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Golden point, you are receiving. What is the plan?
Golden point receiving: your best returner, your best lob, then advance together. Use the choice you are given.
It is 40-40, golden point, and your pair is receiving. You choose the receiver. What is the plan for the point?
Golden point receiving: your best returner, your best lob, then advance together. Use the choice you are given.
Why
Golden point gives the receiving pair one advantage, they choose who receives, and the plan starts there: the partner with the more reliable return lob takes it. The point is then played as the highest-percentage pattern the pair owns: a deep cross-court lob over the server, both players advancing to the service line, split as the overhead is hit, and then the net. The single-point format punishes low-percentage choices more than any other score, because there is no second chance to recover. Best returner, best shot, biggest target, and then trust the pattern.
What this means at your level
Beginner
Decide before the match who takes golden points. On the day, that player lobs deep and you both walk forward.
Intermediate
Choose the receiver by the server: if the server slices wide into the glass, the partner who returns off the wall better takes it.
Advanced
The server knows where they must serve, so they will hit their most reliable serve. Prepare for exactly that serve and nothing else.
Common questions
It is 40-40, golden point, and your pair is receiving. You choose the receiver. What is the plan for the point?
Best returner, the deep lob they trust, then advance together. Golden point receiving: your best returner, your best lob, then advance together. Use the choice you are given. Golden point gives the receiving pair one advantage, they choose who receives, and the plan starts there: the partner with the more reliable return lob takes it. The point is then played as the highest-percentage pattern the pair owns: a deep cross-court lob over the server, both players advancing to the service line, split as the overhead is hit, and then the net. The single-point format punishes low-percentage choices more than any other score, because there is no second chance to recover. Best returner, best shot, biggest target, and then trust the pattern.
Why not whoever was due to receive, and go for a winner?
You get to choose, so choose. And a winner on a single deciding point is a coin flip; the lob is not.
What should a beginner do here?
Decide before the match who takes golden points. On the day, that player lobs deep and you both walk forward.
How does this change for an advanced player?
The server knows where they must serve, so they will hit their most reliable serve. Prepare for exactly that serve and nothing else.
Puzzles like this one
Both 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.
intermediateWhat do you do with the return of serve?
The return lob is how the receiving pair steals the net. Aim over the player who is still moving.
advancedThey are camped at the net and you cannot lob. What now?
If you cannot lift it over them, make them lift it for you. The chiquita is a slow ball at their feet.