Oh, Lordie. Another drop shot.

[Steady Eddy]

To be clear, I'm a 3.5 woman. When I play ladies (6.5 combo), no one drop-shots me, not intentionally anyway. Sometimes you will see ladies with poor stroke mechanics who cannot drive the ball, so their returns are short. These are easy to reach and I could S&V if they are not easy to reach. And the person who hit it is usually hugging the baseline, so I have plenty of court open to me.

The problem comes with 7.0 mixed. This weekend, I played a 4.0 guy who had the most unorthodox approach shot. He would take my serve, and hit what I am calling a drop shot and then follow it to net. Kind of a push or slice or some weird thing. Whatever it was, I had to race to the net to play it, and it didn't strike me as a ball I could reasonably expect my partner to get. S&V isn't my favorite trick to try against a 4.0 guy, as they have this unfortunate way of blasting me out of my tennis shoes in a way 3.0-3.5 women do not.

So aim for the net strap and try to finesse it over cross-court, eh? And I run with my racket in front and take no backswing and use no follow-through?

I dunno, that lob idea scares me against a 4.0 guy. I can see it now. I race in, I pop it up, he stretches up for an overhead, and everything goes dark.

Why not? She's much closer to it than you are. As soon as she sees it's short she should start moving. You're a team, help each other out. Really work on getting past the "This is my side, that is your side. Don't you ever get on my side!" mentality. I see it a lot. I even had a partner get mad when a crossed over and hit the short ball for a winner.

 

[Cashman]

I'm having the weirdest problem in mixed doubles: players who play drop shots to my side of the court when I'm at the baseline.

This is usually a function of not hitting your groundstrokes deep enough. If you are keeping your opponent pinned behind the baseline, he’s not going to be able to hit drop shots with any kind of consistency.

If the guy is just too good, and he bullies your groundstrokes too much for you to keep your shots deep - get to net. You may still lose but you’re giving yourself a fighting chance.

 

[Bagumbawalla]

If you know a certain player will "drop shot" the return of serve, you should follow your serve to the net and volley it back.

 

[FatHead250]

If you play competetive, just hit one as hard as you can into their net player, they will stop