Transcription
I'm Matt from the pickleball clinic, and today I'm going to show you guys one of the most fun and effective shots that you can use on your third shots. This is going to be a Top Spin Drive.
The Top Spin Drive is super effective because you can really lay into that ball and hit it hard and get it to spin down over the net so that your opponents are hitting it from below their knees. Imagine you're hitting your drives and your opponents are hitting it below the net. They have to pop it up or dink it. That's why the Top Spin Drive is so effective. Top spin makes the ball go down.
The first thing that we need to do in order to get more spin on our shots is understand where spin comes from. How are we going to generate spin? Spin is created by the friction between the ball and the paddle. So if I come from under the ball here and as I hit, I move my paddle up, I create this friction that causes the ball to move forward. So when I swing up, the ball is going to go forward. That's going to create my top spin.
If I come from on top of the ball and swing downwards, now the ball is going to move backwards. That's going to create my slice or my backspin. Whichever direction the paddle is moving in when it makes contact with the ball, that's the direction we're going to get spin in. So if I come from under and up, I get spin to go this way, forwards. If I come from the side, I'm going to get some side spin. If I come from on top and down, I'm going to get some backspin. So whichever direction the paddle is moving in, that's the direction that the ball is going to spin in.
Now, the first tip to hitting a good Top Spin Drive is going to come before we even prepare to hit the ball, and that's going to be to make sure that we're using the right grip. There are many different grips that we can use in pickleball: Continental, Eastern, semi-western, and western. Those are going to be our four classifications of our grips.
The main grip that beginners are usually taught is going to be our Continental grip. That's going to be our universal grip that we can hit pretty much every shot in the game from. That's where my first knuckle is going to come on to bevel number two of the paddle. All these paddles have eight bevels, so my first knuckle is going to come on a bevel number two, if for counting from the top, one, two, right here on the side. My first knuckle goes right there. That's going to be my Continental grip.
The Continental grip is great for hitting backspin, it's great for our slice shots, it's great for our dinks, and it's even pretty good for our serves if you want to hit a flat serve. But what Continental doesn't give us is the ability to hit really good top spin.
So in order to get more spin, what I'm going to do is I'm going to rotate the paddle in my hand. So I'm going to go to either an Eastern grip or even a semi-western grip. If you're playing with a new paddle like this Pro XR paddle, a thermoformed carbon fiber paddle, you can go towards semi-western. Otherwise, I'd recommend Eastern.
But here's how we find them. So an Eastern grip is when we're going to put that first knuckle on bevel number three. So remember, we're counting one, two, three. So this long flat part is facing up, my first knuckle goes right on top there. That's going to be an Eastern grip. This is one way to hit a Top Spin Drive.
If you want to get even more spin, especially if you come from a tennis background, I wouldn't recommend this for all players, but if you played tennis or want to try to get some extreme spin, then we can go to a semi-western grip. A semi-western grip is when that first knuckle is going to be over on bevel number four. So that's this one's three, then four is one more over to the right. I'm going to turn my arm to rotate the paddle, and then my first knuckle is on bevel number four.
And then the last grip we can use, which I actually would not recommend for anybody to use unless you're Riley Newman, is going to be a western grip. That's when our knuckle goes all the way off to this ridge over here on the side, and that's going to be really hard to hit because we have to contort our wrist.
Now to understand better why we get more spin with these grips: If we're in a Continental grip, when I make contact, the paddle naturally is going to be flat here. So when I swing, I'm going to swing and just come straight up. Now, if I move towards Eastern, that same contact point, now look, the paddle faces angled down a little bit. So in order to get my paddle face flat to contact, my wrist has to come back a little bit. So that way, when I swing naturally, my wrist closes on top of the ball to create this under and up motion, like we said before, that's how we get top spin and this under and up.
So Eastern is in a neutral position, flat or towards the ground. So what I have to do is rotate, which naturally means that after I hit, I'm going to come here because remember, no matter what spin we're hitting, we have to make contact with the flat paddle face this way, or else the ball is going to go in the net. If I make contact here.
Semi-western is even more extreme. So if I go over to my semi-western grip, now the paddle is really facing towards the ground in a neutral flat position. So what I have to do is rotate my arm back even more from my contact point. So now, before I hit the ball and after I hit the ball, we're going to go this way naturally. So as I swing, I'm going to snap forward even harder from the semi-western grip. So that's why you're going to get even more spin.
And then the Western, of course, the even crazier grip, we have to do crazy things with our wrist to get over it. That's why if you somehow manage to hit in Western, you're going to get a ton of spin. But seriously, I wouldn't recommend trying that.
Now, we're going to get into the actual swing pattern of a Top Spin Drive. So we're going to talk about what we're doing with our arm, what we're doing with our legs, and the rest of our body in order to get as much spin as possible.
So the first thing we want to make sure that we're getting below the ball. So if I want to hit a lot of top spin, I have to bend down. I got to get down with my knees. Remember, spin comes when we're coming from under and up. So I have to get down under the ball. That's the very first thing to hit top spin. We're going to get low and we're going to stay low throughout the entire shot.
Next, we want to make sure that we're engaging our wrists and our forearm properly. So before I make contact with that ball, I have to drop under here. That's going to be turning my wrist down and my forearm down. So that way I can drop the tip of the paddle. If I'm hitting with my paddle face square, parallel with the ground, I'm going to be flat here because I'm not dropping under it. What I want to do is get my paddle tip pointing down towards the ground on about a 45-degree angle. So that way, when I come to the ball, I'm going to be able to flick over the top of it this way.
And then we want to make sure that we're following through all the way up over our shoulder because if we stop the follow through here, it's not going to be a fluid, relaxed motion. So we're not going to get as much spin as possible. So when I swing through the shot, I have to make sure I'm following through up to my shoulder.
And then we want to pretend that we're sneezing into our arm. We're getting our elbow up to cover our mouth. That way I know I'm following through all the way and I'm getting a nice high follow-through, as opposed to a follow-through down low, which is going to cause the ball to go down. Remember, we have to shape the ball. So you want to envision the direction that we're going to create the spin in, that's that forward motion, and then get the paddle to do that exact motion.
Now, as you guys could tell from some of those shots, the main benefit to hitting a Top Spin Drive is that your opponent's going to be returning it from low, below the net. If you hit a flat drive that comes right to the chest level of your opponent, that's going to be the strike zone. That's going to be an easy spot to hit a block volley from. But if you hit a Top Spin Drive and it comes over the net and then dips down, they have to hit it from their knees, which means they have to open up the paddle face to return it, which means if they don't dink it in the kitchen, it's going to be a pop-up for your opponent to come and crash on a shake and bake play.
The Top Spin Drive is one of my favorite shots for that reason. It's going to allow you guys to get up to the kitchen and win points really quickly, especially against players that aren't really used to that kind of spin.