Transcription
I'm here with pro pickleball player Colin Johns, one of the best right side players of all time.
Today, I'm going to teach you how to dominate the right side.
All right. So, to start, what are some general strategy points we should be keeping in mind when we're playing the right side?
Yeah. So, as a right side player, as a righty, you kind of have to approach things a bit differently because you're not equipped to be quite as aggressive in the middle as your partner is in certain situations. Certainly the modern game you'll see more of uh aggression from the right side player. Um, but just knowing that your partner is going to have greater reach with something like a forehand. Also they're going to tend to take the third shots in the middle and so forth. This can differ a little bit person to person. Um, but you really have to get into the mentality to me of making your partner look good and it's not something everyone is super comfortable with. Um, so even determining whether you're going to be a good right side player. Um, if you're not a lefty, obviously lefties belong on the right side, but if you're going to be a right side player, you need to approach it such that you don't feel like you need to take the credit for everything. Um, setting up your partner should feel just as good as hitting the winner yourself. So, I would say the mindset just to start is very important.
In in general, we think of the right side sometimes more of like a defensive position and the left side is offensive or stronger versus more passive. So, where would you see that balance just to get started?
Yeah, you want to think of yourself more as the setter and the other person can be the hitter. So, for example, if I set them up with something with a dink and to the corner and we get a floater to the middle, it's just natural. It makes a lot of sense for me to let my partner then finish that point. Um, in the absence of having a lefty forehand in the middle, it just you have more finishing power with a shot like that. Um, so just knowing that, accepting that, and really getting in tune with that, and making sure your partner's in sync with you, that's very, very important.
And then one thing I want to address for the pickle ball community as a whole, cuz we hear this all the time, that typically the left side player is the stronger player. Would you say on the pro tour amateur level just in general, is that something that holds to be true or is that something that we should kind of start to forget about?
I would say because most people are right-handed, that will generally be more true than not, but at the top levels of the game, it's not necessarily true. I would say that the left side player tends to be the more aggressive player and tends to have some flashier shots than the right side players. Not strictly always true. Um, but I would say simply because everyone's sort of been in the mindset for a long time is you have to be the alpha player from the left side. Again, a lot of that is due because most people are right-handed. you're going to be able to take more court when you're stretching with the forehand than with the backhand. Um, certainly it could be done if you're a tall lefty and you move well. Certainly you could apply the same concept from the other side of the court. Um, but I do think that that sort of stereotype of the better player plays the left is generally true, but it's changing more and more.
Yeah. No, it makes sense. I love taking my forehand on the right no matter who I'm playing with too. So, I guess it kind of depends. What should I done? So, that's actually a great segue. So, you can see if somebody's not super familiar with playing with a particular player, that can cause some issues in the middle. So, clearly I pump fake my partner on that ball that he missed. So, you really have to work out who's going to take that middle ball and establish what you're trying to do with it. So, you can see that ball bounced more in the middle of the court from more of a straight angle and I moved over to take it as the right side player. So, the problem with this is it really creates a lot of indecision between me and my partner. In this particular position where the ball is really moving more towards my partner than it is for me, unless I can be very aggressive, maybe get a backend flick out of the air, it really doesn't make a lot of sense for me to take this ball from my partner for another reason as well. If the ball lands in the middle, and presumably we've been working this corner since this player just hit the last ball. If we want to keep the ball in that corner of the court, it makes more sense for the player across from the ball to take this next shot to that corner because it allows me as the right side player to stay more stationary and be more ready to counter if he potentially attacks and my partner is then ready to cover anything down the middle. So, you can really isolate a corner a lot better if you're allowing the forehand from the middle to take the ball inside out. The same thing could be applied if I were a lefty and I could work this side. So, it's not exclusive to the right and left side. It really just depends on the forehand and also the direction the ball is coming from. So, this would be less true is if the opponent was in that corner hitting a dink. So, Aaron, if you want to jump over there, this would be less true on a ball like this because now the ball is carrying more towards me. it puts my partner further out of position and then if he wants to work that same corner again, we're both going to have to shift. So in this particular case, I could move my feet over enough to get a forehand or this might be a time I would take a backhand. So just keeping in mind the sort of angle that's coming at you is also very important.
Now let's talk about a speed up situation that I feel like a lot of people get wrong when you're a right side player that's being aggressive. So, we're going to have Aaron stand in front of me here. He's going to dink me a ball. I'm going to speed up at him. I'm going to try to get him to get the ball somewhere in this vicinity. Essentially, catch him late enough to bring the ball over my left shoulder. Now, in this situation, you want to let your partner swoop in and finish off the rally. It's just much easier after I've initiated to get out of there and let somebody with the full stretch of and the power of a forehand to finish the rally rather than a high backhand. So, let's take a look at that.
Oh, I missed it. He came up empty, but that's the idea. where I catch this guy late, he brings it back on my half of the court. But as a right side player, I should know that my partner should be close enough to me based on court position to finish with that forehand. So that's yet another opportunity for you as a right side player to allow your partner to ultimately hit the winner by you really set them up for it.
So quick followup there on that. How far should I be coming over? Is it just when I see you speed up, I should just be looking to crash?
So, there are certain uh things that you can look at that are indicators that I'm going to speed up. Certainly off the ground, the more the tip goes towards the ground, the more likely I'm going to speed this up with top spin, in which case you're going to want to slide towards me. Cuz generally involves return more or less in the same direction it came from, which in a lot of cases going to drift towards the middle if they're just a little bit late. So, another indicator is if the ball is somewhat elevated and I look to be stretching forward, that's also a prime opportunity to attack. Essentially, the more indicators you get that I'm about to attack the ball, the more you want to get towards my left shoulder. Because you want to think about it in terms of percentage. If I'm attacking straight ahead, which most of the time I will be, it's very difficult for him to counter behind you, unless I really hang you out to drop, in which case it's on me. So, essentially, you can start to play two-on-one versus this player. This is something that I used to run a lot with Ben where I would attack out of the air and he would be hugging my left shoulder. So far, this person feels like they're playing two-on-one and then I slide over for a backhand. Ben slides in with the forehand and now you're in big trouble. So, as long as you hit that first initial speed up well enough to where they're not going to burn you behind, you're going to be in great shape. But let's take a look at one more speed up to where you swoop in for the winner right after.
So, presumably, I then need to trust that you're going to be out of the way.
Yes. All right, cool. So, this is really important. You have to trust that your partner's going to be there and you have to trust that I'm going to get out of there because it's every bit as important for me to move as it is for you to come and take it. And that's where being in sync with your partner as a right side player is so important. Very tempting to go back and try to hit this because it is a juicy ball, but your partner has a better play on it. So, let them have it. So, you saw an example there where I caught him extra late. Even if you're hugging my left shoulder and you're really exaggerating it right now, you're still able to move back and cover that ball unless he hits it extremely sharply and extremely well, you're still going to get a paddle on it and we're still going to be in the rally. Let's do it again. And there he gets the perfect setup. And even though I'm the one who is responsible for that winner, a lot of people will look over at this court and they'll be like, "Boy, that left side player, he's having a great day. He's finishing a lot of points." So, don't let that bother you as the right side player. If anything, you should feel really good about it because you're doing your job really well. Your job in this particular situation is to be the center and you've allowed your partner to be the hitter. And one question we get, especially from intermediate players, cuz when I'm teaching, I get this all the time. Well, how far over should I come? Should I cross on my partner's side? Obviously, we've gotten rid of that here with this theory, the strategy here. And that's obviously the right way to play where you almost want to ignore this line and this, you know, each player having that side. But if someone's asking me, well, how far should I come over, right? Like let's say um you're giving me that setup and I'm coming over to here. An intermediate player might say, well, that's like, you know, 2 to 3 ft over onto your side. So where do we is there a place that we draw that line or is it just I trust you're going to get out of the way, so I'm going to crash. Or where do we where's that distinction?
Yeah, that's going to be a little bit different for everybody. Not everyone can move like Ben John. So, you can't go quite as far and still recover. But what I really would encourage everyone to do is erase this center line from your mind. One day, I'm going to make a pickle ball court without this line. And we're going to see how much better you can train people to be in position. So, essentially, you want the end of your range as the left side player to end with a stretch forehand that ends where my range on the backhand is limited. So, in an ideal world, I'm lefty, so I don't have to give up as much space. And then when I stretch with the forehand, you stretch with the other forehand, we can cut everything off fairly comfortably. The issue here is there's a little wrinkle when you have two righties because my range is more limited by reaching across my body for a back end. Obviously, you have to come towards me enough to cover this void cuz what left side players get very good at doing is they find this void in the middle where you have the weak spot in the defense that you wouldn't have if I were a lefty. So something I would uh give a tip to the people that would maybe be a little bit late getting back or covering. You can cover more space when the ball is on that side if you lunge at a backwards angle. So instead of going completely laterally, something else that works really well is lunge at a diagonal back towards the corner a little bit more. The reason this works is the further the ball comes towards me from that angle, it's drifting towards me. So, if I get to here, that ball from Aaron is coming further and further towards my paddle versus if I'm strictly moving laterally, I'm not able to cut this ball off, and I also have less time. So, this comes at the sacrifice of me being slightly further back. So, I'm probably going to make contact a little bit lower. I won't have as good a hitting angle over the net, but at the same time, those other advantages can outweigh that. So, just keep that in mind. If you're really struggling to get into position after your partner initiates and you feel like you have to follow them too far, think about lunging more on a diagonal rather than strictly lateral.
Okay, let's talk a little bit about the backhand feed. I've been known to hit this shot a few times and I've had the luxury of playing with Ben John's for a long time. So obviously not everybody can slide as far as I have in the past, but what you can get good at is sliding at the right time to really throw off your partner's target spot. So as the right side player, if the ball's straight in front of me, I'm responsible for all the way to my sideline. So what I can do, because the backhand covers such a wide area when you're in a neutral grip, the continental grip allows me to cover backhands all the way from here. And if I slide the the paddle all the way across, I can literally hit back hands from here. Now, is this ideal? Probably not. But we're not always going to be able to read the ball in time to get a clean strike on the ball. So, making sure that you can hedge your bets a little bit to where I'm leaning more towards my backhand rather than guessing forehand or backhand. You'll notice that the timing is very important here. If I go too early and I move laterally to slide and get a backhand and make sure that the coverage extends all the way to my sideline, it opens up a void in the middle. So, you don't want them to bank on you going there and knowing exactly where you're repositioning. So, as he's about to fire, I'm going to slide just marginally over to my right such that my range of my backhand can get to my sideline because this is the really important part of this. The sideline protects me. If I can get my backhand to cover all the way over to here, even though it might be slightly awkward, I'm essentially making myself faster to react because I only need to react with one side of my paddle. So, if I get good at covering from here to here, and then I allow my partner the ability to come over with the forehand and he has that range to cover this weak spot in the middle. We're essentially forcing his shot to a lower percentage area. Certainly he could dink the ball crosscourt and it does take some range of mobility for the left side player to cover that but at the same time we're really shrinking his area to attack. Straight ahead attacks become much more difficult to execute effectively when I'm essentially able to cover all of the spots with one side of my paddle with the backhand simply by fading towards my right. So you can see that was not a perfect hit. He was able to jam me up to the right shoulder, but because I knew that I was going to be hitting a back end the whole time, I'm still able to fight it off. And now my partner, like we talked about in that last segment, is able to protect me with a stretch forehand in the middle. As long as I get this first ball down, we're in a very winning position cuz now he's got to get through one side of my paddle, my backhand, or he's got to go through the middle right where we want the ball to go. We've won so many points like this simply when I get on top of a backhand and Ben crashes in with the forehand after.
So you'd say when I'm speeding up and you're countering, your partner then is going to crash over with the forehand, right? As long as they see you get a read on that counter, they're going to come right over and look for that forehand.
Yeah. So this is important to be in sync with your partner. So just like that last segment we were talking about where we set it up with a speed up, the same thing is true when I get on top of a counter punch. Now, it's important that you do two things with your counter. One, you get down on it enough to where angles are not opened up behind your partner. And number two, you should hit this back straight ahead. Cuz the further the ball is on this side of the court, the more my partner can shift towards the center and not really have fear of getting burned behind. So, what you really don't want to do is accidentally fade your backhand counter crosscourt because now it really crosses up your partner and it's very difficult for them to swoop in with the forehand knowing that they're going to be out of position. So, making sure you get it down is number one. Number two, make sure you hit it back somewhere on this half of the court such that your partner can then get their hands on that next ball. So, even one like that that's not hit all that hard, as long as my partner's there for me on that next ball, it's going to be very difficult for the opponent to dig out something from his shoelaces and keep it away from that forehand that's waiting to pounce.
Perfect. Look at that.
So clean.
That was nice. But you see how easy it can be to stretch with the forehand here. You can get so much snap on the full stretch. That's the big difference between a backhand. You can only get so much. That's why someday all the best teams will be lefty righties cuz you can just snap it so hard here.
All right. So, some of these tips hopefully they've helped you become a better right side player. These are some of the things that I've certainly done over the past few years. So to recap a little bit, we have knowing what you and your partner should do as partners, agree upon it ahead of time, and be okay with being the setter and letting them be the hitter. That mindset is really important. Knowing who should take things like dinks in the middle based on angle. So knowing if the ball is more at a straight angle and you have plenty of time to communicate, generally the forehand is going to dictate better from the center. And then lastly, if you get the ball down on a counter or you initiate and the ball's floating towards the middle, let your partner crash in with the forehand and finish the point. You have a lot more success as a team. And just remember, you don't always have to get the credit. You win as a team, you lose as a team.
And one big thing that I'm going to take away from that is how important it is to communicate and be on the same page to have that strategy. Pickle ball is chess. It's all strategy. So much strategy in this game. So, make sure you're taking advantage of that and strategizing with your partner cuz I it feels to me that a lot of these things aren't going to work unless you guys are on the same page. If you got something out of that, make sure you like and subscribe. There's much more where that came from.