[0:00]Pickleball pros are pushing the limits of the game every single day, and they do some pretty unique things that we're going to break down so that you can add them to your own game. So you're the seven best tips you can take from the best in the game. Subscribe, it really helps us out a lot, and let's get into it. Let's do it. We'll start by learning from the best in the world, the number one women's player, Anna Leigh Waters. She recently broke down exactly what it takes to have a solid pickleball serve because she sees a lot of players struggling with a simple concept that she breaks down exactly how to fix. Let me show you what I mean. One of the biggest problems Annalee sees in amateur players is a concept called hitching in our serve. Hitching refers to the fact that when we go for a serve, we often accidentally add in a pause to our serve, which then removes all of the momentum that we would have when serving the ball. A lot of people get ready to serve and they get excited for the point and they do their prep, they bring their paddle back, and then they serve the ball. The issue is that when we bring our paddle back to get ready to serve, we're losing a lot of momentum that we would gain by simply swinging through the ball at the time of contact. So instead of doing this hitch and then serving, what we should do is just treat it like a regular forehand and do it all in one very fluid motion so that we get the full momentum from our swing plus all the spin. It just looks like this.
[1:19]I'm treating the serve like it's a regular forehand, rather than overthinking the fact that I'm serving the ball. The reason a lot of players do this hitch or some sort of pause before they serve because they're adding a lot of pressure to their serve because they really want it to go in. Or there's a lot of external factors that they're trying to account for. But in reality, a serve is just an extension of your forehand, and that's the most basic concept that Annalee adds to her serve every single time that she goes to hit it. She also recently broke down exactly where she aims her serves every time that she hits it. So as the number one player in the world, we have to give you this advice because it's the most proven and the most successful. So let me tell you her prime targets when she's serving. The first piece of advice when you're serving the ball is simply to know your opponent. So for example, we have Shay over here. Let's say Shay really prefers his backhand for some reason. So, when I go to serve the ball, he's biasing his backhand by shifting to the left side of the court, my left, and is ready to hit a backhand every single time. So, if I'm smart, I'm simply going to aim to the corner to try to get the ball to his forehand or maybe even at his body. But vice versa, if Shay's a forehand player, then you'll see he's biasing his forehand and he's really looking for that ball. So what we want to do is simply aim down the T. Now you might know that concept, but we go a little bit further in this next point. Those concepts are simply a starting point because the next thing Annalee Waters does is whenever she wants to be aggressive on a serve, she hits to one target more often than others regardless of her opponent's bias. And that is down the T, right here. The reason they serve down the T is so powerful in professional matches is because of the flight travel path of the ball. When you serve from T to T, the ball has to take the least amount of time to reach that spot on the court, meaning it's the fastest and one of the most difficult to reach. But I want to emphasize one point here. The professionals never go for these very aggressive serves when it is a crucial point in the match. Whenever you feel pressure during the match, let's say it's match point or maybe it's a very important exchange and you want to win that point no matter what, that's the time to back off of your targets, simply hit deep and rolling and let the ball go in the court. On important moments of the match, Annalee hits cross court rather than down the T because she wants the highest margin of error for her serve to go in and she simply focuses on depth rather than aiming for a great target. If it works for her, it's probably going to work for you. So play it safe, win the point matters, and go for aggression when you're up in the match and you're ready to add some power. Now let's learn something from our next pro, Zane. Our next tip is from the mind of Zane Navratil talking about making your attacks count. Speedups are really difficult to get correct. So for example, I have a ball right in front of me. If I hit this ball too hard, Caleb can just let it go, and it goes out of bounds. And if I hit it too soft, well, he'll just demolish me, right? So you want to be very specific about how you hit your speedups. The solution to this is to hit a very specific part of your opponent's body. So here's the problem. If I hit with my forehand to my opponent's backhand, they'll naturally go to my backhand. So I've hit a shot, my paddle's like this. They're hitting behind me, really difficult for me to do anything with that. Same thing over here. If I hit with my backhand to his forehand, he goes behind me. The solution to this is to hit across your opponent's body, not cross court, but across your opponent's body. So check this out. Same situation. If I hit with my forehand to his forehand over here, he has to move his paddle back, and more than likely he'll be hitting that shot in this direction. So I hit from here, here, and now my paddle's already ready across my body to put it away. Same thing on the backhand. If I hit across his body, his paddle has to go back. If he doesn't hit a perfect shot, well then my paddle's here, ready to put it away. Annalee was talking about this too, whenever someone actually does that, a good player just resets because they know they're going to pop it up. And just another extra tip here. You don't really want to try to hit this ball too hard. It's mainly about the placement of your shot. So you can take a lot of pace off this ball and instead add spin. That way, if they were to let the ball go, it just lands in the back of the court, rather than going out of bounds. Additionally, this has the added benefit of when you go across your opponent's body, very often they'll just let the ball go. And if their partner is not really good about closing the space between them, then you just get a free point. This trick from Zane really depends on you being ready for the next shot. So it's very important that after you hit your initial speedup, you keep your swing compact, that way you're ready for the next one because we're never really trying to win the ball on that first speedup. We're always looking to win it on the second one instead. Our next big tip comes from Roscoe Bellamy, who is one of the top singles and doubles players out there on tour right now. He had some great advice for what you should be doing on your third shot so you know exactly what kind of third shot you should be hitting, depending on the return that's coming towards you. So we're going to break down all of the returns that can come your way and how you should respond to those returns every single time that you see them. Let me show you what I mean. The first type of second shot that can come your way is one that we do not want to attack if we can help it. And it looks like this. When a ball is deep and low, this is not the time to try to drive and create offensive pressure against our opponents. Pros know this because they want to maximize every single point and get to the kitchen as consistently as possible. So when we try to drive a deep low ball, there's not a lot of margin. We are also more prone to popping it up to our opponents on the other side of the court because we're in a desperate position and it's hard to hit a perfect drive from a good return. So what we should do instead is after we serve the ball, always take a step back, be ready for the deep and low shot and instead lob it up with a third shot drop and then begin to work our way into the kitchen. When your opponent hits a good return, which would be deep and low, our goal is not to start the point aggressively. We understand that we're in the defensive position as the server and it's our job to slowly work our way towards the kitchen and be more consistent, rather than aggressive. The second kind of return that will come your way is the most tempting in pickleball. It's a second shot that is short and low. So when you hit a good serve, often it's difficult for your opponent to hit a deep return back at you. So what happens is they hit a drive and it can land somewhere in the middle of the court right here. The catch is that if that ball is not popping up, it can still tempting to want to be aggressive when you notice your opponent is hitting a weaker return. The issue is when the ball is too low to the ground in the middle of the court, this is actually one of the lowest margins of errors that you have in the entire game of pickleball. Trying to drive a low shot from the middle of the court is one of the easiest ways to make errors in pickleball because it's almost impossible. If you think about it, hitting the ball from down here forces you to hit upward on the ball in order for it to get over the net. And when you're hitting upward, you're often adding a little bit of power to also clear the net, especially if it's a drive. So what happens is we create an angle that makes it very difficult for it not to go out of bounds deep on the other side of the court. So what Roscoe recommends to do instead and what the pros do is instead of being tempted by the short ball, take it as a free drop and work your way into the kitchen. At the end of the day, this is the place we want to be to win points, so it's a better and more consistent decision to simply drop the ball rather than drive it. It's a big mistake we see a lot of beginner pickleball players make. But lastly, let's talk about the green light that the pros are looking for. When a ball is short and has the perfect combo of bouncing high, that's when we want to hit a drive. Because we are finally able to hit down on the ball, which allows us to keep it in the court. This is the time to get aggressive and start the point off to potentially get a hands battle or win it outright. I do want to talk about one exception to these rules. Sometimes your opponent hits such a strong return that we get pushed very far back off the baseline. So this is going back to that first type of return, a deep, but also high ball. If your opponent pushes you incredibly far back, it's almost impossible to hit a perfect drop from this deep into the court. So this is the one time we want to drive from behind the baseline just to get enough power to work ourselves back into the court. The catch is when you drive from behind the baseline, the goal is not to be aggressive from back here, but instead just get ourselves back into the point so that we can work our way up to the kitchen. A lot of players try to be too aggressive from behind the baseline and end up costing themselves the point because they pop up the ball too high to their opponent. This next pro tip is from Callie Jo Smith and it's helped over a million people. Let's break it down. Dealing with a well-hit drive at you is one of the hardest things to defend in pickleball. The common response to a well-hit drive is to take a full swing and try to hit it hard back. But there's three things that go wrong with this. Number one is when you take a large swing, it's really difficult to time that shot. So imagine your opponent's already hitting a really hard shot at you, trying to take a really big swing and hit it yourself is difficult to do. And if you're hitting your paddle anywhere that's not around the center area, you're probably going to have a miss it, which is not what you want when you're taking a full swing. The second thing is that when you take a full swing, it's very likely you're adding too much power to your shot, which could easily lead to the ball going out of bounds. They're already adding a ton of power to their drive, you don't need to hit it with that much power yourself. And the third thing is when you take a full swing, your recovery time is a lot shorter than it otherwise could be. So if your opponents are running a strategy like the shaking bake where one person drives and the other person crashes over, if my swing is really big, I'm probably not ready for the next ball that comes back to me. Thankfully, the solution from Callie is really simple. You want to be using what we call a punch volley, and it really is just like it sounds. It's a really short compact movement that leads to a lot of great results. So, number one, this almost ensures great contact. Because your paddle's moving so minimally, it's really easy to put it in the right spot, and you don't have all these timing mistakes that you would get from taking a really large swing. And additionally, you're keeping the paddle in front of you so you can see the paddle the entire time, as well as the ball, so it makes it that much easier to see where your paddle is in space, and then make good contact. And then number three, which I've probably done a bad job showing you here, but in anything you do in pickleball, you want to stay low and in athletic position. This just ensures that you're in the best position possible to make good contact and to recover really quick for the next shot. So now you can be offensive on a well-hit drive at you, but what if your opponent drops the ball? Well, Caleb will show you how to do that right now. Our next tip is from Brandon Sechong, who has mastered how to stay aggressive even when your opponent is dropping the ball. Here's some great tips that he's shown to some amateurs. We just covered drives and how to counter drives more effectively. But a lot of times your opponent, if they're smart, will try to drop their way into the kitchen after a third shot. The issue is when your opponent is good at dropping the ball, it's very difficult to be aggressive because you're having to hit from down low, rather than from up high. One of the biggest issues when we try to attack the ball from our own kitchen line is we accidentally hit it too high, which allows our opponent to attack from the midcourt. Or vice versa, if we try to hit it too low at our opponent's feet, we often instead hit into the net because the angle we're trying to create from down here is too tight. But there's a simple solution that Brandon does really well. Instead of focusing on the angle of our shot, instead, we should focus on how we make contact with our shot. The idea is just to create an incredible amount of spin on the ball. That way, no matter what we do, the ball stays in the court and drops down to our opponent's feet. You might know this as a roll, but instead of just rolling the ball, I want us to practice brushing the backside of the ball. That way we're able to add an extra layer of topspin that even a typical roll doesn't normally accomplish. A lot of intermediate players think a roll is simply hitting the ball here and brushing upwards, but instead of just doing that, we want to start down low and come over the top of the ball to create the most amount of contact with our paddle whole way through. That way we can use our paddle space to generate as much topspin as possible. So instead of focusing on just where your shot is going or what your opponent is doing on the other side of the court, we need to be locking in as much as possible on our contact to the ball. That way we can brush it with the most amount of topspin possible. After we nail that concept, we can start to focus on some targets that are most effective. The first is hopefully the most obvious, we want to hit our opponent's feet. When our opponent tries to reach to hit a ball all the way down at his foot, it often means he's forced to pop up the ball, which means we have a chance to end the point with a volley. Another great place to aim when he's in the transition zone is his shins. And the roll allows us to execute this very well. Because it forces Shay to take the reset out of the air, which means he's much less likely to hit an aggressive shot, meaning we get to stay the aggressor in the point. And the next place we want to be aiming when we hit a roll is to our opponent's forehand. Forehands are actually much more difficult to reset than a backhand is because of the position of our paddle and how we use our wrist. As you can see from that awkward motion from Shay, it's very difficult to execute a solid reset. That's why when our opponent is in the transition zone, we like to aim low and at their forehand when possible. Now you know some advanced tips on how to improve your rolls so you can stay aggressive longer in the point. Our next tip is from the undisputed goat of pickleball, Ben Johns. He has some of the smoothest drops in pickleball. It's because he thinks about it differently than most people. Let me show you. So Ben changes his paddle angle depending on where he's making contact in relation to his body. So in general, the best place to hit a drop is in front of your body. And when you're hitting in front of your body, you want your paddle tip down just like this. But here's the thing, at higher levels, and even lower levels, you're going to have times where you have to hit drops from either beside you or behind you. And most people don't really think about how to hit these shots, but Ben does. So on the side of your body, Ben recommends holding the paddle more to the side. And then when you get behind your body, he actually lifts his paddle tip up above his wrist and kind of cocks his wrist, and then hits drops like this. I've added this into my game and it has helped me tremendously. And the main reason why I think it's so important is because it puts your wrist in the best possible position. So if you imagine you're in front of your body, my paddle tip is down, my wrist is just neutral and stable. If I try to go to the side though, I get bent in my wrist, and then going up is like almost impossible. From the side of my body, if I go down, look at my wrist. If I go up, look at my wrist. But if I'm here at the side, I'm neutral and stable. And then behind me, same thing. If I go down, my wrist is crazy. If I go here, my wrist is bent. If I go here, it's much more neutral and stable. And I can hit better shots that way. This hitting the ball behind you is really helpful if you're trying to get further into the court. So now you don't have to be exactly still when you're hitting the ball. You can hit the ball and move forward as you go, and make a lot of progress towards the kitchen as you're hitting your drive. The other thing that I've taken from Ben that's really helped my drives and my drops is thinking about getting on the outside of the ball. One of the places that I struggled with not having a tennis background is getting really true good topspin on my shots. And that's because I thought that I had to hit the center of the ball and then brush up it to get perfect topspin. And while that is true, it's not as simple as it sounds. The problem is when you're trying to hit the center of the ball, it's really easy for your wrist to do this like breaking motion and your paddle to move out. And then you kind of hit this slice motion, rather than a perfect up and down drive. But if you think about getting on the outside of the ball, you naturally have this up and down motion, which leads to really good topspin. Just a simple mindset shift can really take your drives and your drops to the next level. Finally, Caleb's going to talk about our next pro and tell us the perfect place to drop a ball. Our final tip comes from one of the most recognizable coaches in pickleball, Kyle Kazuda, otherwise known as that pickleball guy. We all know one of the most unique shots in pickleball is the third shot drop, and it's incredibly important. But Kyle tells us exactly where to aim our third shot drops for the best chance of success. So let me break down the top targets and why you should avoid some certain areas on the pickleball court. First, let's point out the two problem areas that a lot of people hit their third shot drops that gets them attacked. These are the areas we want to avoid when we are hitting our third shot drops. The first one is the sidelines, and the reason is pretty simple. Whenever we hit to the sidelines, we risk that our strong opponent could be taking Ernie out of the air and smacking him ball right back at us. It's just another thing to worry about. So the sidelines are more dangerous for that reason. The other problem area is when we hit a drop to the middle of the court. The issue is because this often lands at our opponent's forehand and that's the shot that they want to be taking and they'll hit with more power. So if we hit it slightly too high, they'll punish us with an attack. So, the optimal place that we should be aiming our third shot drops is to the backhand of the person on the right side of the court. There's a couple reasons this is such a great place to aim your drops. The first big reason is it forces the other team to communicate who's going to take the ball. The person with the forehand, likely wants to take the ball in the middle when possible, but when it's too far over, and the person with the backhand needs to step in and hit it instead. Anytime we can make our opponents talk, they're more likely to make an error. So, by hitting to the backhand, they might just clash in the middle and mess up their shot altogether. And of course, that also means we're staying away from that dangerous forehand of the player on the left. So, hitting to this side is more effective because we're going to likely get a weaker ball from an opponent's backhand that they're less confident in. Another big advantage is this creates less attacking angles for this player on the right. They have less court to work with, so they're less able to hit dangerous angles that would leave us in a more compromised position on the other side of the court. And finally, the fourth reason this is such a good target. It's just difficult to hit a speedup from a backhand, meaning even if we hit it too high, our opponent is less likely to win the point outright by speeding up the ball directly at us. It gives us a better chance to hit a reset and drop our way into the kitchen. That's why when you hit drops, aim for that target every time you're capable of it. It's going to give you the best chance to get all the way up to the kitchen each time. Every now and then, though, we will run into a very strong opponent who's capable of hitting solid shots from their backhand. Maybe they have a two-hander, maybe they prefer it. If that's the case in your matches, there's a second best target you should aim for. And that's simply the left side player's backhand. Because again, this player's probably less confident in their backhand and less likely to be as dangerous when a ball is hit a bit too high. But the caveat, just like we talked about at the beginning, we don't want to be hitting all the way out to the alley because if our opponent is smart, they'll just come and take the Ernie. So, it's a little bit finer of a target because it needs to be to his backhand but not in the alley. Ideally, right here would be perfect. Now you know these seven top pickleball tips to steal from the pros so you can use them for yourself. If you like this video, subscribe and you watch that one. It'll help you out even more. Come better. Today, now.
