Yes, They’re Going to Attack the Woman. Here’s How to Make Them Regret It.

Let’s get the uncomfortable part out of the way first: in mixed doubles, the other team is going to pick a target, and statistically speaking, that target is the woman. Not because she’s worse — plenty of 4.0 women would run a 3.5 man off the court and take his lunch money — but because targeting is about probabilities, not respect. If one player on your team has less reach, less raw counter-punch off the two-handed backhand, or is simply standing in a worse spot, that’s where the ball is going. Every ball. Until you make it stop being profitable.

Here’s the thing nobody says out loud at the rec level: getting targeted is not an insult. It’s a strategy problem. And strategy problems have solutions that don’t involve getting your feelings hurt or your partner apologizing after every point. Let’s fix the actual problem.

Why the targeting happens (and why “it’s sexist” is the wrong response)

At the pro level, the top mixed women — your Anna Bright, your Rachel Rohrabacher — are so good that “attack the woman” is a great way to lose. They counter-attack, they reset from their shoelaces, and they’ll make you pay for treating them like a weakness. The strategy exists because at most levels below that, there’s an asymmetry: the average recreational mixed team has a height, reach, and hand-speed gap, and one player is usually newer to the sport than the other.

Opponents aren’t being rude. They’re being correct. They found the mathematically higher-percentage play and they’re running it. The mature response — the one that actually wins games — is to say “cool, they’ve committed to a pattern, and patterns are exploitable.”

Because here’s the secret: a team that’s targeting one player has told you their entire plan. They’re going to hit the same shots to the same person. You now know where 70% of the balls are going before the point starts. That’s not a disadvantage. That’s a scouting report they handed you for free.

Step one: stop trying to hit winners off every attacked ball

The single biggest mistake the targeted player makes is treating each incoming ball like a personal challenge to be answered with force. Someone drives at your hip and your instinct is to blast it back to prove you belong. You pop it up. They put it away. Now you’re both frustrated and your partner is doing that thing where they pretend not to be frustrated.

The counter to relentless targeting isn’t power. It’s the reset. When they attack, your job is often not to win the point on that ball — it’s to neutralize it. Soft hands, paddle out front, absorb the pace, drop it back into the kitchen, and reset the point to a dinking battle where the reach advantage disappears. Every ball you calmly reset is a ball where their aggressive strategy produced nothing. Do that four times in a row and watch them start pressing, going for too much, and dumping balls into the net. Grinding works both directions.

If you’re the targeted player, drill this until it’s boring: partner feeds you hard balls at the body, you reset them into the kitchen. Not winners. Resets. The player who can absorb pace under fire is the player nobody wants to target, because targeting them just doesn’t do anything.

Step two: run the crosscourt–middle–behind escape pattern

When you’re getting hammered, don’t improvise. Pros teach a predetermined sequence for exactly this situation, and it works because it takes the panic out of the decision:

• Crosscourt first. When in trouble, the crosscourt dink or reset is your safety valve — it’s the longest distance on the court, the net is lowest in the middle, and it buys you time. Default here.
• Middle second. Once you’ve stabilized, start pushing balls at the middle seam between the two opponents. Middle balls create hesitation, cause “yours/mine” confusion, and take away the sharp angles they’ve been using on you.
• Behind third. When they’ve adjusted and started cheating toward the middle, go behind them — jam the ball back at the feet or the body of the player who just leaned the wrong way.

Crosscourt to survive, middle to neutralize, behind to punish. Memorize it. When the pressure comes, you’re not thinking “oh no,” you’re thinking “okay, we’re on shot one.”

Step three: the “up” player has to actually poach

Here’s where the non-targeted partner earns their keep, and where most rec teams fall apart. If your partner is getting bombarded, the worst thing you can do is stand on your side of the court like a polite bystander watching it happen. Your job is to be a threat — to poach.

When opponents commit to hitting the same player over and over, they get predictable and lazy with their targeting. That predictability is a gift for the partner at the net. Cheat toward the middle. Watch for the high ball or the lazy crosscourt dink, and cross over to intercept it. One good poach — one ball you step across and put away — and suddenly the other team has a new problem: they can’t just autopilot every ball to your partner anymore, because you might eat it. You’ve made targeting risky.

The key is that poaching isn’t drifting. Use a real crossover step, trigger off the ball trajectory (high balls, predictable crosscourt dinks), not off instinct, and commit. And communicate it — a closed fist behind the back is the standard “I’m going” signal so your partner knows to switch and cover the side you just vacated. Poach silently and unannounced and you’ll just create a giant hole in the court, at which point you have become the problem.

Step four: stack so the targeting hits a wall

Positioning-wise, stacking is the single most powerful tool against a targeting team. The whole point of stacking in mixed is to keep both players on their strong side — most commonly, arranging things so the forehands live in the middle of the court. When the middle is patrolled by two forehands, the “attack the seam” plan that most targeting relies on suddenly runs into your best shots instead of your weakest ones.

Stacking also lets you hide the targeted player’s backhand and keep them in the spot where their reach and shot selection are strongest. If they can’t get the ball to the weakness because your formation keeps taking it away, the entire targeting strategy collapses. Yes, stacking is a little awkward at first and yes, you’ll botch a switch or two. Do it anyway. A team that stacks well is structurally harder to attack, full stop.

And a word to the guys, because someone has to say it

The flip side of the “attack the woman” dynamic is the guy who decides that he is the answer to every problem — who ranges three feet into his partner’s side, poaches balls that weren’t his, and turns “protecting my partner” into “not letting my partner play.” Cut it out. You’re not helping; you’re telling the whole court she can’t handle it, and you’re leaving two-thirds of the court wide open for the easy re-direct.

Poach the balls that are genuinely yours to take. Cover the middle when you’ve signaled it. Then trust your partner to play her game — including the resets and the counters she’s been drilling. The best mixed teams aren’t one hero and one liability. They’re two players who both make the other team’s plan fall apart. Get targeted, stay calm, run your patterns, and make them wish they’d picked on somebody else.

Then dink about it.