Doubles Only Tennis Podcast

3 Lessons from Tennis Summit 2026 with Mehrban Iranshad

• Will Boucek • Episode 281

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Mehrban Iranshad is the founder of Tennis Summit, an online tennis conference for club players who want to improve. I've presented at the conference for four years in a row and have a presentation this year on doubles formations (live now).

Sign up for here to watch my presentation. You'll also get access to lessons from other coaches like Paul Annacone, the former coach of Pete Sampras and Roger Federer, 19x grand slam champion Gigi Fernandez, Jonathan Stokke, and more.

In this podcast, Mehrban covers his 3 favorite lessons from Tennis Summit so far.

  • The best volley targets from Peter Freeman.
  • Anticipation tips from Louis Cayer.
  • Australian formation benefits from... me 🙂

I also discussed a few other doubles strategies in this one. If you're serious about improving your game, do not miss this opportunity to learn for free.

Sign up for Tennis Summit here.

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What The Tennis Summit Is

SPEAKER_01

You're about to hear my conversation with Mirban Ironshad. Mirban is the host of the Tennis Files podcast and the founder of the Tennis Summit, which is one of the largest online tennis conferences in the world. And it's one of my favorite events that I get to present at each year, alongside other top coaches like Gigi Fernandez, Paul Anakone, Jonathan Stokey, Peter Freeman, Louis Caillet, and more. And a lot of these people have been on the podcast before. And just to give you some perspective, if you were to try to get a private lesson from any one of these coaches, it would cost you hundreds of dollars. But you get access to presentations and lessons from 30 plus coaches. So this is a really cool opportunity that I do like to encourage all of you to sign up for every year because you can see some of the top coaches in the world give their best lessons all for free. So I'm going to link in the show notes where you can sign up and get access for those lessons. But you do only get access for the lessons for 48 hours. If you want the lessons for life, you do have to upgrade. It's less than$100, so it is a very good value. But if you have time today and this week, then you should sign up and watch the lessons for free. In this conversation with Maribon, we talk about his favorite lessons from the 2026 Tennis Summit. And we obviously focused on doubles. And this episode is going to be released on Wednesday, April 22nd, which is the doubles day of the Tennis Summit. So my presentation on doubles formations is going to be released today, along with presentations from Louis Caille, who has been on the podcast before and has coached a number of players to number one in the world in doubles. Gigi Fernandez is doing a live session with Maribon today, so you can hop on that if you sign up and ask Gigi questions directly. Jonathan Stokey has a presentation that I watched already. Paul Anakone has a chat with Maribon as well. And I watched that one, got a lot out of that. I love this event so much. I'm sure you can hear my passion for it, although I am recording this at 11 p.m. So I might sound a bit tired. But it's such a cool opportunity to learn from multiple coaches. And I've told you over the years, I don't want you to just listen to my content. I want you to learn from other coaches as well. So definitely sign up for the Tennis Summit. Again, I'll link to that in the show notes. And then in this conversation with Mirabon, we're covering his three favorite lessons, which I think you're going to love. So listen to this conversation, sign up for Tennis Summit, go watch as many lessons as you can over the next several days. And if you want those lessons for life, then go ahead and buy the lifetime access. Without further delay, enjoy the Tennis Summit preview with Mirban Aronchad. Hey everybody, welcome to the show. Today we have Mirban Aronchad on, the host of the Tennis Files podcast and the host of the Tennis Summit, the biggest, is it the biggest online tennis conference? Certainly one of the biggest, uh and certainly one of the best.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks. I gotta give respect to my buddy Pete Freeman with TennisCon too. But yeah, it's definitely, definitely up there. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, it's such a fun event. Um, so thanks for coming on. Uh, what I want to do today is kind of preview um Tennis Summit, even though this is going to be released like right in the middle of it, because we're recording Tuesday, uh, the week of Tennis Summit. Um I want to preview uh what some of the best lessons are uh that you've learned watching all of the videos and the presentations from 2026. Uh so we'll give people a preview of that here in a second. But before we get to that, um what year is this for Tennis Summit? And explain what it is overall.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, sure. Um, Will, and thanks for having me on as well. It's an honor to be on your your podcast. You're doing a wonderful job. Um, I love that it's you know centered towards doubles because like you know, I love to listen to your podcast sometimes when I'm going to like a USA doubles match, and it definitely gets me in the right mindset. Um, but yeah, it's amazingly, it's the 10th year of the summit. So I mean time has flown by. I remember you know the first year when I did it, and I was just basically like having panic attacks. Like, am I gonna get like these presentations with people? Like, is it gonna be okay? But yeah, we progressed a lot from there, and it's basically an online tennis conference where I try to get like anywhere between 25 to 35 of the world's best coaches that I can find, at least. And you know, they have sessions throughout the week. Um, you know, we have some live streams sprinkled in, and yeah, it's um this year is it's themed a bit differently with different tracks. We've got a uh double strategy track, a strategy uh track, uh um uh technique and stroke development track, and then a mental game and uh physical longevity track. And and yeah, it's it's five days uh throughout this week, and then um you get 48 hour access if you pick up the free pass, and then uh if you go through you know Will's link, you can get like lafetime access. But basically it's it's a really fun week. I love it, and like it's it amazes me because like I've been doing this for 10 years, but every single year I learn a lot of you know seemingly new things that really help my game, and it just it like reinvigorates my passion to to play and compete and to train because I'm just like wow, this information is awesome and and you know I want to put it to practice. So so there's a lot in there, and and that's hopefully I describe that okay, but yeah, it's a it's an online tennis conference.

Peter Freeman On Net Choices

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So people can sign up and get access to each lesson for free for 48 hours after it's released. Uh, this podcast is gonna go live on Wednesday, which I think is the doubles day, right? Is that the doubles? Okay, so so if you're listening to this now, um, you might pause or at the end of our conversation. Uh, if you want to sign up, you can do that and then watch all the doubles lessons. Uh and then yesterday, um, for people listening to this, to it was actually earlier today for me, um, I watched Jonathan Stokey's lesson, which was also kind of doubles focused about uh partnership communication, which I enjoyed a lot. And I'm kind of with you, like I, you know, I do a presentation every year for you, um, I think the last like four or five years. And I also watch a lot of them, and I always learn and like try to emphasize those lessons to my audience as well. Um, because I'm always telling people like you got to be learning from other people, like you can't just learn everything from me because I might be saying one thing one way, and then other coaches might say it another way that lands better with you, and like that's okay, and that's that's a good thing. So it's good to kind of learn from multiple sources, and and that's how I learned, anyways. Um and then people can, if they want lifetime access, it's like less than a hundred dollars, right? Yeah, like 97 at this point, yeah. Which I mean, to get a private lesson from any one of these coaches would be a lot more than that. Um, so it's it's such a good value. Uh let's dive into the lessons for this year. So I asked you before we hopped on here to pick like three to five of your favorite lessons from this year that would apply to uh a club level doubles player. So let's start with the first one.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, well, so uh one of the first lessons um that I thought was great is from uh our mutual buddy Peter Freeman, who I mentioned earlier, and his uh presentation is on doubles positioning as well as shot selection. And so one very illuminating thing that he mentioned was the danger of your shot selection as a net player, and in particular uh going short to short at the wrong time. So, in other words, that means if you're at the net and you hit um a volley to the opposing net player at the wrong time, this can result in disaster, you know, the the middle can be opened up, um, or if you're not able to hit an offensive enough volley to essentially end the point or get a weak reply, then you're you can you can be in trouble. And so that made me think about you know many times where, for example, you know, one of his examples is like if you get pulled out wide towards the alley, um players still think that, you know, they automatically think like that the rule is if you're a net player, you you should hit to the opposing net player. But if you were to get pulled out wide and hit a volley, even if it's a high volley, if and you hit it to the opposing net player, a lot of times because you're stretch, especially, you know, you can't really muster up like a ton of power on that shot. So then you're hitting it to the opposing net player, but you have open now opened up this huge gap in the middle of the court, and then the opposing net player can just simply hit, you know, in that gap and and you lose the point. So I mean, you know, things like that that that Peter covers, it was was really illuminating. And and also, I mean, he not only covers like that shot, but he he it's it's really cool because he covers like specific different shot scenarios. So I think that's just an awesome session because if you're a doubles player, you you're a lot of you probably think like what shot do I need to hit in one what particular scenario? And like Pete Peter just goes through those scenarios, so it's like it's uh in my opinion, that's like a can't miss session. I mean, there's many of them, but that's one in particular if you want to get better at your net positioning and movement and what shot you should be hitting.

SPEAKER_01

That's awesome. Um, was that the one on Sunday night that you did with him? Oh, you know what? Or is this a different one?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it's a different one. Yeah, so he did refer to that like in our um in our uh live stream on Sunday, but this is actually that now that I'm what I'm mentioning is like specific to his lesson on Wednesday.

Drills And Fixing Bad Volleys

SPEAKER_01

Okay, so this will come out tomorrow or or today for the listeners. Okay, yeah, yeah. It's obviously more expensive. Yeah, I'll check that one out for sure. Also, yeah, I I like that idea because I saw, I mean, I was just at a doubles camp um that I was running in Miami, and I saw that over and over. And as you were just describing that, I was trying to think of like how to simulate a drill for some club players to try to work on like when is it the time, like judging that ball, like is this the right ball to go at the net player, or is this the right ball to you know avoid the net player and actually go back to the baseline player and and force them to come up with something good? So that's something I'm gonna have to think more about how to like design a drill for that. But that's that's a really important concept. Um because it's something I've had to train myself on too over the years. Like I I used to just re hit my reaction volleys right back at the net player, and now it's like uh I've gotten better at hitting some of those more defensive volleys uh away from them so that they can't attack me again. So that's that's a really good concept. Uh things well. What's the uh what's another lesson um for doubles players?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so I mean, one of the most legendary doubles uh specific coaches is uh Louis Caillet um with the Lawn and Tennis Association, and so he talked about anticipation and doubles. And by the way, he's coached I think at least nine world number one doubles players, so it's uh quite quite a resume there. But his presentation was really cool, but and he he does a really deep dive, and so he talked about in well, part of it was uh his presentation was uh four types of anticipation, these four categories. So he went into I'll try not to like you know give it all away, but perceptual, technical, tactical, and geometrical anticipation. I don't think most players have like thought about anticipation in these four buckets, but so I mean it was just very illuminating that where he, you know, for each one, he like breaks it down and and he shows many different ways, you know, that you can improve your anticipation. And so, I mean, for example, with the tactical anticipation, yeah, that's about like understanding your opponent's game styles, their tendencies, um, also like what they might perceive as percentage tennis. And so that I mean it really it's exciting, right? Because like you can really just by winning a few more points um through anticipation, you can win, you can overturn these matches in your favor. So, for example, he mentioned where you need to try to notice patterns. So, say, you know, there was one of his one opponent that his player played that um that opponent every second serve he was hitting to the backhand. And so that's just like an automatic robotic thing that the opponent's doing. So you can, if you actually think about these things and try to recognize patterns, then you're gonna be able to then be prepared for that when it comes and you know, maybe maybe adjust and try to you hit your strength. Maybe you're you can like run around, you know, the and hit your forehand because you know it's coming to your backhand. Um, so I mean tactile anticipation is great. He also talked about um something called partial anticipation. It's interesting way that he he put that term, but it's basically kind of recognizing that when when your opponent is unable to hit, you know, very uh offensive shot, like are they on the defense. So, like classic one is you know, uh players on the run, and then you you can just move up because you know that they're not going to hit a very forceful shot at you. So um him breaking down anticipation to these different um buckets was really cool. And he also talked about um, like I mentioned, technical anticipation where you read your opponent's, you know, um body positioning and contact point, and and it was just like it really opened my eyes into how many different ways you can think about anticipation and and and help it like help you read where the ball is more likely to go.

Louis Caillet On Anticipation

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's amazing. Louis's content is so dense. Like I feel like that presentation you could probably watch it like five or ten times and learn something new every time. Um that's my experience with Louis. He's been on the podcast before, so some of the listeners are familiar with him. And it was like I talked to him in Australia last year, and it was like a I think it was just like a 20-minute podcast. And in that 20 minutes, I mean, there was just so much strategy gold. Like it was it was amazing. Um, but I I love that concept because most like the the I think it was the tactical one you mentioned most players, for example, on the return, like they return from the same position every time, right? And like a lot of club players might only have a slice serve in the deuce court. So like the player will go to their return position, get aced out wide, go to their return position, get miss a four-hand return out wide. And it's like, why aren't you just standing over in the doubles alley, see if they can hit a T serve? You know, so there's patterns like that that club players don't pick up on, and they should train themselves to, right? And I'm sure Louis articulates it way better than either of us can because he's um the best doubles coach in the world right now, probably. Um, so I'm looking forward to that one. That that'll be awesome. Um, what is uh what's number three?

SPEAKER_00

Well, number three is session from this this random guy named Will Bochek, I think his name is on uh doubles formations made simple. And he's not very good.

SPEAKER_01

We can skip this one.

SPEAKER_00

I think I think he's pretty decent, yeah. And uh, you know, I just I I love formations like constantly am telling people of how important they are they are, and I'm so glad that you know, you being you know such a great resource in doubles covered this. Um, formations have have changed, you know, match results for me. Um, I had a recent match, and you know, for this one, I maybe I can't say the match result changed because we did lose, but we won the second set after losing the first at 6-0 because I told my partner is like, hey, we got to do these, you know, formations are gonna help us a lot. So we went from doing like almost no formations, this was mixed uh nine, no doubles, to just doing them on her serve all the time and then on mine sometimes. And it just changed the whole trajectory of the match, you know. All of a sudden, you know, the people who were the my opponents who were in this groove of their their cross-court um returns, now they had you know me like just giving them like an uncomfortable um time of like, oh, where's Mirbahn gonna be going? Or like even if I didn't go anywhere, but we did like Aussie, then I would be blocking their favorite path. And so what I really like about your presentation, Will, is you you really do a great deep dive of you know each formation from like as we mentioned, Aussie affirmation, but also like two back, one up, one back, um, all the formations you can think of. And you I love it because you show um you know uh clips of like uh amazing players playing and showing showing like in visual form these formations and how and and how it works and and all that. So I really like you know your presentation was great. And um also one in thing in particular that I picked up that I actually didn't think about was you know, so one of my favorite things to do is to on on the ad side when I'm serving is to use the Aussie formation. And I always think about it as like, oh, I love this because I get to hit my forehand. What I didn't think about until I saw your presentation was you talked about also your volleying your partner at net giving them a better volley side because most people like the volley much better or significantly better with their forehand, right? So when you do an Aussie um formation on the ad side, then not only are you as a righty hitting a forehand, but then your your partner net is likely gonna hit a forehand volley, like you know, assuming that the the shots are coming into the middle. So I mean that was that was definitely something I didn't think about. And so overall, I just really appreciated how you you know went in depth in each formation and had like visual examples, was it was really good.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks. Yeah, it was fun to put together. Um, yeah, the Aussie in the Ad court is a really good one for righties, and I would encourage people listening if you do run that to actually call some poaches out of that. So you hit your serve and shift back into kind of regular, because a lot of times if you use Aussie and hit the uh do the same pattern every time. So you serve and then you shift to your right and your net player stays left, the returner can get into a new rhythm down the line. Um, before they're in a rhythm cross court, if you're using regular, then they can get into a rhythm down the line, and that net player needs to be able to go get that ball. Um, and when you do that, it's generally gonna be better to serve T or maybe body because it'll be a shorter distance for that net player to go. If you serve out wide and they go down the line, that ball is gonna be coming down the doubles alley. So it's it's really hard to get that far. Um but uh it depends on the the player's tendencies and stuff too, which is where Louie's presentation would come into come into play, anticipating where the return is gonna go. So um you can kind of you can kind of interweave all of these presentations together to come up with uh some double strategies.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, definitely.

SPEAKER_01

Um so do you have one more for us?

Doubles Formations Made Simple

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, this one might be a little shorter for y'all, but um Brady Height, um, he's he's a great uh great coach as well. Um daily tennis lesson, him and Mark do a nice job there. And so we his session is on moving together as a doubles team. And I'm curious about your take on this, um, Will, but he talked about a very cool visual that that I I liked, and it made me think about you know my previous match with a mixed doubles match where you know we I mean I don't like to you know talk about my partners, like blame them or anything, but you know, like sometimes my partner would leave the middle open, like the my partner would kind of like when the ball was hit in that my partner's direction, then that person would like move uh very quickly like to the alley, and it would kind of it would obviously like again open up a big gap. So what Brady was talking about was like a visual of being of the two partners being on uh on a tethered string and like keeping that that like distance and and you know just moving together in tandem. And I I like that that was a good good way to like again like easy visuals, simple visuals and tennis on explanation and greater, you know, simple explanations will help players um you know retain concepts easier and implement them. So I did I do like that. Um I'm wondering like how you might teach like movement and spacing. Is that concept like something you would you would also say?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Um I think I've seen this might have been a video of of Louis actually. Um it might be somebody else, but I think I've seen where um a coach had a doubles team on the court and literally tied a rope in between them and did not allow them to like obviously get create a huge gap in the middle because that rope was only so so long. Um so that would be like a simple way to teach it. Uh but the concept kind of visually makes a lot of sense. So if, for example, um you And I are playing, and you're returning in the deuce court. And let's say we're playing two back. If I see the opponent hit a really good wide serve and you go to your right and you're stretched with your forehand volley, and they're playing eye formation, and you hit a forehand return that I feel like, okay, this is probably going at the net player. I should shift to my right to cover the middle because the middle is going to be the easiest volley for that net player. Now we probably lose that point anyways because you're off the court and they hit a good first serve and they got a volley for their net player. But if I don't cover the middle, they probably win 10 out of 10 of those because it's a very easy volley. But now that I send them to the outside, maybe they miss like two or three out of 10, and we get an extra point off of that every now and then. So being able to recognize when your partner is out of position and then kind of covering for them and shifting with them, I think is a huge concept. Um, so I don't I don't know if I have a great way to teach it other than explaining it that way. Um, I guess I could try to create some kind of physical rope that connected people at my doubles camps. Maybe I'll try to do that next year. Um yeah, yeah, I like the idea. Um, but yeah, it's it's a really important concept that uh Brady's spot on. Like you've gotta be shifting with your partner. Um in a lot of like doubles drills, right? Uh like king of the court style stuff, there'll be a rule where like if you hit a winner through the middle of the court, you go over automatically. Um, and there's a reason for that. Like we want to control the middle of the court and doubles. So if your partner's out of position, you've got to shift to the middle with them um to try to try to close that gap.

SPEAKER_00

Most definitely, most definitely. And uh yeah, I mean, these sessions are just I mean, they have so much good information in them, and and I really have to applaud the coaches because they they put a lot of effort into their presentations too. And um, you know, these are I mean, there's just all high performing coaches, and you know, they've played at the highest levels or they've coached at the highest levels, they put out content for you know many, many years. Um, and I'm also really excited uh, well, we'll be today for the viewers, but um, I'm also gonna have a live stream with um Gigi Fernandez, who's you know won 17 grand slams, and uh I don't have any tips from her because we you know haven't live streamed yet. But uh, you know, that's another you know great one for you all to attend because you can obviously just ask away, ask your questions. Uh I try to my best to you know facilitate uh asking all the questions that that we can from the audience. So um you know it's a great chance to you know ask questions from one of the most successful doubles players in history.

Moving Together As One Team

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, that's amazing. I've learned a ton from her too. She was on the podcast a few years ago, and awesome. Um every time she puts out content, I I try to watch it because I always learn a lot from her. She's such a good she's cool because she's like played at the highest level, right? Like winning so many grand slams, and then also now like specializes in coaching club players, you know, and that's a rare kind of uh rare skill set to be able to do both of those because even though a lot of the patterns and and strategies are the same at the pro level and club level, there are some kind of subtle differences that uh pros don't always necessarily pick up on. Um and the the present the chat with Paul Anicone was great too. I watched that earlier today. Oh, thanks. Um, and he talked a bit, but he was talking more about singles, but I feel like he talked a lot about kind of your game identity and like how to develop yourself as a player. So it 100% applies to doubles players as well. Um, so I thought that was a really good one too.

Beyond Doubles Sessions And Wrap

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, thanks, Will. And you know, we obviously have um, you know, Wednesday is a doubles day, um, but there's also obviously a lot of other sessions that will help you a lot too. You know, that day four, which is Thursday, is gonna be, you know, mental game and physical readiness. So we have some amazing people like, I mean, Dr. Mark Kovax, I think your audience probably knows him, but you know, um, he's actually coaching Francis TFO now, so it's pretty good. Um, yeah, yeah. And he's just like a top performance physiologist, um former USD Sports Science Director. And then actually got Dr. Larry Lauer, who's the mentor um, he's the mental skills uh director of mental skills, I believe it is, or mental mental performance at USA Tennis. So, and then we've got some great people doing fitness as well, and um, and yeah, and then day five will be uh kind of a mix of different. I mean, the theme, the theme there is practice planning and training systems. So we're we're gonna have um Racket Flex talking about uh surf plus one and um you know uh Edgar Giffnik talking about like what to practice and what to ignore. That was a really great one. I filmed that with him recently. And and that one, you know, it's very important to know or find out what is it that will give you the biggest return on investment in your game. And so I think you'll really enjoy it because he did the exercise with me after he did the presentation. So Edgar asked me these eight questions, and it really helped me to discover like what it is exactly in my game that I need to improve on. And it was really cool because we established really early on that you know, I that I play 90% plus of my matches uh as doubles matches because of USC leagues, that's the majority of the of the uh format. And so we went through that those questions and discovered like what it exactly it is that will give me the biggest return on investment in my game that will help me win more matches and more matches in in league play. And so I highly encourage you to check that um that one out because it's so important, obviously, right, to like know, like find out what is it that will truly help me win more matches? Like, because there's so many things like that you know you can work on, right? There's like technique, strategy, mental game, and like so many different strokes, but to be able to narrow it down, like what is truly important, um, is gonna help you a lot. Because he said, for example, like you maybe you might want to you think that you should get more serve speed, but is that really helping you win more matches? I don't know, probably not. You know, there's other things that can give you more return on investment. So, you know, that one's a great one. I just mentioned, you know, just a few of these sessions to highlight that there are a lot of sessions, even if they're not doubles focused, which today, when you listen, if if it's on Wednesday, they are, they're all on doubles, but there's also non-doubles sessions that will help you with your doubles game.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, 100%. I mean, I'd always try to watch as many as I can, and that that one with Edgar sounds great too. Um so, anyways, Miraban, uh, we're gonna let you go because I know you've got uh more tennis summit to prepare for and emails to write and everything else. So I appreciate you coming on and doing this. Um, and for everyone listening, we'll link in the show notes so you can sign up to Tennis Summit for free.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, awesome. Thanks, Will. Keep up the great work. Really appreciate everything you're doing for the tennis community. Awesome. Thanks, man.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks.