Playing people who camp out on the corner to hit forehands

Finster

Rookie
They are always on that corner. Trying to hit to their BH when they are over there, can end up spraying the shot wide. Trying to hit to the open court leaves you open to their best shot. I've noticed this as a common strategy for players to try to hit less BHs.
 

socallefty

G.O.A.T.
There may be a few players doing it to hide their weak BHs. More often, it is an aggressive tactic to use their FH weapon more and dictate points. At the ATP level, there have been research papers that the player who hits more inside-FHs corelates to a much higher winning % in matches. Typically you have better court position and are playing from closer to the baseline if you are hitting many inside-FHs as this is not a tactic you can execute well playing very deep as you leave too much court open in that case.

One way to get them off that corner is to serve/return/hit into their FH early in points and then hit crosscourt to their BH. If they are camped in the BH corner from the start, you have to be patient and force a short ball before you can attack them in open space DTL to the FH corner.
 
They are always on that corner. Trying to hit to their BH when they are over there, can end up spraying the shot wide. Trying to hit to the open court leaves you open to their best shot. I've noticed this as a common strategy for players to try to hit less BHs.
Do you know how to hit a high pace, flat shot? Seems like leaving the court open to hit a FH would not be as effective if the FH shot you have to chase down is high enough quality.

If someone leaves a big part of the court open for me, rest assured I will hit a hard one towards there and really test to see how fast their speed and ability to hit on the run is.
 

esgee48

G.O.A.T.
Just hit it DTL with a slice to the FH corner. The ball lands short and stays down. They have to run up to get it. Thia type of player wants to camp out in that spot to protect their BH and want the ball to come back to them. In a match, you don't have to hit them a ball that sits up.
 

eah123

Hall of Fame
A few strategies to try. I like inside-out short angle forehand followed by inside-in forehand or inside-out backhand (mine is decent).
Another option is moonball or high topspin to the backhand side, then sneak in to hit a high volley to the open court or overhead.
Another is to follow up a crosscourt the backhand with a drop shot to the deuce side.
 

Morch Us

Hall of Fame
Trying to hit to their BH when they are over there, can end up spraying the shot wide. Trying to hit to the open court leaves you open to their best shot.

From the above I assume, you are already in a slightly defensive position at this point (or otherwise you could have hit a hard one down the line to their forehand).

1. The best option is NOT to get into this slightly defensive position. This is done by infact hitting deep through the middle early in the point, so that their backhand is accessible to you, when you are in neutral. And you get a weaker shot from their backhand.

2. Even if you get into this slightly defensive position where they are not hitting strong forehands to your backhand, what you don't want to do is trying to get to their backhand. Of course you need to realize that your main task at hand is to neutralize and get back into a neutral position (instead of thinking about hurting them). This is done by high trajectory deep balls, especially to their forehand side. All you are trying to do is NOT let them jump on it and finish, and possibly open up their backhand. If you have to, hit multiple neutral loopy shots to their forehand (either through middle or to duece court). Eventually when you get chance force a stronger shot to, now available open space in their backhand.

Essentially, to get space on their backhand, you have to hit to their forehand. When you hit to their forehand, attack is probably not your main intent, the main intent is them not being able to attack (so that you get a neutral ball back).

Arguably their forehand attack should be better than yours (since you are playing at same level, and they have a weaker backhand than you). This is why you may want to get into a forehand battle with them, instead keep it neutral on forehand to open up backhand. Once you have upper hand everything goes (attack to forehand wing or backhandwing).
 

nyta2

Legend
hit to the fh side is the obvious answer…

but i’m guessing op doesn’t feel comfortable hitting to the fh side at least not with good consistency and depth for it to be effective?

I used to be that way anyway… because I was so used to hitting fh dtl, fh inside out, and bh cc, I never really developed my fh cc, fh inside in, bh dtl…. i’ve had to explicitly train those shots because to me, the feel was slightly different.

I don’t think i’ve had to play anyone that heavily camped their bh side to avoid a fh, since the 3.0-low4.0 days, but it’s generally common at all levels to run around the bh, not because it’s bad, but because their fh is often much stronger.

personally I started practing hitting to the deuce corner because one of my nemesis at the 4.0 level was a lefty…
 

Dragy

Legend
but i’m guessing op doesn’t feel comfortable hitting to the fh side at least not with good consistency and depth for it to be effective?
Need to man up and go for it. There’s also an option that opponent is just too good for the OP doing what he does. Because you cannot loose every point once you hit to his FH, and hope to be competitive in that match.

There can be some variations to this like:
- Serve strong and dominate, take the net
- Return aggressively and dominate, take the net
- Junkball, hit short slices and lob him

But still I bet you need to be able to at least defend against his FH to have chances to win. So hit decently CC, open his BH side with such shots, hit to the BH if it seems to get you more points and opportunities.
 

PKorda

Professional
I played a guy who did this to the extreme, was pretty frustrating as this is not easy to combat for someone who does this well, what I tried to do was try to get him moving so he wasn't able to just camp out on the backhand sides and blast shots, this kept him on the run and also can tire him out as he has to constantly move back to get to the position he likes. Also tried to keep the ball low when I could either by slice or just flatter shots when possible.
 

nyta2

Legend
Need to man up and go for it. There’s also an option that opponent is just too good for the OP doing what he does. Because you cannot loose every point once you hit to his FH, and hope to be competitive in that match.

There can be some variations to this like:
- Serve strong and dominate, take the net
- Return aggressively and dominate, take the net
- Junkball, hit short slices and lob him

But still I bet you need to be able to at least defend against his FH to have chances to win. So hit decently CC, open his BH side with such shots, hit to the BH if it seems to get you more points and opportunities.
not a question of “manning up”… without actually practicing it... for me anyway, i needed to practice hitting into the deuce corner from various spots...
 

Dragy

Legend
not a question of “manning up”… without actually practicing it... for me anyway, i needed to practice hitting into the deuce corner from various spots...
I argee but also, I've been that guy who cannot hit CC, all to BH. At least under match pressure. But the moment I forced myself to do it, I won a point. Then again. It didn't feel comfortable at all, but you need to do it.

Doesn't need to be shard sideline-crossing CC, just to that part of the court.

Now if you find out you cannot make the shot at all, you man up and lose the match trying, and then you know what you need to practice. It hurts to loose because you simply cannot place the ball CC, doesn't it? Motivates though.
 

MyFearHand

Professional
They are always on that corner. Trying to hit to their BH when they are over there, can end up spraying the shot wide. Trying to hit to the open court leaves you open to their best shot. I've noticed this as a common strategy for players to try to hit less BHs.

There's no other option than hitting to their forehand. Hit a loopy deep ball there to give yourself plenty of margin and time to recover where you need to on the court. A high deep ball will be difficult to really punish. Then hopefully they'll have opened up their backhand.
 
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