Improve Your Court Positioning

To improve your court positioning, you don’t have to get faster, just smarter.

"Hit the ball and move back to the center of the court." When you first pick up a tennis racquet, that’s the standard instruction for recovering after a shot. And at the beginner level, when your opponents don’t possess much firepower, you can get away with this kind of simple tactic.

But anyone who has played the game for a while knows that court positioning isn’t that straightforward. Like all things in tennis, recovering to the right spot on the court is about playing the percentages. To come to the right calculation, you must consider such things as the direction and quality of your shot, the location of your opponent, and the types of shots your opponent has a tendency to hit. That’s a lot of information to gather in a second or two, and the higher the ability level, the faster and more sophisticated it becomes. Still, with a little practice and some added knowledge, you can become much more efficient with your court positioning. Here’s a quick lesson in the subject for players of all levels.

Beginner Objective: Center yourself during rallies and employ a splitstep

The key for beginners is to avoid over-recovering back to the middle of the court. Doing so hampers a player’s court positioning more than anything else. The center of the baseline would seem to put you in the best position to get to the next ball, but unless you hit the ball directly down the middle, which is pretty rare, you don’t want to stand there. If you’re engaged in a crosscourt rally (the most common type), after you hit each shot you should recover back 2 to 3 feet from the center on that side of the court.

For example, say I’m a righty hitting crosscourt forehands from the deuce court. After hitting each one, I should shuffle back toward the center of the court but stop 2 to 3 feet before it. Why? Because the highestpercentage return shot for my opponent is back crosscourt. If I recover all the way back to the center, I’m opening up the court for my opponent to hit behind me. Similarly, if I hit down the line, I’m going to recover 2 to 3 feet past the center toward the other side of the court, to cover the crosscourt shot.

Once you get to the right position along the baseline, you need to time your splitstep properly. The splitstep gives you a chance to set up for the incoming ball by performing a small hop that will get your feet to hit the court just before your opponent contacts the ball, so you can explode in either direction. Many players are flat-footed when their opponents make contact; the split-step will help you get to the ball more quickly and be in control when you get there.

Intermediate Objective: Recover with more intensity and adjust your positioning based on ball location.

You can see from the diagram above that in the top left situation the ball is played by player 1 back to near the middle of the court, so the recovery position is also near the centre.

In the situation on the right player 1 has played a cross court shot that need a recovery position to the left of centre to cover the possible return back on that diagonal.Also you can see that this gives player 1 a shorter distance to recover, if they had played straight then the recovery point would have been a meter to the right of the centre position.

As the quality of your opponents improves, you’re going to have to contend with a wider variety of shots and become more sophisticated with your positioning. It’s imperative that you put a lot of energy into your recovery. If you lollygag back into position, you’re going to be on the defensive all the time. In my experience, when players think about being explosive, they move with more conviction.

If you hit a weak shot, recover backwards and diagonally to give yourself more time.

The timing of the split step also gets trickier. Since your opponent will have more versatility in his game, knowing when to perform the split-step can be difficult. For example, if you hit a high ball that you expect your opponent to retreat back on, but instead he takes it on the rise, this can alter your recovery and disrupt the timing of your split-step. That’s how a player like Andre Agassi, who takes the ball early on his return of serve, catches so many opponents out of position.

You also have to start being aware of the depth of both your and your opponent’s shots, because that’s going to dictate where you position yourself. If you hit a ball that lands well inside the baseline, you shouldn’t move straight across the baseline. Instead, you want to move on a diagonal behind the baseline (this could be as much as 7 feet), which will give you more time to track down the return.

By the same token, if you give the ball some juice and it looks like it’ll force a weak reply from your opponent, shuffle across on a forward diagonal to get inside the baseline. This way you can take the ball earlier and rob your opponent of some time, which will create havoc with his positioning.

Advanced Objective: Anticipate by reading your opponents’ cues and patterns.

As you started to notice at the intermediate level, court positioning is not black and white. And once you get to the highest levels of play, you really enter a gray area. Elements like court surface, types of spin, and opponents’ tendencies all have to factor into your recovery. So whether it’s through advance scouting or prior experience playing your opponent, you must be more studious if you want to be in the right position.

For example, you may play someone who you know doesn’t hit drop shots. In that case, if you hit a weak ball that lands short in the court, you can retreat well beyond the baseline to give yourself more time to recover for the next shot.

Also, recognizing the types of shots your opponents can hit from a certain setup will help your positioning. Pay attention to things like the racquet angle on his take-back. If he brings the racquet back with an open face, there’s a good chance he’ll be hitting a slice shot, which won’t travel quickly but will bounce low. If your opponent moves into the court and has a big shoulder turn and a long backswing, you know he’s going to drive through the shot, which will penetrate more.

These particular examples aren’t always applicable; unorthodox stroke production can make a player difficult to read. Venus Williams hits her downthe- line backhand with an open stance, making contact at around her left hip. Even though opponents know it’s coming, it can still freeze them because it looks so unconventional. Still, gathering and interpreting this kind of data will help your anticipation, which will make your positioning that much better