Transcription
Pickleball is evolving quickly. Serves, drives, dinks, and volleys are all hit very differently than they were just a couple of years ago. And in 2025, I think the return of serve is due for its big overhaul. So today, we're going to be talking about one of the most important shots in pickleball, and that is the return to serve. So I'm going to go over kind of three different styles or three different ways that you can approach this shot. I'm going to talk about the pros and cons of each one, and I'm going to tell you why I think in 2025, the aggressive return is going to be the way to go.
So when we're talking about the return of serve, there's a balance that we have to strike. There's always a give and take between the main two kind of goals that we have, which are number one, getting to the kitchen line, and number two, hitting a quality return. So I would say four or five years ago, the priority was put more on getting to the kitchen line. You were seeing more kind of slice returns, more spin, a little bit of a floaty your ball, so there wasn't much on the shot, it was hanging in the air longer. But the benefit of that is that gives you more time to get up there and get settled at the kitchen line. Obviously, the reverse of that would be the harder we hit the ball, the more we go after the return, the bigger swing we take, all of those things could sacrifice our ability to get to the kitchen line quickly. So we're going to work through kind of what's the best formula of those two things.
So let's start with version one. I'm going to call this the 2021 return of serve. It's going to be underspin. It's going to be a nice compact swing, and it's going to be a big focus on moving through the ball. Okay, so we were chipping the ball a lot. Think of like a chip and charge in tennis, and we were hitting floatier returns that were giving us a lot of time to get up to the kitchen line. We started to realize that underspin helps our opponents a lot. The more underspin you hit means the more topspin that my opponent can hit. You were seeing at the pro level, and then filtering down to other levels, that the people were going away from the underspin, and we are just hitting a little bit flatter returns, a little bit harder. But again, this this concept that it was still kind of a push through the ball and using your body weight to move into the return. So we'll call that the 2023 return.
What I think we're going to see in 2025, and what I've been doing and noticing in a lot of our pro rec play games, is a fuller swing and a full-on almost groundstroke return with the main focus on being hitting the ball very hard and deep. What you're going to give up for doing this is you may be a step late to the line, but we can live with that because it's going to make the third shot for our opponents so much more difficult. If you're absolutely just ripping that return, laying into that ball, hitting it hard and deep, you're going to have them on their back foot.
So the main thing that I want you to do to practice this is we're going to practice, you know, focusing on how we actually finish our swing. So for example, if I was just back at the baseline hitting groundstrokes and I'm really trying to hit through the ball, I'm going to have a full finish on either my forehand or backhand. Now, for me, I've always had when I return, it's always been kind of a different technique because I'm moving through it, that tends to cut the finish off a little bit. Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to try to practice keeping that full finish. We're going to practice groundstrokes first without any forward movement, so you're just going to drive back and forth with your partner. Once you get that, then we're going to try to add some forward movement to it while maintaining that full finish, really that keeping that drive through the ball.
So a couple things I want you to keep in mind. If you are going to use this style of return, it's probably good that you try to get your partner more involved. If your partner knows that you're going for more and you're possibly going to be maybe a step late to the line, we're expecting maybe a weak third or maybe a weak drive. So what I'd like to see is have your partner come over and help more and take a little bit more court, knowing that you're going to be that step late. And remember that for this return of serve, it's not a one-size-fits-all thing. This is going to depend on how strong your groundstrokes are, what maybe your tennis background is, what your movement level is. Keep in mind that one of these three versions of returns that we talked about is going to work best for you, but I want you to keep this this more aggressive option on the table.
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