Mental Warfare In Doubles

By Kyle Mollison, USPTA

Like it or not tennis is a mind game, and unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) the player with better strokes doesn’t always win, it’s almost always the mentally tougher. Check out these 2 strategies for waging mental warfare in doubles:

Drive a Wedge Between Them

We talked about this before, but doubles teams are their most successful when they believe in each other and have positive attitudes towards each other. A great way to disrupt that is to identify which of your opponents is the weaker of the two and play to them. Play to that player until they give you an obvious put away; take the put away shot at the stronger of the two players. This will help to drive a wedge between them because one will feel bad for getting balls pummeled at their partner, and the other will get annoyed with their partner for making them a target.

Chatter & Head Fakes

A great way to get into your opponent’s’ head is to poach, and head fake. However to make this tactic even more mentally imposing whether you are going to poach, head fake, or stay, go back and chat with your partner. It can be quiet or it can be just loud enough for your opponents to possibly hear it, but the idea is that your opponent is thinking something crazy is coming, and that puts pressure on them. Another version on this is to say that you are doing one thing to them, but signal going somewhere else and following the signal rather than your audible.