I take live ball drills from a coach who teaches great strategy. He's taught me how using a variety of planned switches and poaches can help keep your opponents off your partner and turn a match.
We have one play called switch on serve. The receiver returns the ball as normal. As soon as the ball bounces, we switch sides. Sometimes the opponent is so focused on the ball they don't even see us move. Other times they see movement and miss or they change their stroke and don't hit it as well as they want. You can do this with both players at the baseline or one up/one back.
On serve, we signal every point. In this situation, in addition to the standard stay and go, we add two more; fake and no.
Fake means we both fake. This is a hard fake, not the soft head and shoulders kind. You actually have to take a quick step or two in the off direction before hustling back into position. Your opponent only has a chance to glimpse your positions before they must deal with the ball. If you sell it, they'll think you've switched when you really haven't gone anywhere.
The no literally means nothing. I use it mostly with people who don't like to poach or who don't poach well and end up staying more often than not. That's what makes them easy targets. My partner gives the dummy signal, I say 'No', they signal stay, the ball goes into play and we both fake hard. Often, the opponent is thinking we're finally going to switch and they end up hitting the ball to where they think the weaker person is going. But this will stop working quickly if the weaker player doesn't actually poach every once in a while. The beauty with this one is it works just as well with people who poach a lot. If you move it around in different formations such as Australian and I, it gives the opponent a little extra to think about.
The most important thing is when you're not switching you must fake. You're just wasting good sweat for nothing if you do one without the other. Also, talk about every switch before you make it. Do nothing in the blind. And don't overdo it. The more you switch, the wider the middle becomes. Besides, a little switching goes a long way. You only have to do it once or twice every game or two to plant the seed that the only thing your opponent can expect is the unexpected.
And no matter how hard it is, play nice with your weaker partner. In my 20+ years, I've only had to deal with a handful of people who thought they were too good to be on the court with me and only a couple of them were stupid enough to show it. In those cases, I lobbed a lot. And the more vile my partner acted, the shorter my lob became. Just saying.
