Welcome to double strategy number two. One of the most powerful things you can do as a doubles team and especially as a partner of a doubles team, is learn how to place your serve. Placing your serve allows you to set up your net person, and this is super important when it comes to the roles you run a play in doubles. 

Your number one job as a server is to try to get the ball, try to get the point started. If you don't get the point started, your team can't win a point. Your second job is now to set up your partner. And this is something that I don't see a lot of players thinking about. What I see a lot of players thinking about is how could I hit the big service?

Probably not going to come back. Actually, when I play doubles, I'm totally OK with the ball coming back as long as I can control or help influence where the ball is going to come back because I'm going to position my net player in the right position based on where I serve it, and most players don't understand this in the beginning. They're just either serving hard or just serving randomly. 

They don't realize that they're not setting up their partner or they're actually putting their partner in a more vulnerable position. And you don't want that. So the very first thing we want to think about is where is a great position to serve for doubles? A lot of times I see players for doubles and they're serving out wide and out wide is probably one of the worst places to serve for doubles unless you're trying to change it up.

The reason out wide is a bad position is because it's pulling the ball away from your net player. A better position would be is to hit the serve down the T down the T now positions where your opponent has to on the do side has to hit their backhand and really time it well to get it, to go back across court or for them, it would be actually inside out if they missed time it.

They're going to pull the ball to my net player and this is what you want. This is how you become a great doubles partner by setting up your serve and pulling the return to your net player to finish a point. And that's the second roll. If you think about it, your net player is the attacker. They're the finisher. 

That's why it's so important that you get out of the mindset of trying to win the point on the serve and get into the mindset of how can I set my partner up so they can win the point and it becomes this one two combo, and it's so much easier to win points and matches when you set this combination up.

So a lot of times when I go out and I'm serving for doubles, what I'm trying to do is serve down the middle and get my partner to poach the middle ball. The next level, this is not just serving with placement, but serving with placement and then letting your partner know what you want them to do after it.

And this is called signaling, for signaling what you want to do is first start off with letting your partner know where you're going to serve it. This can happen over a conversation moving back to the baseline where you're about to serve, but then also let your partner know, Hey, I want you to poach or I want you to fake, or I want you to stay still. 

By having this communication, you both become very strategic in how you're going to place the ball and how you're going to attack the shot. And with this, this gives you a huge advantage when you're playing other teams that don't communicate. 

This is why you see the pros constant going back and talking to their partner to make sure they're both on the same page about where they want the serve to go and also what they want the net person to do. 

And this is so important. Now, I'm not going to get into the exact procedure of calling with your hand because I do recommend in the beginning, if you find calling with your hand, just go up and talk to your partner with a quick say, Hey, I'm going to serve to the T and I want you to poach, or Hey, I'm going to serve out. Why? Because we're mixing it up, but I don't want you to poach. 

Stay there because I'm going to pull the ball away from you. And so I don't want you to go towards the middle as the ball's going away from you, giving your opponent more shot of going down the line and burning your net player.

And this is also why a lot of that players could be burned because their partners serving to the wrong location and the net player is trying to attack the middle, that's a bad combination. Now this works on both sides, from the deuce to the ad, making sure that you're serving to the team, pulling the ball to your net player.

 Now here's the thing as we do if this action steps what I want you to do and you can go up by yourself is simply get in the habit of serving down the T and talking about what you want to do with your partner. 

So obviously you don't have a partner here, but what I would do is go up to the line signals to my partner if I was going to serve down the T. And then I serve and I make the selection of what I want to do. After that, another advanced skill is serving down the T and then making sure that based on your call, you're moving to the correct location. 

I see this as a big problem for so many doubles players is that they got the communication now, but they're not moving to the next spot. And so what I mean by this is coming up and saying, I'm going to serve to the T and I want you to poach. So if this is the case, what I need to do after the poach is immediately move and cover other side of the court.

If I'm serving a volley and moving forward, or if I'm going to stay back and move on the baseline so I would serve to the T and then I'd move over. Now that ball wasn't in no problem. I do a second serve and communicate with my partner, so the action steps I want you to do is get used to calling and moving, calling and moving without your partner because so many times you probably aren't going to get the chance to practice calling.

Moving with your partner just out here and not having another team on the other side, and there's so much pressure on the line when you're playing with another team, you want everything to count, so this is the perfect place to come out and just work on. Calling and moving. I'm going to call down the T and then I'm going to serve a volley and move to the other side. 

You can practice this movement, so when you get in the match, you naturally serve and then move to the next location. It's really important to you. Remember what you're calling so you can naturally move to the right location because if you're not, most of the time so many servers serve, forget what they're supposed to move. 

And then they have this open part of the court. And the whole idea of moving to the other side of the court is to balance the court, making sure that as your partner attacks the middle ball, that you balance out the court on the other side.