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A lob goes flying over your team's head. Has your first instinct ever been to look at your partner and think... yours? Well just who shot is it anyway? Stay tuned.
You don't see a lot of lobs with 5.0 players but if you're playing at the levels I'm at 3.5 to 4.5 that's a fairly common shot. Hey everybody it's CJ Johnson. A couple of things are important about a lob and the teamwork. Number one is that you know how to run it down and number two is who shot is it anyway?
If you're not sure how to run it down click on the link, it'll take you to the last video where Laura Fenton Kovanda worked with us to make sure that we have the proper skills to do just that. Here are a couple of things that I think about that have helped me to learn to defend the LOB just a little bit better.
The first one is I look at who I'm playing with is one of us more or less mobile than the other? Simply put who's however the fastest has the best chance of getting back there and defending against the LOB most often they should be the person who tracks it down. A recent example of
this was the powerhouse ladies double Team of Sarah Ansboury and Christina McGrath. Last year when Christina was seven months pregnant that changed her mobility just a little bit and Sarah need to cover a little bit more of the court that she normally does.
The second thing is there a height differential in your team? If your opponents are smart it's not going over the tallest person on the court. It's going to go over the shortest person on the court therefore you have an advantage when you see their paddle blade start to open up you can make an educated guess that it's going over the shorter person. The team facing the net has a height differential of about a foot so sure enough when the LOB goes up it goes over the shorter ones head.
The third thing that's helped me is the partner who looks at it at an angle generally has a better chance of putting their body in the right position to swing the racket and return the shot. If you're trying to back pedal or watch a ball going over your head it's very difficult to keep a spot on it. If you're looking at it in an angle you have a much better chance. Stefanie Lane and Laura Fenton Kovanda have their back towards us. When she sends the lob over her opponents head the gal in the orange looks at it from an angle and she is better able to track it down.
Now that you got a couple ideas of who should be running it down what does the other partner do? Again it depends but it should be dictated by the partner who's hitting the shot. If you're that partner you want to yell duck or switch. Don't be afraid to tell your other partner what to do. Chances are they can't see the shot and they can't see you so they need your direction. When Laura sends this lob over Bills partner's head he does a great job of calling for a switch and the team is in position for the next shot. Here we're going to see Stephanie Lane send one up and Lucy Kovalov does her best to just duck and get out of the way.
Those are a couple of the strategies that I've used to become a better doubles partner and to be able to defend against the lob. Make sure you come back next week when I show you the
three different types of shots that you can hit to get that ball back into play.
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