I’m an all-court player and my game plan for a singles match usually has four elements.
1) Adapt to Playing Style
- If I play an aggressive baseliner, I’ll try to be a consistent, counter-punching baseliner who is patient. I’m likely to amp up my topspin and lower the pace of my rally balls.
- If I play a consistent baseliner or a junkballer, I try to get to the net to finish points and I also try bringing them to net.
- If I play a net player, I am more aggressive with my baseline game and also stand closer during rallies. I’m likely to hit harder and flatter with less topspin and less trajectory. I also serve more wide serves to open up space for a pass on the other side if they try to chip and charge.
- If I play against a flat-hitter, I’ll increase my topspin a lot to give them a high contact zone. I can also change angles more easily and hit DTL more often. Against a heavy topspin hitter, I make too many errors if I try to change the angle often and have to wait for a shorter ball.
2) Rally basics (apart from Wardlaw directionals)
- I always try to open up space or take away time during rallies. Every rally ball hopefully helps a little bit to be able to do one or the other later in the rally. For example, pushing someone closer and closer to one sideline to open up space on the other corner or hitting body shots repeatedly.
- If someone is quick, I try to take away time by serving/hitting right at them or wrongfooting (hitting behind) them. I’ll probably vary pace/depth more to try to disrupt their rhythm.
- If someone is slow, I move them around more and try to open up space to potentially get a chance to hit winners. I’ll likely hit harder and flatter with less topspin.
- I’ll test if someone moves up/down as well as they move laterally. If not, I’ll use short slices and lobs more.
- I’m always looking for weaknesses (like BH in many cases) and will attack it relentlessly.
- If someone has a strong weapon on one wing, I’ll avoid it. If it is not a weapon where they can outhit me consistently, I might still hit there a lot with my strength. For instance, I’ll keep hitting inside-out lefty FHs which is a strength of mine to the righty FH if their FH is not strong enough to overpower me.
- If someone has a very good BH slice where they force me to hit a lot of angled low balls, I’ll either avoid it and try their FH or if the FH is too strong, I’ll hit more deep to the middle to prevent them from hitting wide angles.
3) Serve location
- Try to find the serve patterns (location/spin) that set up point patterns I like or lead to more return errors.
- My base strategy is to serve wide a lot and in particular on ad where I have my lefty slice as I like to open up court for a serve+1 shot into open space. So, often this is my initial strategy against a new opponent on 1st serves.
- If it looks like they have a weak BH, I might attack it more. If they have a strong BH slice, I might avoid it or try to serve only heavier spin to that wing as slices work better against my flatter serves.
- I’ll likely start off serving second serves more to the BH and body. I also serve more to the body when it is cold.
- Serve patterns that work with new balls might stop working as the ball gets old and I’m always waiting to see if it is time to change serve strategy. For instance, guys that crush FH returns with new balls might give me FH returns that I can handle with slower balls and I might no longer need to avoid the FH late in a match. Others might not like a slower slice that stays low when the ball gets old especially if it is cold.
- I’ll stick with the same serve patterns that are working if I’m holding serve easily. Then they start shading to cover that frequent serve and I can serve into the gap or change my spin on a big point later in the match when I need it. For instance, I’ll keep serving my lefty slice wide on ad 1st serves till they start shading over and then on a break point, I’ll serve flat down the middle into the gap. Or use a body 1st serve on a big point.
4) Return location
- I’ll change where I stand on deuce and ad returns depending on what kind of serves the opponent is serving frequently and how good their location/pace is. If someone serves a lot to one side, it makes sense to shade over a bit. It might be a different position on 1st and 2nd serves both laterally and in terms of how close to the baseline (or inside) I stand.
- Again, I’ll look out for whether I can be more aggressive and stand closer once the balls start getting old.
- If I don’t want to go to the net because an opponent’s passes/lobs are too good and I would rather beat them from the baseline, then I won’t stand too close on returns even if their serve is slow as they might be doing It on purpose to bait me to come to the net.
- With new balls, I might have to block or slice BH returns more due to the extra pace/bounce, whereas I might be able to hit more topspin drives with old balls. If so, I have to change where I stand as I need a bit more spacing to hit topspin BH returns.
I‘m a big believer in sticking with what’s working and also playing to my strengths rather than focusing too much on an opponent‘s weakness when I’m playing against players at my own level. Only when I play down do opponents have glaring weaknesses that I’ll look to exploit more relentlessly. If I lost the first set badly or lost the first set close and am down a break in the 2nd, I’ll be wracking my brain hard to figure out what I can change - usually it means that I have to increase my risk level on serve location/pace, rally ball speed, changing angles more often, using finesse shots etc. as staying in my comfort zone as a power baseliner is not working. Some opponents adapt fast when I adapt and then I have to adjust again - those are the fun matches and it is usually the most skilled opponents who do that. I’ve found that ex-college players or former top-ranked juniors are very quick at adapting strategy, serving to get to their optimal point patterns, finding my weaknesses quickly etc. as you can tell that they have been coached in college or in the juniors to think all the time and play accordingly. It is rare to find players that haven’t been coached a lot who are great tacticians on the court otherwise. I would say that most players have no clue on what an advanced opponent is doing to make them hit more errors or what serve/point patterns the opponent is exploiting as they never adjust to it.
