[ColoradoTree]

With our plethora of talent, I wonder if we will take the opportunity to develop some dedicated doubles teams who only or mostly play doubles. Would give them the chance to practice doubles a lot instead of splitting practice between singles and doubles (I suspect that doubles usually gets slighted relative to singles, which makes sense given the relative value of doubles vs. singles matches)

With ten scholarship players and six singles spots, this is intriguing. You wouldn't want to completely get rid of singles practice for the doubles folks, because you still want players ready to step in if there are injuries, but a greater emphasis on doubles shotmaking seems well worth the time investment. 

OTOH, I think we've been well-served by our top singles players playing some doubles, and I want, say, Gordon and Blake having as many opportunities to play as they can get. 

But something needs to change. I recognize that it's just one point out of seven, and our M.O. against other top teams is to drop doubles and charge back in singles, but why not make doubles elite? It's still very good--we take the doubles point most of the time, after all--but there's no reason why we have to go into a match against UCLA knowing we'll need to win four out of six singles matches. 

Maybe something where one of our top few singles players is paired with someone out of the singles lineup who spends a greater percentage of their time specifically on doubles shotmaking? So, that could be something like Gordon-Madurawe, Arbuthnott-Higuchi, and Blake-Choy. The specific pairings are chemistry-dependent, of course, but maybe that's a way to give a boost to our doubles play.

[ColoradoTree]

With our plethora of talent, I wonder if we will take the opportunity to develop some dedicated doubles teams who only or mostly play doubles. Would give them the chance to practice doubles a lot instead of splitting practice between singles and doubles (I suspect that doubles usually gets slighted relative to singles, which makes sense given the relative value of doubles vs. singles matches)

With ten scholarship players and six singles spots, this is intriguing. You wouldn't want to completely get rid of singles practice for the doubles folks, because you still want players ready to step in if there are injuries, but a greater emphasis on doubles shotmaking seems well worth the time investment. 

OTOH, I think we've been well-served by our top singles players playing some doubles, and I want, say, Gordon and Blake having as many opportunities to play as they can get. 

But something needs to change. I recognize that it's just one point out of seven, and our M.O. against other top teams is to drop doubles and charge back in singles, but why not make doubles elite? It's still very good--we take the doubles point most of the time, after all--but there's no reason why we have to go into a match against UCLA knowing we'll need to win four out of six singles matches. 

Maybe something where one of our top few singles players is paired with someone out of the singles lineup who spends a greater percentage of their time specifically on doubles shotmaking? So, that could be something like Gordon-Madurawe, Arbuthnott-Higuchi, and Blake-Choy. The specific pairings are chemistry-dependent, of course, but maybe that's a way to give a boost to our doubles play.