When To Poach In Doubles

What is a Poach?

A poach traditionally happens when you’re the net player and your partner is serving.

Your opponent most likely will try to return the ball cross court to the server.

However, if they don’t get their return far enough cross court, the net player can poach, meaning move in towards the net on an angle and pick that ball off.

Essentially, you’re taking the ball that was meant for your partner.

When Should you Poach?

Some poaches are pre-determined, meaning sometimes the net player will let the server know that they will poach on that point.

The server knows this, so they can place their serve in a spot that can help the poacher.

Other poaches are spontaneous, meaning the net player sees a ball they can attack and poach on and they make a move towards the ball.

When your poach is spontaneous, you want to make sure you poach on a ball that you can make an aggressive move on.

You don’t want to poach when you can barely reach or get to the ball, if you do this you can leave both yourself and your partner in a vulnerable position.

A lot of people think that you should only poach on the return of serve.

This is definitely not the case.

Sometimes the best time to poach is during the middle of a rally.

If your partner is in a baseline rally you want to look for ball your opponent leaves down the middle of the court or a ball that they don’t hit with much pace.

Many times this will happen when your partner hits a good deep ball or a ball with a lot of pace that your opponent can’t handle very well.

This is a great time to look to poach!

Again, try to incorporate the poach into your doubles game as much as possible to keep your opponents guessing.