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If you are striving to become a successful doubles player it is imperative for you to understand that singles and doubles are like apples and oranges, night and day, black and white or what ever image you want to employ to contrast the differences in the two games.

When playing singles your main task is to keep the ball in play deep in the opponents’ court while attempting to induce an error by moving them side to side.

Playing reasonably deep crosscourt from your own baseline is the cornerstone of high percentage singles play but in doubles it is quite often necessary to still play cross court but keep the ball purposefully short and low crosscourt and force the opponent to lift the ball to your partner stationed in the kill zone near the net

Serving wide is a basic tactic in singles because it forces your opposition to begin the point outside the alley line and opens the court for a forcing ground stroke that you can then hit into a wide open court and take immediate control of the point

Doubles tactics stress the player serving should use their serve to set up his/her partner up at net by placing the serve more often than not tight to the center service line in both the deuce and add courts.

Lobbing the return of serve up the line has great value in doubles as it forces the serving team to switch and scramble to cover the ball and opens the door for miscommunication between partners.

The same return in singles has less value because the court is relatively narrow and doesn’t really put the same level of movement pressure on the server and because there isn’t a player already waiting at the net to hammer their reply to the lob away for a winner.

Is it any wonder that at the pro level there are doubles specialists who you have never heard of that would hand Nadal and Federer a painful lesson if they were to foolishly team up for doubles.

Singles tactics require specific skills as do doubles tactics. Make sure you are working on the correct set of skills and tactics if you expect to experience success in doubles.