(By Larry Hodges)

The easiest and simplest way of beating a player is to “lock him up.” This basically means forcing him to do what he doesn’t want to do. A classic case would be to force an opponent with a weaker backhand to go backhand to backhand with you. Another example would be take away an opponent’s strong loop and force him to instead block by getting in the first loop each rally. How do you “lock someone up”? By basing your tactics toward this goal. You’ve got to figure out what your opponent doesn’t want to do, and how you can make him do that using your own weapons – serve, receive, and strokes. Too often players think only about what they want to do, and forget about forcing their opponents to do what they don’t want to do.

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