77 Pickleball Tips and Tricks

Author

Shea Underwood
June 22, 2024

WEEK 21

Welcome back to the Road to Pro!

Here’s what you can expect this week:

  • The most important skills for every level of pickleball

  • Drills to help you develop these skills

  • Two new videos that offer a total of 77 pickleball tips and tricks for you

As always, I’ve answered a question that one of you submitted, and this week, Jaden gets a brand new paddle for his question! If you want the chance to win a paddle, click on the button below to submit your pickleball questions. Anyone whose question is featured in my newsletter will automatically win a new paddle!

Now let’s get to it!

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Q&A Spotlight

This week’s question comes from Jaden. Time to win a new paddle!

What are the most important skills a beginner should focus on when starting to learn pickleball?

Jaden

Answer: Great question! I’m going to answer it in regards to beginner, intermediate, and advanced.

This week I made a YouTube video about all these tips, so if you’re a visual learner, or if you just want to dive deeper into these topics, you can watch the video below.

Beginner (3.5 and below)

The most important thing for beginners is to have a solid serve and return. These are the two shots you are guaranteed to hit in every game, so you need to be confident in them.

Remember that the serve is the only shot in pickleball that you have full control over. Here are two tips for hitting a successful serve every time:

  1. Keep your motion compact. Avoid a huge backswing or a massive follow-through. A smaller, controlled swing ensures the ball stays in bounds. Focus on accuracy and consistency first, then you can work on power later.

  2. When you’re first working on your serve, aim for the area of the court halfway between the kitchen line and the backline. You’ve probably already heard people say it’s best to aim for a deep serve, and that’s true. BUT, when you’re a true beginner, you’ll need to give yourself room for error by aiming for the middle. This is a safe serve that will prevent the ball from going out of bounds until you have more skill to place it wherever you want.

For returns, your backhand is usually weaker when you’re first starting to play. Your opponents will often recognize this and target your weakness. If you want to avoid hitting returns with your backhand, just position yourself on the left side of your box (assuming you’re right-handed) so that you can hit any return using your forehand. If you do this, your opponent may hit a serve far to the side of the court, so be prepared to move quickly to return that ball if necessary.

Stand on the left side of the court for forehand returns

Intermediate (3.5-4.5)

Intermediate players often struggle with knowing how to transition from the backline to the kitchen line. Here are three key tips to help you do this well:

  1. Watch your opponent's paddle when hitting drop shots. A low paddle means you can move up; a paddle at or slightly above net height means you should stay back; a high paddle means you should back up further. If you want to dive a little deeper into this concept, I explained this in more detail in a previous issue, which you can read here.

  1. Move toward the side of the court where you hit your drops, and your partner should also move to cover you. For example, if you hit a drop to the middle, stay in the middle of your box. If you drop straight in front of you towards your sideline, move closer to the line to cover that area, and your partner should move over and cover the middle.

You and your partner shade the area where the ball is

  1. Avoid rushing to the kitchen too quickly. Often you aren’t able to make it all the way to the line off one drop. Sometimes you have to creep in slowly, defending shots on the way. So, when you are transitioning to the kitchen, make sure you are split-stepped before your opponent makes contact with the ball. This way you will be balanced and ready to move in any direction.

Be ready to move in any direction

Advanced (4.5-5.5)

One of the most important skills an advanced player should master is how to speed up the ball successfully. More specifically, if you truly want to take your opponents off-guard, you need to know how to disguise your speed-ups.

The key to doing this is, when you’re in a dink rally, make it look like you’re about to hit a dink every time. Position your body and paddle in the same way for every shot so that when you do hit a speed-up, your opponents won’t see it coming. Be sure to get your paddle under the ball and keep your motion small.

There are two approaches to hitting speed-ups:

  • One that you know is going out of bounds

  • One that will stay in

You’ll often hit a speed-up that is too high and fast for it to stay in bounds. The goal with these is that it’ll be too fast for your opponent to register whether it is going in or out before they hit the ball. If you’re facing an opponent that struggles to let out balls go, this kind of speed-up can really work in your favor. However, if your opponent is good at making these calls, they could let it go out, and you’ll lose the point. That’s the risk with hitting a speed-up too fast, but if you disguise your shot well, it reduces your opponent’s reaction time and increases your chance of winning the point.

The other type of speed-up is slower, but has the guarantee of landing in. This is when you focus on placement rather than speed. Since the ball is moving slower, your opponent has more time to react. However, if you target areas on their body that are awkward to return from, you could set yourself up for a winning shot. For example, if you notice your opponent holds their paddle low to one side, speed up the ball higher to the other side of their body. It’ll take them longer for them to get their paddle over, causing them to either miss the shot or pop up the ball for an easy put-away.

Aim for an angle opposite to where they are holding their paddle

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If you have a question you’d like for me to answer, please click the button below to fill out the question submission form.

If your question is chosen for next week’s newsletter, you’ll win a free paddle!

Announcement

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Drill Highlight

Like last week, I’ve provided drills for each level to help develop the most important skills we discussed above.

Beginner

To gain more confidence in your serves and returns, grab a friend to drill with and something you can place on the court to use as a target.

One of you can practice your serves while the other practices their forehand returns. Place a cone (or something small to use as a target) in the center of the box that you’re serving to. Start hitting your returns to this target while your partner positions themselves on the left side of the box to hit returns with their forehand. Do this until you both feel more control over your shots. Then switch positions and repeat.

When you practice these shots outside of a game, you’ll start to develop the skill and confidence to hit your serves and returns well every time.

Intermediate

You need to practice transitioning smoothly to the kitchen line. Use this drill to start looking for the signs to move up.

Position yourself at the backline with your drilling partner at the kitchen line. Have them feed you shots while you attempt to drop the ball into the kitchen. Pay close attention to the three things we looked at above:

  1. Look at your opponent’s paddle to see if you can move up or should stay back.

  2. Shade to the side of the court you drop the ball to.

  3. As you move up, split-step BEFORE your drilling partner makes contact with the ball.

This is a lot to focus on all at once if these are new concepts to you, so break it down to focus on one thing at a time. Start by hitting drops and watching your partner’s paddle (this will tell you what type of shot they are about to make). Stay back or come up depending on what you see. Once you make it all the way to the kitchen, reset and repeat. Do this a few times until it starts to become easier. Then bring in the next step and start shading to the side of the court you hit the ball to as you move in. Finally, add the last step and practice split-stepping before your partner hits the ball. Make sure that you aren’t moving forward in the court while they are making their shot.

Advanced

You can practice your speed-ups with a partner using a drill called “dink, speed-up, reset.” Both you and your partner should position yourselves across from each other at the kitchen line. Keep up a pattern of shots where you dink, your partner speeds up the ball, you reset; then your partner dinks, you speed up, and they reset.

While you are hitting in this pattern, make sure that you position yourself and your paddle for every shot like you’re about to hit a dink. When you speed up the ball, keep your motion compact, avoiding a big backswing or follow through. Try to target different areas of your partner’s body that make it difficult for them to return the ball, and also try using different speeds to see how your partner handles different kinds of speed-ups.

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For any level, it’s important to practice drills like these and many more so that you can start to implement new skills in your game.

Videos You’ll Enjoy

  • I just posted a new video this week where I dive into the coolest features of an innovative pickleball app called SwingVision. Check it out!

  • Here’s another new video on my other channel, Cracked Pickleball, where my friend Caleb and I go over 50 advanced pickleball tips in 10 minutes.

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