The Magic Spot

It is not hard to learn to place balls in the magic spot. The spot is as close to the corner of the baseline and the right side of the court as you can manage. The best shot to place here is return of serve. You can do it from the left or right side of the court, but the right side tends to be more spectacular. For best results, they should be long, low drives, but can also be high and floppy.

You’ll find that most right-handers, and even many left-handers struggle with this spot. One reason is it is unusual. The other is that they typically will not move far enough to their left to accommodate the shot.

On interesting effect I’ve noticed is that even if you don’t get close to the sideline, your recipients will still struggle. Just having the ball go slightly to the recipient’s left will flummox many players.

Finally, while the shot works best when deep, a variation is to place the ball close to the net. This is true whether the players are standing toward the back of the court, or up by the kitchen, although a good player at the kitchen line is likely to blast the ball back down your own sideline, or place an extreme diagonal into your partner’s kitchen. The short kitchen version must be low and ideally very close to the net.

Drilling for the magic spot is easy, and a worthwhile activity if you have a bucket of balls and time on your hands. Just bounce a ball while you are standing near your baseline, and hit it as if you are returning a serve.