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Their lob is flying long. You volley it anyway. Whose point?
Touch a ball before it bounces and it is in play, wherever it was going. Leaving it is a skill.
Their lob is clearly going to hit your back glass on the full, but you reach up and volley it out of the air. What is the situation?
Touch a ball before it bounces and it is in play, wherever it was going. Leaving it is a skill.
Why
A ball is only out when it hits a wall, the mesh or leaves the court before bouncing on the floor. If you strike it before it does any of those things, the point continues as if the ball had been good. The advanced version of this is deliberate: a lob heading long can be smashed if the smash is easy, or left if it is not, and reading which is which, in the half-second available, is one of the skills that separates net players.
What this means at your level
Beginner
If the lob is high and going long, let it go. Watching it hit the glass on the full is a free point.
Intermediate
Read depth from the height of the lob at the net. A ball still rising as it passes over you is going long.
Advanced
Against a pair that lobs long often, you can take a high ball on purpose when it gives you a comfortable smash, but never a difficult one. The free point is the free point.
Common questions
Their lob is clearly going to hit your back glass on the full, but you reach up and volley it out of the air. What is the situation?
In play: by hitting it, you accepted the ball. Touch a ball before it bounces and it is in play, wherever it was going. Leaving it is a skill. A ball is only out when it hits a wall, the mesh or leaves the court before bouncing on the floor. If you strike it before it does any of those things, the point continues as if the ball had been good. The advanced version of this is deliberate: a lob heading long can be smashed if the smash is easy, or left if it is not, and reading which is which, in the half-second available, is one of the skills that separates net players.
Why not theirs. You must let a long ball go?
You are allowed to hit it; you are just not obliged to. The point continues on your shot.
What should a beginner do here?
If the lob is high and going long, let it go. Watching it hit the glass on the full is a free point.
How does this change for an advanced player?
Against a pair that lobs long often, you can take a high ball on purpose when it gives you a comfortable smash, but never a difficult one. The free point is the free point.
What do the rules say?
A ball that is struck before it bounces is in play regardless of where it would otherwise have landed.
Puzzles like this one
They lobbed you deep. Smash it or play the bandeja?
Deep ball, high hands: bandeja. The shot exists to keep you at the net, not to win the point.
beginnerThe ball is at your feet at the net. What now?
A ball below the net cannot be attacked. Block it deep and wait for one above the tape.
beginnerBoth of them are at the net. What is the highest-percentage ball?
Only the lob moves a net pair backwards. Everything else invites them forward.