While most players believe they need crazy spin, a killer third shot strategy, and excellent net play to become a great pickleball player, it actually comes down to reducing your number of errors. We’re going to go over 10 pickleball mistakes that even intermediate players continue to make when they play.
1. Body Dinking
The first of our pickleball mistakes has to do with the dink.
I don’t know what it is about being at the net, but sometimes you start dancing with your opponent.
The dink is supposed to be a lame duck shot. You pop it over, and it dies. It stays low. You don’t really want it going anywhere, but players take this as a signal to be unintentional and lazy with their dink shots.
Pickleball players will subconsciously get into dink rallies with the opponent where you both just hit it back and forth at each other. It’s as if they are aiming at each other, when actually the whole goal is to win the point and get out of the rally.
You fall into this trap of hitting it at your opponent when instead every dink should be a challenge to return in some way. It could be hit away from them or hit with spin or both. The last thing you want to do is get lulled into just hitting a flat dink right at them because you don’t actually accomplish anything with it.
2. Being Pinned Because You Won’t Leave the Baseline
If you stand on the baseline after your serve you will get eaten alive in higher levels of competition.
A lot of beginner and intermediate players serve and then stand on the baseline waiting for the return. But when you play talented competition they will drive the ball back at you to where it lands just at the edge of the baseline and at your feet.
This means you have to step back just to get space to create a returnable shot. However, this is the exact opposite of what you should be doing on your third shot. You want drive towards the net but now your momentum is going in the opposite direction. You’re reeling on your heels as you go to swing.
Instead, give yourself room to breath back from the baseline after your serve. Now no matter where the shot goes you’re stepping into it and can press up whether you go with a drive or drop on the third shot. And you aren’t pinned back on your heels.
3. Avoiding Your Backhand
I did not like my backhand starting out.
A lot of players don’t. We all love our forehands.
But every player knows this, and especially in better circles they will use this against you. If you can’t get comfortable with the backhand or have a large ability gap, pickleball players will sniff that out and begin to target it.
When you always favor your forehand you also become easy to move around because players know you’ll adjust your positioning so each shot can be hit forehand. Suddenly after a shot to your backhand side in the corner you’re way out of position off the court.
It’s important to train the backhand harder than then forehand because most are naturally weaker here.
4. Not Using a Backswing When You Serve
It isn’t ping pong. It is isn’t tennis. It’s somewhere in between.
I think because the rule is that you have to serve underhand players think you need to temper your arm motion on your serve.
In reality a big backswing is one of the best ways to create power and put spin on the ball.
Don’t take this overboard. However, most players don’t use any backswing at all or punch the ball from below. To get a good idea of what I’m talking about you should be bringing your paddle back until it’s roughly parallel with the ground and perpendicular to the net. This isn’t meant to be precise and whatever you do should still be comfortable for you, but it’s a rough estimate.
5. Getting Pushed Off the Kitchen Line
You should always stay at the kitchen line and get to the non volley zone at all costs. This gets peddled around in pickleball a lot as the end all be all. It’s not. But it still holds true in most instances.
The scenario where it really matters is in volley and dink exchanges close to the net. Players will unknowingly let themselves get walked back from the net during these, opening up a huge number of angles for the opponent who stays close to attack.
What you’ll see happen is they think the ball needs to bounce because it’s over the non volley zone. But it’s going to bounce at their feet. They take a step back to create space to let it bounce but never close that gap again. And then they’ll do it again, slowly edging backwards.
The right thing to do is actually volley these shots landing at your feet. As long as you aren’t over the ktichen line it doesn’t matter where the ball is. This will also throw off the opponent’s rhythm if you’ve been in the midst of a dink exchange.
6. Keeping a Consistent Serve
Many players get into a routine with their serve. They see their serve as a shot to perfect, and they practice it over and over again.
The problem with this is it’s the same serve. Over the course of a game, when you keep hitting that same serve to your opponents over and over again you are actually training them to beat you. They know what to expect and get to practice repeatedly.
Instead a serve should be a set of tools in your toolbox. Sure you have your go to, but you need several options. Vary where you stand, where you serve to, the speed, height, and spin on your serve, everything.
Over the course of the game you should be analyzing the opponent seeing what they are expecting, their strengths, weaknesses, what makes them uncomfortable.
Have a powerful serve with topspin that pushes them all the way back at the edge of the baseline, then follow it up with a short lollipop shot falling short at the outside corner just past the kitchen.
7. Playing Tennis
No need to pretend. Some of you reading this are coming over from tennis.
And that’s totally fine.
Expanding the sport to other groups is awesome, but let’s remember not to forget which game we’re playing.
Everyone has played a pickleball game with someone who sits at the baseline and tries to win the rallies with solely groundstrokes and bangers, as if there’s a laser tripwire that goes off if they cross in front of the baseline.
So much of pickleball is won around the kitchen you can’t afford to play this way.
8. Hitting Low Drop Shots
This one is very counter intuitive, I actually needed a coach to explain this several times before it clicked. I’m going to my best over text.
Too many times on drop shots, players hit the ball really low trying to just clear the net. The idea is to get the ball to drop right in front of the net so they figure they’ll hit it as low as possible.
But they put no arc on the pickleball. The problem is to hit this way the only way to clear over the net is to put power behind the ball. The trajectory of the ball is flat, so all that momentum carries the ball further into the opponent’s back court.
But this is the antithesis of a drop shot!
A drop shot should stop dead near the kitchen and force the opponent to sprint up to get to it in time. You can achieve this by keeping the same power on the ball but angling your power higher to get more arc. Adding a little backspin will work wonders as well
See what I mean below.
9. Small Margins and Small Targets
Of all the pickleball mistakes this one is arguably the most fixable.
Too many times players overestimate their abilities and try to squeeze as little space between their shot and the out of bounds area as possible. They want to just clear the net by a half inch. The ball needs to graze the baseline to get as deep as possible on a serve.
The problem is you leave yourself no room for error and marginal returns for succeeding are low.
What’s the extra benefit of getting the net 6 inches deeper or wider on a shot. The pickleball court is small. In doubles there are few shots that someone can’t get to. More often it comes down to the first team to make a mistake. In order to minimize this, you need to give your shots a bigger margin for error.
10. Trying to Match Pace
The final pickleball mistake is trying to match pace and power when your opponent is hitting very hard shots at you.
You have to understand that they are doing that to try and get you to make a mistake and pop the ball up, so they have an angle on the next shot for an easy put away.
Many players don’t realize this so they’ll start trying to bang back and forth with the opponent before the inevitable paddle stroke, angled slightly too high, gives the opponent the opportunity they’ve been waiting for.
Instead opt for a reset shot and take all the momentum out of the play.
Wrap Up – Pickleball Mistakes
There you have it. Those are 10 pickleball mistakes that I see among players who have already have a fair amount of playing experience. Correct these, and you’re well on your way to becoming a top shelf pickleball player.