Transcription
Whether you're a beginner, intermediate, or advanced player, these double strategies we're about to share will help you win games at any level. And be sure to stay to the end because we have a massive giveaway that you don't want to miss. So let's get into it.
I want to talk to you about serving strategy. I see way too many people in pickleball that are just super conservative with their serve and they serve at about a four out of ten intensity, just because they want to get the ball in. While this might be good and eliminate errors, when you're struggling to score in pickleball, so let's say you kind of plateau and you haven't scored in a while, I want you to think about really going for your serve.
Now, what does it mean to go for your serve? What I mean by that is when you're serving, you don't just want pace. You don't just want it to be a low kind of line drive serve, but you also want depth. The way that you achieve depth when you're serving is through a combination of power, height, and space. So if I were to come up to the net here, when you're serving the ball, a lot of people, they try to keep this line drive, almost where the ball is barely over the net. But you actually want some height. The more height that you put on your serve, especially with the increase of paddle technology and the spin that you can create in today's game, the more height and spin you get, the deeper that ball is going to go, making it harder for your opponents to return the ball. So again, if you find yourself down in a game, game, or struggling to score, don't be afraid to hit the ball out. Add some height to your serve to create depth, and that will help you win way more pickleball points.
This next strategy has to do with putting your opponents at a disadvantageous position on the court. So we all know that most pickleball points are won and lost here at the kitchen line. One of the most underrated shots in pickleball is quite possibly the lob. Now, there are three times where I feel like the lob is a great strategy play: one being when you are the serving team, two being when all four players are at the kitchen line like dinking. This is a great time to lob because again, you're putting the opposite team off the best place to play, and three, when you disguise your lob as a dink because then you have that element of surprise. The lob is so underrated, and if you use it more, you will frustrate your opponents and win more points.
I was talking to my friend the other day who's a pro player, and he shared this secret with me about how about 90% of pro players get to the net. This strategy will help you win more pickleball points because you're going to get to the net a lot more consistently. And what this is, is it's the drive-drop combo. So on your third shot, what you're going to do is you're going to try to hit about a 60 to 70% drive. A lot of people, they hit that drive and they try to hit a winner, but that's not the point of what you're trying to do here. You want about a 60 to 70% drive, and you want to create topspin. That ball dipping over the net to force your opponent to have to hit up on the ball. This will make your third shot way easier because you're probably going to get a response that lands somewhere here in transition that you're going to be able to easily drop and move forward.
So this is what it's going to look like. If I get a return from my opponent here, I'm going to hit just a nice 60 to 70% drive. And you see what happened there is I didn't hit the ball super hard, I didn't take a big swing, but I focused on putting topspin, and that ball starts to dip over the net so my opponent can't do much with it. Now I'm going to get a response somewhere here in transition, and that ball is going to be way easier to drop than having to hit a drop from the back line. This will allow me to move forward to the kitchen line more consistently and win way more points in pickleball.
This next strategy is often overlooked, but when you start playing at a high level, especially, this is going to get you a lot of points, and it has to do with your speed-up choice and location. So first, let's go over choice, meaning the opportune time to hit a speed-up. One would be when your opponents are off balance. That's a great time to speed up the ball at them. Another is if you see them cheating a certain direction. So if they are hugging middle, speeding up maybe to their backside of the body is a great time to speed up there. And then another one is if you see your opponent's paddle hanging down by their side, that's a great time to speed up at their body.
Now let's talk about locations. There are three locations that I love to target. So one location being the paddle-side shoulder. This is a very hard spot to defend. This is what people call a chicken wing. Another is the paddle-side hip. So again, this jams up your opponents, it's very hard for them to hit. And then another one, and I would use this one selectively, is their body because again, a lot of times they don't have that ability to soften the ball because they're jammed up. So those are the three locations that I would target when hitting a speed-up.
The next strategy that it's important to understand in pickleball is about court positioning. So let's talk about what you're going to do with your partner if the ball gets pulled out wide. So if the ball goes this way, I'm responsible for covering this line. My partner would then want to come cover the middle. A lot of people when they first start playing pickleball, they think that's your side and this is my side. However, you really want to shade based off of where the ball is. So I'll take the ball back. If the ball were to go to this corner, my partner is going to shade and cover the line, and I'm going to pinch middle. But I want you to look at where I'm standing. I'm almost all the way on her side of the court. Now, part of this is because I trust my speed enough to get back and cover this, but this is the hardest shot for him to hit. If the ball's over on this side, it's crosscourt, and if he hits crosscourt, I have a lot of time to run over here and get the ball. But if I come hug this side, we're shrinking the court right now, so he has less options. There's no gap here, he can't go in front of him, the middle's plugged. We're really putting the hardest shot at the open court.
So now that we understand that, we're going to talk about respecting the X. Here's what I mean by that. This has to do more with who's responsible for hitting the ball. If you get this strategy of respecting the X, you and your partner are never going to get confused on whose ball it is again. So I'll take the ball back here. What respecting the X means is that whoever's receiving the ball diagonally or crosscourt has priority. So let's say the ball, go ahead and dink it crosscourt to me. You see how that ball is moving diagonally at me? That means I have priority over the ball. Now, if he were to hit the ball straight in front of him, that ball isn't moving diagonally as much, it's more coming in a straight line. So this is when I'm going to have to communicate with my partner, but I'm probably going to let my partner take this. What I wouldn't want to do is if he hits straight forward for me to come over. I can take this ball, but now we're in a really odd position when it comes to covering the court. Some people will come and mix doubles and pull the ball back out this way, but it's a good rule of thumb to remember the X. Whoever's receiving the ball diagonally should take priority over the ball. This applies to when you're dinking, but also when you're returning the ball or hitting your third shot. The person that has the ball coming diagonally should take priority. If you implement this, you and your partner are going to have much more success when it comes to communication on the pickleball court.
I'm going to give you a secret strategy to use against high-level players, and even players that are better at dinking than you. It's understanding the concept that straight lines give straight lines and angles give angles. I wish somebody told me this when I was playing really good teams, especially at the kitchen line. When you give an angle, meaning you hit a diagonal, even a hard, hard diagonal shot, what that does is that gives angles for them to come back at you. So if you're playing a team that's particularly better dinkers than you and your team, it's a great strategy to actually pound the middle and really go for your opponent's inside foot because the less of an angle that you give them, the less of an angle that they'll be able to hit on you. So if you find yourself losing points at the kitchen line because they're dinking you really aggressive angles, switch up your places and start dinking more straight lines so that you get less angles in return.
Now, this is also true when it comes to speeding up the ball. This is why a lot of times you'll hear people say, don't speed up crosscourt because when you speed up crosscourt, you'll get your partner in trouble because typically that ball's not coming back at you, it's going to come back at your partner. So when you're speeding up the ball, try your best to actually speed up straight in front of you, meaning at the person right in front of you, because that ball is typically going to be coming back for you, and you're going to be ready for it because you were the one that initiated the speed-up in the first place.
Thanks so much for watching. Be sure to like and subscribe to the PlaypPickleball.com YouTube channel. And as we mentioned at the beginning of the video, we have a massive giveaway for you guys. We're going to be giving away $200 worth of Selker store credit to five lucky winners. If you want a chance to win, find the link in the description below, and we'll see you on the next one.
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