When I was a junior in high school, I had to take geometry. I wanted to play sports and one day coach; I didn’t need to study geometry. Now I love tennis because it’s all about geometry. Creating and bisecting angles has new meaning to a tennis coach.
Today I want to talk about bisecting the possible angle of returns by a player to determine the best court position to defend the whole court. To illustrate this let me give you an example. Let’s say a player is hitting a forehand from the singles sideline and the baseline corner. We must look at all the possible forehands the player may hit. To one extreme the player could hit the ball straight down the singles sideline. The other extreme is to hit the ball crosscourt; lets say the ball lands on the service line and singles sideline.
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If you were to draw a line from the singles sideline and baseline corner to the opposite court where the service line and singles sideline meet, and then continued that line until it reached past the baseline on the opposite side you would have a crosscourt return. The point at which this crosscourt return connects with the baseline would be well outside the doubles alley. So to take the players possible angle of returns, we would have a point on the baseline at the singles sideline and a point beyond the doubles alley. To be in the center of your opponents possible angle of returns you would be standing about 3 feet to the right of the center service mark. We come to this conclusion because we bisected the angle of possible returns and we stand ready to return along that line.
If we were to come to the net after hitting the ball to that crosscourt corner we would bisect the angle of returns and charge the net along that angled line. This would put us to the left of the center service line because the center of returns is an angled line from one corner to the other.
Understanding this basic concept of being in the center of your opponents possible returns puts you the best position to cover all the shots.
Doug Hofer, USPTA September 29, 2005
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