Contents
The drop and the lob — the front-court pair
The drop finishes the rally or forces a sprint to the front; the lob is its natural answer — high, soft, deep, it buys time and sends everyone back. The two are trained together (the drop-lob routine: one player drops, the other lobs, fixed roles then swapped) because in a match they are the same moment of play. A drop is touch, not power: open face, ball taken early, floated just over the tin — and you follow your ball: an unfollowed drop leaves the whole court open.
The volley — stealing time
Taking the ball before it bounces steals the opponent's recovery time. Since the move to PAR-11 (every rally scores), the volley pays more than it used to: time pressure now converts directly into points. It builds solo against the front wall (short action, no backswing), then off a feed (intercept the floating ball before the corner), then in the « must-volley » condition game. One safety line always rides with it: no big swing at head height near the opponent — a controlled action is a conduct rule as much as a technique (Rule 8.10).
The boast family and the diagonal
The boast strikes the side wall first: the ball comes out toward the opposite front. It has several faces — the working boast (two walls, defensive, to escape a corner), the trickle boast (attacking, played soft from the front) — and one precise tactical job: opening the diagonal. The classic pattern: length pins the opponent deep → the boast drags them diagonally forward → the drop or the cross finishes. The boast-drive routine — squash's most famous: one player boasts from the back, the other returns a straight length from the front, endlessly — trains both shots and both players' front-to-back movement at once.
| Shot | Role | The risk |
|---|---|---|
| Drop | Finish, or force the sprint forward | High if not tight, or played out of position |
| Lob | Reset, buy time | Low — the front-court escape |
| Volley | Steal time, hold the T | Moderate — demands early positioning |
| Boast | Open the diagonal | High — a loose boast sits up for a winner |
For the youngest, these families are taught in graded form: the side-wall target game (the boast's idea, before the boast), the wall-volley count with catches allowed, the guided drop off a high, slow feed. The adult form comes with control — never the other way round.
Frequently asked questions
When to play short — and when to hold back?
Is the boast defensive or attacking?
Why is the boast-drive routine used so much?
Sources
Squash's training canon — the WSF framework, England Squash Junior 101 and Squash Canada (foreign curricula, cited as such), FFsquash (the Mini-Squash / École de Jeunes graded forms) — for the named forms (drop-lob, boast-drive, trickle boast, condition games); WSF Singles Rules 2025 V1.2 for the dangerous swing (Rule 8.10) and PAR-11. · Paak's squash corpus, files 03 (technique) and 04 (tactics — the diagonal) — verified September 2026.