, but somehow we were up a break.  We were serving almost exclusively to the backhand with great success.  At set point 40-30 my partner changed up and served to our opponent’s forehand.  It came back as a 100 mph winner.  I asked, “Why in the world did you do that?” and he answered, “I thought it would catch him by surprise.”  I said, “You did, but he loves forehand and hasn’t returned a backhand in the court in the past 4 games.  Do you think you could wait to surprise him next set?” Two backhand returns later we won the set.

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A couple of days ago, playing with one of my advanced students who played on his college team I was falling behind.  In the 3 years that we have played once a week I’ve always won and wanted to keep it that way (pride again).  He was playing better than I had ever seen him play before and I was serving poorly (very).  I went down a break early in the set and determined that I wasn’t going to lose due to a low first serve percentage.  I started hitting every serve as a second serve high to his backhand (his forehand is great) and eventually got the break back and won.

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I want to make 2 points with these stories.  One, if you find a weakness exploit it to the fullest, it may be that in knowing what to expect, your opponent, rather than being prepared, might be too anxious.  Two, try to have an understanding of what is causing you to get behind and have an alternative.  Neither of these things is a guarantee, but they are certain to help move the odds in your favor.