Why Dink? Is the soft game important?

What is the point of a soft game? Isn't pickleball changing and getting faster and harder all the time? Do you really need to develop annoying drop shots and slow dink shots?

Why to hit slow balls

If you are asking these questions, you likely don't understand the strategic reason behind the soft game. It's true that you can play and even find success without developing a soft game, but that is only true up to a certain level of play. No matter how hard you can hit the ball, you are not going to be successful beyond a 3.5 level without some ability to engage in the soft game. Why? Because players beyond that level increasingly know how to handle hard fast balls, and they are likely to cause you more trouble than you caused for them. Players at 4.0 and higher increasingly know when to let out balls go out, they know how to take pace off balls and dump them into the kitchen, they can hit angles that are difficult to reach and send you scrambling, and they are less likely to be out of position where a fast ball at their feet could cause problems. That means they are going to be set at the kitchen line, and when you hit drives at them, they are hitting balls that are waist high (because the balls you send to them have to clear the net), and even if they don't have the ability to cut angles or drop the ball into the kitchen, they can hit hard volleys right back at you, but you will be hitting them near your feet. Players at the kitchen line have the advantage and they will win rallies more often than players near the baseline no matter how hard the players at the baseline can drive the ball.

When your opponents are at the net and you are not at the net, your opponents have a significant positional advantage. It is in your strategic interest to neutralize that advantage. Hitting soft balls that your opponents cannot attack is the way you can neutralize that advantage.

What makes a ball unattackable? If your opponents have to hit up on a ball in order to send it back over the top of the net, those balls are difficult to attack. If your opponents can hit down on the ball because it floats higher, they can attack that and hit it hard. If your opponents try to attack a low ball, the likely outcome is that it will go into the net, it might go out if it clears the net (because they have less than 30 feet to the baseline on your side), or the angle of the ball clearing the net from below might float a high ball that allows you to attack. All of those outcomes are good for you. The best response from your opponents if they have to hit up is to send back a controlled slow ball back to you and force you to hit up as well.

Hitting slow shots also gives you more time to recover from balls that sent you out of your position, and it also gives you more time to move forward through the transition zone (the area between the baseline and the kitchen) to get yourself and your partner to the kitchen to neutralize your opponents' positional advantage. Hitting fast hard balls at your opponents means they are likely going to send them back fast and hard at you. By the time you are finished swinging, that ball is likely heading back in your direction again.

How to hit slow balls

Stand on a pickleball court near the baseline. Put your paddle down for a minute and put a ball in your dominant hand. Bend your knees and do a controlled toss with a nice arc into the kitchen on the opposite side of the net. Your toss should be fluid. Your release should happen in front of your body and your arm should follow through on the path you sent the ball. That is the same motion you should be using for drop shots and dinks. The sensation of the ball on your paddle should be more like a catching sensation than a hitting sensation. The swing should come from your shoulder, but your body, including your knees and waist should also be involved. Think "big muscle groups". That is the way you control your stroke. If your wrist is moving, your shot is not going to be as consistent.

Practice the tossing motion until you can consistently get the ball into the kitchen. The ball can land in the back portion of the kitchen or even behind the kitchen line on the opposite side of the net. A drop shot that falls in the near portion of the kitchen will likely bounce above the net because of the high arc needed to get it to fall that close to the net and your opponents can attack that ball after the bounce. You should see an arced path. The apex of the arc should be on your side of the court so that the ball is descending when it crosses the net. You can toss it higher than you likely think. Practicing this tossing motion will help you to get a good mental image of the path of the ball when you are hitting with your paddle.

If you are having trouble with the long drop shots from the baseline, take a few steps toward the kitchen line and try to toss it from there. Find a distance where you can consistently toss that ball into the kitchen on the other side of the net (even if that means right at the kitchen line), and then back up until you can do a few in a row from the baseline. Again, the purpose of tossing these balls is to cement the arcing path of the ball into your mind and also to give you practice moving your arm in an upward motion from your shoulder to lift the ball.

If you toss several balls in a row into the opposite kitchen with your hand, now pick up your paddle and try to feed yourself some balls (just bounce them in front of you) and hit them with the same kind of motion. Bend your knees, make contact with the ball in front of your body.

Here is a clip showing a forehand and backhand drop shot.

In both instances, the opponent who received the ball had to hit up to clear the net. Notice in the second clip with the backhand drop, even though the opponent was able to hit a volley because the ball wasn't as low as the forehand dropshot, and the opponent thought he could attack the ball, his attack ended up sailing long because the ball was low enough to render his attack ineffective. The backhand drop wasn't perfect, but it was low enough to make it unattackable.

Then what?

So, you hit a slow ball with a nice arc, it descended into your opponent's kitchen and your opponent was forced to hit up. The next skill you need to work on is reading the quality of that drop shot. The lower your opponent is hitting the ball below that net, the safer you are. And if you manage to hit a shot that makes your opponent reach or stretch to hit a low ball, that is your free passage through the transition zone. Run to the net! If your opponent is hitting below the net, but hitting a volley you have less time, but you can still follow the ball until they hit it. You have less time, the higher your opponent is hitting. And if they are hitting an overhead ball, you might even want to take a step back to give yourself a split second more to react. An overhead smash is most likely going to come at you fast and furious.

Maybe your 3rd shot doesn't get you to the net, but if you can slow things down on your 5th and 7th, and you can gain a little ground with each drop, you'll get there. It takes practice, but it is worth it.

Learning how to take pace off the ball and reset is one of the most important skills in pickleball. Everyone gets into trouble. Watch the pro level games. They are amazing at getting themselves out of trouble. They do it in a number of ways, but one of the main ways they bail themselves out of tough positions and get themselves back to the kitchen is by hitting neutralizing drop shots into the kitchen.

Once you get established at the kitchen line it's a game of patience and waiting for a high ball from your opponents that you can attack.

Are you convinced? I hope so. Soft game skills are genuinely important in pickleball.

...so what about power? Do you need to be able to hit drives, smashes, and power shots? That is a subject for a future article!

Thanks for stopping by the No Fun Zone!

David