D I N K I N G S T R AT E G I E S
stay on the paddle for a fraction of a second longer to give
you more feel and consistency.
It’s not hard to tell when your opponent is gripping too
tightly on the paddle while dinking because the ball flies
off the face like a rocket. I call these people drive-dinkers
because they hit the ball low and hard. Sometimes these
shots are effective, but the problem is that the margin
for error is minimal. The shots often drift high across the
middle and get picked off, or they wind up in the middle of
the net.
The goal of loosening the grip pressure is to allow you
to change from a solid shot to a higher and softer shot.
Always remember that the mark of a good dink is that it
should be un-attackable. Oh, and the same grip philosophy
applies to the third-shot drop.
EXECUTING THE SHOT
Now that you know your positioning relative to the
line and you begin to work on your grip pressure and feel,
you’ll want to start thinking about where to contact the
ball. Ideally, we always want to make contact with the ball
in front of our body. I call this area the “impact zone.” We
never want to get it to our side or behind us. With few
exceptions, players who dink the ball from the sides of
their bodies make way too many errors.
Then there’s the issue with backswing and form. Many
pickleballers are tennis converts. That being said, you’ll
often see long backswings from these players. People with
large backswings tend to decelerate as they strike the ball.
So much for touch. The way I teach dinking is that I want
to see very little to no backswing at all. You want to have a
“short, simple, repeatable motion.” You should be able to
repeat your dink form 99 out of 100 times. Remember, we
are not trying to hit a winner. It is all about consistency.
OK, so now the ball is out in front of you and you’re
accelerating with a short dink form. So, how high do we
want to hit the ball? To answer this one, I ask, “What
happens to a pickleball when it loses its speed?” The answer
is that it drops straight down. The reason this is important
is because too many players aim their dinks 1-2 balls over
the height of the net. If you do this, too often you will hit
the ball short into the net. This vio