Reading your opponent's backhand

So far it's been about you — your position, your length. Now, for the first time, you turn your attention to your opponent as someone with a weakness you can use. And the most common weakness has a name: the backhand.

For most players the backhand side is the less secure one. It reaches less pace, less control, less range than the forehand. That's the rule, not the exception — including for you, as you know from the technique part. Precisely for that reason, playing the Speeder to your opponent's backhand side again and again is one of the most reliable tactical decisions there is.

The effect is twofold. First, you get weaker, shorter returns that you can more easily put under pressure. Second — and this is subtler — you force your opponent to protect their weak side. They shift to cover the backhand and in doing so open up the forehand side. Now you have two targets instead of one.

You keep knocking on the same door. Either it gives way — the weak return comes — or your opponent plants themselves in front of it and leaves the other door unguarded.

That's the core of tactical play, not an unfair trick: spotting your opponent's weakness and playing on it patiently, instead of hoping for the one big stroke.

Hit the backhand corner