Defensive Lob

You really shouldn’t lob defensively, and basically should only use it for offense.

If you can get enough of a paddle on it and have enough time, you should be able to reset the ball to the middle.

However, if you must lob defensively your goal is to lob and have them not be able to get a clean hard overhead. Your goal is to force them to do a weaker overhead, and then you can reset into kitchen to get in.

Your goal isn’t to keep staying back at baseline and lobbing, because eventually you’ll hit one that is too low and they’ll put it away or you’ll hit one that flies out the court due to wind.

Priority Checklist

Must-do

• Lob it high
  • Make sure your lob doesn’t end up at head height or below when it reaches the opponent’s kitchen, because it would be an easy putaway.
  • Unlike with offensive lobs, feel free to lob it as high as possible.
• Lob it deep
  • The further back they have to run to hit the ball down, the less angles they have available to hit to.
    • If they are hitting overhead far back in the court, they can basically only hit down the middle because if they hit the sides, it’ll either go into the net or fly out the sides.

Lower priority

• Lob it with topspin