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Lesson

Potent Poaching:

Track and Move

By Monty Basnyat, TennisONE Associate Editor

Strategy Question

I love doubles! The whole idea of coming in as much as possible and poaching every chance you get excites me. But lately my poaches have not been very effective and penetrating. I understand the concept of timing the movement on the poach but is there anything else you can help me with to make my poaches more potent?

Answer

There are two things you need to understand for a potent poach.

Timing the poach.
Tracking and moving.

Since we have covered concept #1 in the past lessons, we will concentrate on the second concept.

Once the poacher has started his movement for the poach, there are two things that he must learn to do at the same time: track the ball (#1) while moving (#2). Most novice poachers tend to concentrate on one thing and that's what hurts them. They either move and just see a yellow blur of the ball or they move, get as far as the white line that divides the two service boxes and then try to react to the ball. The result is they end up looking at their partner and saying, "Sorry about that."

For a potent poach, once you have timed the movement you must learn to track the ball right from the opponent's racquet and continuously move to the ball until after the connection. Remember the movement does not stop or slow down until after the ball has connected with your racquet. The key again for a potent poach is for the "track-and-movement" to happen at the same time.

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