Transcription
Now he's risking it, right? That was a good one. But if he gets it high enough, boom, then I'm able to attack the ball.
Are you a pickle ball player over 50 who could use some help with your dinking? In this lesson, I'm going to show you three keys that the pros use in their dinking and that you can use, too. Let's dive in and get some real coaching.
It's common for pickle ball players to think that they need to dink like this with a top spin dink or like this with an under spin dink. Now, there's nothing wrong with spin dinks, but they're not the only way to have an effective dinking. And in fact, for many amateur players, it leads to more errors than they need to have in their play.
Let's look at some game tape now to see how the pros use flat neutral dings as part of their overall dink strategy. Let's take a look at a pro men's match. We're going to have a counter come up in a second where we're going to count the flat dings and the spend dings as they happen. Let's count the flat dings and the spend dings in this rally of pro footage made possible by the PPA, which is the Professional Pickleball Association. If you've never checked them out live, you should definitely check them out live if they come your way and follow their action on Pickle Ball TV.
Spin dinks have gotten out to a lead, but flat dinks are making a comeback. Tyson McGuffin tends to hit a lot of flat dings. He's one of the best defenders in the game and hardly ever misses a dink. This rally is almost over. We're going to have a total of 19 dings hit, of which eight will be flat dinks, meaning that 42% of all the dinks in this rally were flat.
We're not going to do the counter again, but we're going to watch this rally between four top female Pearl players. So, you can see how simply they hit their dings as well. Even the last dink here has a little bit of cut to it, but not too much. So, you can clearly see how even the pros use a flat neutral dink as part of their dink strategy.
Now, you may hear some players at your courts refer to these dinks as dead dinks or dumb dinks. Ignore that noise. Don't get caught up in them because even the pros use those dinks as part of their play. And no offense to your friends who are calling them dead dinks, the players against whom those pros are competing against are way better than anybody at our local courts. So if they can hit the dink that way, so can we.
So what are three keys to an effective dink that we can learn from the pros?
Key number one has to do with the net. You'll notice that when the pros dink, they do not needlessly risk the net. Yet, amateur players often times are trying to skim the net with their dinks. Skimming the net increases the chance that you're going to make an error with your dink, and it's not necessary. As you can see, the pros give themselves a reasonable margin over the net. So, the way you're going to fix this is stop skimming the net and instead give yourself a nice clearance on your dinks.
Key number two to how the pros dink is you'll notice that they don't dink to the player. Instead, they dink to a predetermined spot on the court. We cover those spots specifically inside our Better Pickle Ball Academy. For purposes of this lesson, the key is this. Don't dink to the player. This zone here in front of me with this colorful arc is a danger zone. So if you get used to dinking toward me, what happens is if your dink goes a little bit deep, I'm able to get out of the air in the danger zone and attack it. If instead you're dinking to a spot on the court that is outside of my danger zone, your dinks will be much more effective.
I've asked my friend Paul to help me demonstrate this. What I'm going to ask Paul to do is first to dink outside of the danger zone arc. And then I'm going to have him dink to me as a player to show you the risk. So, initially Paul's going to be dinking to the middle, which is an underutilized part of the of the court. So, if he dinks there, I can't attack that ball. I need to get in there, right? I can't attack that ball. Now, if he goes Oh, good one, Paul. Now, if he starts going, let's say he starts dinking towards me now, right? Now, he's risking it. Right? That was a good one. But if he gets it high enough, boom, then I'm able to attack the ball. So you see the difference between attacking to a spot or dinking to a spot I should say and dinking to the player. Much more risk when you dink to the player.
Key three that the pros use to have really consistent dinks and that you can bring it to your game to reduce those dink errors is not over complicating the dinks when it doesn't make sense to do so. So, if you're hitting every dink like this with a top spin or trying to cut it or under spin it, consider adding a lot more flat open dinks like that, which is exactly the same way that the pros hit a lot of their dinks.
Let me know in the comments below if you think this type of dinking will work where you play or not, and try and use these dinks, which are the secrets to how the pros dink in their play. I'll see you inside our next lesson.