Introduction
There are only a few tennis players with a left hand, yet most of them are highly ranked in the match. This challenges right-handed tennis players to face lots of ad-court serves.
Usually, left-handed players take advantage of the game because they make the most of the break-point on their left side. Thus, it takes righties much time and effort to figure out effective ways to beat them.
Continue reading to have a grasp of valuable tactics and tips on how to beat left-handed tennis players.
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Why Are Left-handed Tennis Players More Advantageous?
Firstly, lefties take advantage of their break-point on the left to keep the ball in their controls. Thus, they minimize the possibilities of outreach the boundary and add one point to the opponent.
According to famous left-handed players such as Rafael Nadal, Rod Laver, and John McEnroe, they easily direct the ball to the left hands of righties. Therefore, righties cannot handle that passing shot. As a matter of fact, the left-handed players score over the righties.
Angles are the key element to success. The higher forehand shots from lefties are tricky for right-handed players. From the ad-court, lefties have more angles than the crosscourt, which makes righties play their backhand, leading to difficulties. As a result, some left-handed players intentionally increase the frequency of using this tactic to knock out the righties.
Regarding the return shots, left-handed tennis players can open up wide angles with their spins more easily than righties. Therefore, to completely beat the right-handed opponents, the lefties combine spin and serve cross-court shorts to the backhand of opponents.
How To Beat Left-handed Tennis Players: 4 Helpful Tips
Unless you want to beat your components, it is a waste of time to research why their left hands matter to your victory. In this part, we provide you step by step secrets to beat the prominent left-handed opponents on the court.
Understand left-handed tennis players’ patterns
There are mainly two ways to understand the opponent’s patterns. The first option is researching on the internet. Through the cases of famous players, right-handed tennis players can conclude the experience for themselves to be offensive from tricky serve from lefties. This theoretically helps right-handed players be more creative and flexible in their upcoming matches.
According to some online sources, the common pattern used by lefties is “2:1”. This pattern means that they try to force right-handed opponents to the alley in the third ball. Therefore, lefties will have 80% open court and control the ball inside the boundary. The technique is serving down the line on their backhand.
The second method is observing the opponent while playing with them. First, list down several questions for yourself, for instance: Do they serve randomly or purposely? Do they target certain places more often than others? Do they have certain types of shots to win the game? How do they take the return serve?
After having a list of questions, right-handed players can confidently enter the game. Remember to pay close attention to their strategies.
Whenever they score, check carefully the standing position, the serve tactics, and which corners they aim to. In addition, righties should be attentive to their offensive habits and return to understand their angles and height. By observing carefully, right-handed players may notice their strengths and weaknesses.
Test the opponent
It is time to put theories into practice. After having some clues, to know whether they work or not, test them in reality. See how the opponent handles high balls and low balls by serving higher and lower than usual to their backhand intentionally.
The reason behind these actions is righties can estimate the height that better knocks out the lefty opponents. In those cases, lefties must step backward to handle the high passing shot or lean forward to catch the low balls. The more variations of your tactics, the better you understand their subconscious patterns.
It does not have to be applied for the single-serve but can be used for the return also. Start with the cross-court to the weakness and keep going wide with shots continually. By doing this, righties can foster your opponents to show their foot faults as you move them off the court with your short soft angles and give back weak short returns. This tactic also helps you understand their offensive behaviors.
Take advantage of the return
Return is the critical opportunity to change the table. When getting their height and width of serves, right-handed players can rely on that to take advantage of the return. If it does not help you beat them, at least it protects you when they try to target your backhand.
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Change the shot
Usually, when returning the ball, right-handed players are likely to serve cross-court. However, it is time to change from cross-court to down-the-line shots. When receiving a tricky ad-court serve, you provide a down the line to their side, so lefties cannot respond with their forehand.
In those cases, lefties subconsciously respond with their backhand. As righties get their serves’ heights and width already, it is easy for them to get in a better offensive position if lefties are successful with the return. Otherwise, lefties will definitely struggle with this serve from righties as they may run off to catch the ball, and the backhand causes them to provide weak and short returns.
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Change standing position
As a right-handed player, you should not stand in the middle of the ad side of the court. This position is alright if your opponent is right-handed. For left-handed, either down-the-line or cross-court with their backhand can knock you out as right-handed players cannot respond to the return. When the righties make a return to the leftie’s backhand, they will move to the middle of the ad-court on the return. As a result, it guarantees the lefties a wide-angle for a crosscourt.
As the returns from lefties are likely to shift more to the left, right-handed should move closer to the left alley to balance the power. The ideal position is at the edge of the left alley.
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Adjust the spin and slice serve
It is suggested that right-handed players should spin-off to the right when facing the high-level kick serve.
Slice serve tends to shift to the left, so it is essential to predict the slice serve from the left-handed players. The right-handed players should increase the return shot to the deuce of the lefties.
Keep calm
Last but not least, the key to success is to stay calm. The extra tip for right-handed players is the ability to control your emotion. When the righties master all the tactics to beat left-handed tennis players, there is no need to panic. Instead, be calm and analyze the situation.
As long as you psyche when playing against the lefties, they will have more power to beat you in the game.
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Conclusion
To sum up, it is not difficult to master tactics on how to beat left-handed tennis players. The most important thing is that righties should check the strategies of the left-handed tennis players to find out their weaknesses.
When the flag comes to you, understanding their weaknesses helps you give the right serve that they cannot handle. In addition, change the position to better protect yourself from the left return and adjust the spin and slice more to the right.
Remember that they can beat you on your ad-court does not mean you cannot beat them on their deuce court. Remember, right-handed players must turn their strengths to the opponent’s weaknesses to turn the table.
Thanks for your time watching our entry. Sincerely do we hope you have an exciting match ahead and get the desired result.
Further Reading
http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/how-to-beat-a-4-5-5-0-left-handed-player.682374/
https://www.reddit.com/r/tennis/comments/1is29i/any_tips_on_how_to_play_a_left_hander/
