How to break serve
As discussed the easiest way to break serve is to jaws a hoop and then use this position of strength to give you the best opportunity to win the next hoop as well. When you are second to the hoop in normal circumstances it becomes quite a challenge to steal a hard hoop from an opponent.
A lot of the slower games are slow because the first player to the hoop keeps clearing the opponent away. They have the power of the hoop and you keep putting your ball back in the area just to get cleared away again. Instead of just going back near the hoop as a target, on these “stalemate” hoops to break the serve you often need to break the routine.
Firstly, you need to get your balls closer. Don’t go within your opponents stop shot zone. Don’t go in front of the hoop; look for the wired spots or distances that will stop them hitting you away. Once they stop attacking you or they attack you badly and clear themselves away you can pounce. If the balls are all fairly close together and your opponent cannot score or jaws, why not stop away the ball that has just played? If no one can score I stop shot the ball that is closest too me that is in my stop shot range. This ensures I clear a ball to a boundary and stay close to the hoop. The opponent usually clears the next ball to play in order which can simply come back to the hoop. You have the situation now where you have two balls to the hoop first and the next ball to play is the previously cleared boundary ball. You have flipped the order and should be able to manipulate yourself into a scoring position.
When you are trying to break the serve by clearing your opponent away, you will often need to clear them away 2-3 times before you have a chance of scoring yourself. You need patience and you also need to control the pace of your clearance. If you clear hard you are likely to be on a boundary yourself. If your opponent just went back in front of the hoop then it is likely your second clearance is even harder to achieve than your first.
When you don’t have the power of the hoop there is no point firing hard on your opponent unless you are confident you can clear them adequately from the boundary consistently. It is better to improve your soft clearance that puts your opponent out of the scoring zone but also allows your ball to loiter closer to the hoop to ensure your next clearance is even better.
