This is the classic boast and drive routine. The straight drive, close to the wall, landing behind the service box and dying into the corner is the bread and butter shot for racketball and squash. The back corners are where you want your opponent to be. As long as you are on the T and watching them there is nothing they should be able to do to catch you out and there is a good chance they will produce a week shot of poor length or coming off the side wall into the centre form where you can play a winner or at least keep them under pressure until a better opportunity presents itself. Good length balls can often be out right winners of course. Boasts (covered in the introductory and beginners’ sections) are where the ball is played to the front wall via a side wall (or, in extremis, of the rear wall). This is perhaps most often a defensive shot when the ball is too deep to get behind and play a straight or cross course shot to any sort of length. It is a weak shot played in desperation just to keep in the rally as it leaves the ball short in the front half of the court and a competent opponent on the T will have no trouble getting to it and keeping you under pressure. However, the boast can also be a very effective attacking shot when you opponent is behind you and you can play it from further up the court. In this routine boasts are played from the rear of the court.

When I was introduced to this drill it involved 3 players, a feeder on the back hand and forehand sides of the rear court and a hitter positioned centrally just in front of the T. One of the feeders would execute a boast serve from roughly opposite the back of the service box and the hitter on the T would advance to the ball and hit it to a straight length to the other feeder and move back to a central position in front of the T. That feeder would then boast the ball back to the opposite front corner from where the hitter would again play a straight drive down to wall so therefore back to the first feeder. From then on the feeders keep boasting to the front and the hitter keeps playing straight lengths until the routine breaks down. After a fixed time, say 2 minutes, the players rotate so that one of the feeders becomes the hitter and the previous hitter becomes a feeder. This way everyone get a chance to practice their straight drives and their forehand and backhand boasts.

The hitter should always move back towards the T and not just go from side to side near the front wall. This ensures they will normally be approaching the ball diagonally and give them time to adjust foot work and position to the variety of ball trajectories the boasting will produce.

Likewise the feeder should move back away from the side-wall after each boast so they have the time and space to adjust their position for the boast. The drives they will be boasting back will be of variable quality and a fair bit of movement will be required to do consistently good boasts.

This routine is quite demanding for the hitter and less so in terms of physical exertion anyway fora the feeders. It is probably more normal to just have 1 feeder, as demonstrated in the next sections and videos that develop the basic boast and drive routine. With only 1 feeder he or she has to move from side to side at the rear of the course and boast from both sides. Personally I find this the more useful routine as it means the feeder has to move as much as the hitter and improves their footwork and anticipation. Whether you use 2 or 3 players depends on how many players you have and how many courts available. Go for the 2 player variant if you can, especially with players that have already mastered the basics.

This video shows the normal 2 person routine with the focus on the feeder playing the boasts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CWSyf9Gc0U

This video focuses more on the front hitter playing drives. Both videos make it clear what the routine consists of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcS-0qsxcBI

This video is another good demonstration of how it’s done with some ideas on how to vary the boasts.