Laying traps for your opponent.

There’s a short window in squash when all players lose track of their opponents, no matter how clever or aware they are. It’s that moment when you go to strike the ball and begin swinging. At that point the ball becomes your entire focus and you tend to stop worrying about your opponent and become ‘blind’ to them. If you’re particularly composed you might be able to listen for your opponent’s footsteps but in truth you’re basing your awareness of their positioning on their last known movements.

Window of opportunity

During this small window of time when an opponent is playing a shot, there is an opportunity for cunning players to lay a trap for their opponent by taking advantage of this ‘blind spot’ where the player striking the ball has no real idea of their whereabouts.
This can be particularly easy to do when returning serve, as there is a bit more time to compose yourself to lay the trap than in other situations where there might be lots more running and pressure. You might stand really high up as you wait for the return as if you’re overly eager to play a volley. If your opponent is astute, they will notice this and should then look to catch you out with deeper lob serve. While they’re executing this lob serve, you could then shuffle back into a more normal position perfectly ready to deal with their lob serve, which of course you were hoping for all along.

One opponent of mine caught me out with a body serve down the middle on my forehand and after that I started to purposely drift to the right to offer him a great opening for a body serve to see if I could get him to do it again. As he went to swing, I quickly shuffled back so that I was perfectly ready to deal with what was now a weak serve and put the ball away for an easy win.

By offering such an obvious gap or opening for the ball to go into, you are in effect coercing your opponent and influencing them to play a particular shot which you can then prepare for. Perhaps you can influence them to play a shot to an area which is a strength of yours.”

I saw a player once who would play a weak boast from the back and then move really high up the court, inviting the drive. He then used his speed and great volleying skill to drop back just as the opponent entered their blind spot and was about to start swinging and countered their drive shot with a long volley to the back, which often proved to be the winning shot. In this case, he was using his opponent’s blind spot to his advantage. The examples of positions you might take up and the shots you could invite are endless. You could lean to one side of the court to invite the cross-court and then pounce on the volley, you could sit deep to invite a short shot from the back and then move in for an easy drop during the blind spot and many more.

You do have to have a reasonable amount of agility in some of these examples but even if you aren’t the fastest, there’s no reason you can’t sway your opponent’s decision making with clever movement, particularly on the serve.

Have a go and see if you can control your opponent’s next shot by offering them what seems to be an easy shot option, only to then move into a strong position as they enter their blind spot and focus solely on their swing and hitting the ball.