Playing Lefties

People joke with my parents all the time because my brother is a lefty. “I bet you put the fork in his left hand instead of his right!”

We laugh, we’re used to it. And they have good reason to laugh about true leftiness; it is a weapon in tennis, something that, because it is fairly rare, is something that defines you. Oftentimes, if you ask someone how to play someone like my brother, or anyone who is a lefty for that matter, the first thing that they’ll tell you is “he’s a lefty.”

So why the obsession with lefties? Like the ever elusive serve and volleyer and chip and charger, lefties aren’t a player that you see very often on the court. They take some time to get used to; after all, how many times have we trained hitting to the “open court” or “weaker side” which would only set up a lefty with a forehand shot? How often do you practice returning a serve that spins the opposite way compared to a right-handed serve?

These are the small tips that some players don’t think of right away when they are told they are playing a lefty. Typically this tip results with a nod of a head and admiration for the opponent’s elusive talent, but on the court the extent of some people’s knowledge of left-handed players is that their backhand is where the forehand “should be” and vice versa.

An additional tip is to watch out for a lefty serve. Like righties have a good wide serve advantage on the deuce side, lefties have a good wide serve on the ad side. This gives lefties two significant advantages; the serve slices wide to the backhand rather than the forehand, and ad side points are usually more “pressure points” like advantages. The good news is that even though righties rarely practice this serve, unless you happen to have a lefty partner, which in that case, lucky you, players can adjust to this serve by stepping into the return and cutting off the ball as you would do with any return of serve that doesn’t come straight at you. By cutting the ball off and aiming crosscourt, you don’t hazard a mishit going down the line nor do you get pulled off the court too much because, well, you cut the ball off by stepping in.

At the end of the day though, a lefty is also a tennis player, just like any right-handed player is. It takes some time to adjust, but lefty players are not much different—you still use the same tactics, and you are still playing an opponent like any other opponent you’ll face in tennis, and it won’t be an advantage to be a lefty if you don’t let it be.