Basic Rules

There are 4 extra rules when you play doubles:

1. You must take it in turns to hit the ball

2. You can only serve from your right hand box to diagonally. You never serve from your left box.

3. When you serve, you serve to the same side and to the same player for both of your 2 serves.

4. Only when you or your partner finish your two serves do you swap sides.

These are the basic rules and if you follow them you won’t go too far wrong.

Basic Tactics

1. You are only hitting to one person for the whole game so your aim is to make it as hard as possible for them to return the ball.

2. Hitting down the lines is often effective because that leaves your partner in the right position for the next ball.

3. Always serve short, near the net because it is too easy for the receiver if you serve long as they only have to cover half the court. Serve near the middle line so that it doesn’t go long off the side of the table.

Choice of Serving or Receiving

In doubles you will often find that the team winning the toss will elect to receive because that allows you to choose who is hitting to whom in the first set. The server has to decide who is serving and then the receiving team can decide who will receive from that player.

This allows you to choose whether you want your stronger combination in the first set to give your team the best chance of establishing a lead. The other option is to keep your better combination till last. If you think about it, the second part of the deciding set goes for longer than the first. In the deciding set, you change combinations when the first team gets to 5 (a maximum of 9 points). If the score in the last set is 11 - 9 the second part is a minimum of 11 points. So wouldn’t you want to play the majority of the deciding set with your better combination?

What is your better combination?

For each team this can be different. Try to think about how the match might play out before it happens. Whether it suits you to receive from one particular player rather than the other. You may not like one of the players serves whereas your partner may cope with it easily.
Also during the rally you may feel that your stronger player hitting to their weaker player will score you a lot of points.

These are some basic tips for doubles. Try them out next time you play.