The Lob: Your Most Underrated Shot

Why club players under-use the lob

Part of it is fashion. Modern tennis is played from the baseline, players come forward less often, and shots get learned by imitating what you see on television. Nobody grew up wanting to be the guy who lobs.

Part of it is ego. The lob has a reputation as the shot of the desperate and the tricky — the thing pushers do — so players who consider themselves proper ball-strikers avoid it even when the situation is screaming for it. Meanwhile they hit low-percentage passing shots into the tape from positions where a lob would have won the point outright.

And part of it is simple neglect. Almost nobody practises lobs. Ask a group of 3.5 players when they last hit fifty deliberate lobs at a target and the answer will be never. It is one of the few shots in tennis where the barrier to becoming genuinely good is low, because your opponents cannot defend it well and your competition is not working on it either. You do not need exceptional hands or racquet-head speed — you need repetition and the willingness to actually use it in matches.

The defensive lob: height first, depth second

This is the bail-out. You have been pulled wide, or pushed ten feet behind the baseline, or your opponent has hit a good approach and you are scrambling. The point of the shot is not to win the rally — it is to reset it. You are trading tempo for time.

Technique is mostly about the racquet face. Use a continental or eastern grip, open the face, get under the ball, and lift with a long, unhurried upward swing. Try not to slap at it; the swing is more of a controlled lift than a hit, and a relaxed arm produces far better height control than a tense one. A touch of backspin is fine and actually helps — it slows the ball down and makes it sit up rather than run away.

Height is the first priority and most players do not hit them nearly high enough. The peak wants to be several times the height of the net. That altitude is what buys the two or three seconds you need to sprint back to the middle of the baseline and re-establish a neutral position. A lob that clears the net player by four feet has bought you nothing.

Depth is the second priority. A high lob that lands mid-court is an easy, comfortable overhead. A high lob that lands within a few feet of the baseline forces your opponent to move backwards, which is the hardest direction to hit an overhead from, and often produces either a weak smash or a decision to let it bounce — either of which hands the initiative back to you. Aim for the deepest third of the court and accept that you will occasionally hit one long. Lobs that consistently land short are much more costly than lobs that occasionally miss deep.

One detail that matters: as soon as the lob leaves your strings, run. A defensive lob is only worth hitting if you use the time it buys. Standing and watching your rescue shot arc through the air is a wasted opportunity.

The offensive topspin lob: disguise is the whole shot

The offensive lob is a different animal. You are balanced, you have time, and your opponent has crept in tight to the net expecting a passing shot. Instead of trying to squeeze the ball past them, you send it over their head with heavy topspin so it dips down sharply once it clears their reach and then kicks forward and away on the bounce.

The technique is not a special shot — that is the beauty of it. You use your normal topspin groundstroke grip, your normal stance, and your normal preparation. The only thing that changes is the swing path: much steeper from low to high, brushing hard up the back of the ball, finishing high above the shoulder rather than across the body. Contact is a little further out in front than a regular drive.

Because the preparation is identical to a passing shot, your opponent has nothing to read. They see you set up for a topspin drive, they take their final step in to cut off the angle, and by the time the ball leaves your strings on a rising arc they are already committed forward and off balance. A well-disguised topspin lob does not need to be perfect; it just needs to be over their head, because a net player caught leaning forward has almost no chance of recovering to run it down.

The topspin is what makes it work in the court. A flat lob hit hard enough to beat a net player usually sails long. Heavy topspin lets you hit it with real pace and a lower arc while still bringing the ball down inside the baseline, and the forward kick on the bounce means even a scrambling opponent who reaches it is hitting a ball running away from them.

It is a harder shot than the defensive lob and it will take practice before it stops flying over the fence. But it is worth it, because a player with a credible topspin lob changes how the whole point is played — once your opponent knows it exists, they cannot close as tightly on the net, which makes your passing shots easier too.

When a lob beats a passing shot

A passing shot has to beat the net player sideways, through a gap they are actively covering, with the net in play and a sideline not far behind. A lob has to beat them upwards. At club level that second problem is much easier, because most recreational players have a serviceable volley and a shaky overhead.

The clearest moments to lob rather than pass: when your opponent has closed in tight, within a few feet of the net, so the space behind them is enormous. When you are on the run and a passing shot would need pace and precision you do not have time to produce. When you have already tried to pass twice and they are visibly anticipating it. And on the second ball of a net exchange, when they have volleyed and are moving forward again.

There is also a strategic version of this. Against an opponent who serves and volleys or chips and charges relentlessly, an early lob — even one they put away — plants the idea that closing in has a cost. From then on they hesitate half a step, and that half a step is what makes your regular passing shots start finding gaps. The lob does not have to be a winner to be doing work.

Reading the net player's position

Before you decide, look at where they actually are. A net player who is standing three or four feet from the net has essentially given you permission to lob — there is a huge amount of court behind them and no realistic way to cover it. A net player who has stayed back near the service line has already sacrificed some volley effectiveness to protect against the lob, so pass them instead, at their feet.

Also read their body. Someone leaning heavily forward, weight on the front foot, is committed and cannot easily reverse. Someone already drifting backwards is expecting the lob and you should hit through them. This is exactly the same read you use when deciding whether to hit behind a recovering baseliner, just applied vertically.

In doubles, add one more layer: watch which of the two is closing. A poacher committing across the middle leaves a huge diagonal behind them, and a lob over their outside shoulder is the classic punishment. If both opponents are pressing in at the net, almost any decent lob will force one of them backwards.

Wind and sun change the maths

The lob is the shot most affected by conditions, and playing them properly turns a windy day from an annoyance into an advantage.

With the wind behind you, the ball carries. A lob hit with your usual height and pace will sail long, so hit it lower, with heavier topspin, and accept that the topspin lob is your version of the shot in this situation. The upside is real: a downwind lob that does land in is close to impossible to recover, because it keeps travelling away from your opponent.

Into the wind, the opposite problem. The wind holds the ball up and drops it short, which turns your defensive lob into a floating sitter right in the middle of the court. If you must lob into the wind, hit it substantially deeper and flatter than feels right, and consider whether a low, driven ball is simply the better choice. A crosswind, meanwhile, will push a high lob several feet sideways — aim into the wind and let it bring the ball back toward the middle rather than aiming at a line and watching it drift out.

The sun is your friend. A genuinely high lob that forces your opponent to look directly into the sun is one of the few shots in recreational tennis that is close to unplayable — no amount of technique helps if you cannot see the ball. If you notice your opponent squinting when they toss for a serve, you know exactly which half of the court to lob from.

Lobbing in doubles

The lob is a far more valuable shot in doubles than in singles, for the simple reason that the opposing team spends most of the point trying to occupy the net. Two players pressing forward leave a lot of court behind them, and someone has to run backwards.

The highest-value target is over the net player's outside shoulder — the sideline side. That ball forces the opposing team into a switch: the baseline player has to run diagonally across and back to retrieve it, while the net player crosses to cover the other side. Even a competently executed switch usually costs them their attacking position, and at club level it frequently produces a hesitation where each player expects the other to take it.

The lob return of serve is another underused weapon. Against a team where the net player poaches aggressively, a deep lob return over their head immediately kills the poach, pushes both opponents back, and often lets your team take the net instead. You do not need to hit many of them — the threat alone makes an aggressive net player start hovering rather than committing.

A word on partnership. If you lob and your opponents are forced back, both you and your partner should move forward together. The whole point of the lob was to take the net away from them; standing still and admiring it gives it straight back.

How to practise lob depth

Depth is the entire quality of a lob, and depth is a skill that responds unusually well to a few focused sessions. The instinct that stops most players is fear of hitting long, which produces short lobs, which get smashed, which reinforces the fear. Practice breaks that loop.

• Mark a target zone across the back of the court, roughly the last six feet before the baseline, with cones or a line of balls. Hit thirty lobs and count how many land in it. Repeat weekly and watch the number climb.
• Have a partner stand at the net and lob over them, deliberately hitting some too deep. You need to feel where 'too long' is in order to know where the edge of the court is.
• Alternate a passing shot and a topspin lob off identical feeds, making the preparation look the same on both. This trains the disguise, which is the part that matters most.
• Practise on the move. Feed yourself wide and lob from a stretched, off-balance position, because that is the situation the defensive lob actually exists for.
• Play a set where every ball you hit from behind the baseline while defending must be a lob. It is a strange set, but it removes the psychological barrier to using the shot at all.
• Practise the overhead alongside the lob with a partner — one lobs, one smashes, then swap. Both shots improve, and you learn exactly what makes a lob uncomfortable to attack.

How not to become a moonballer

There is a genuine risk here and it is worth naming honestly. The lob is easy to hit, it wins points at lower levels, and it is tempting to lean on it. Players who do end up as moonballers — floating every ball high and deep, winning through opponents' impatience, and never developing an offensive shot. It works up to a point and then it stops working, usually right about when they meet someone with a competent overhead.

The distinction is about choice, not frequency. Using the lob well means selecting it because the situation calls for it: your opponent is at the net, or you are stretched and need time. Moonballing means defaulting to it because you have nothing else. A simple self-test — if you are lobbing from a balanced, neutral position against someone standing on their own baseline, you are moonballing.

The healthy way to hold it is as one option among several. When you are in trouble, the defensive lob is a far better choice than a low-percentage rescue drive. When your opponent is at the net, the topspin lob and the passing shot are two answers to the same question, and having both makes each one better. What you should not do is let the lob replace the work of learning to hit through the court, because the players you want to beat next season will punish it.

Used properly, this is the cheapest improvement available to most club players. It costs a few practice sessions, it does not depend on fitness or racquet-head speed, and it exploits the single weakest shot on the average recreational court.