by Stephanie Lane
When and Where to Lob
To be a successful lobber from the kitchen line, one of the most important aspects to focus on is your ability to disguise the shot. You need to dink the ball and lob the ball with the exact same smooth pendulum motion. By keeping both shots looking exactly the same, you can catch your opponents off guard when they are expecting a dink shot.
When you’re dinking the ball back and forth with your opponents, and you see an opportunity for a lob, simply hit your dink shot with a longer, stronger, and higher follow-through. Your opponents will often assume you’re hitting a dink because of your motion, but your longer, higher follow-through will create a lob and force a defensive reaction.
The dink becomes the lob.
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Recognize Strengths and Weakness
In order to decide when and where to lob, it’s important to know the strengths and weaknesses of a team.
Lobbing from Different Sides
The general strategy is to lob over the weaker player’s backhand overhead. From the right/forehand-side of the court, I have found the best opportunity to lob is when a male’s backhand is down the middle and the female is in front of me. I generally lob deep to her side of the court or down the middle.
When I’m on the left/backhand-side of the court, the whole point is to dink and move my opponents around until I see an opening. If I see one of my opponents off the court, that’s a great time to lob over their backhand.