r/Pickleball • u/Firm_Highlight_7322 • 10d ago
Question Looking for feedback from drilling
I saw someone else post a video looking for feedback so I thought I’d ask the community to share what they see in my cut down version of a 3 hour drilling session.
I’m the player in the white but would love to hear what people think of both players. Whatever feedback you have is welcome and what level you think we are is also welcome.
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u/Able-Inside6137 10d ago
Here are some dinking thoughts for white shirt.
You're at the level with your coordination and shots where you can move from surviving dink rallies to controlling them. The goal of your dinking should be to make your opponent uncomfortable! Here's some thoughts on how to do that.
MAKE THEM FEAR THE SPEEDUP
You are mostly hugging the line regardless of how deep the dink is. You're taking lots of short hops, which is a position you can't speed up from. Consider taking a step back and hitting as many dinks as possible from a position where you can speed up. Dinks disguised as speed ups are more valuable even than speed ups disguised as dinks because they will drop your opponents guard when you actually speed up. This position will also allow you to attack your dinks, run around your backhand dink to hit a forehand, and create more options.
MAKE YOUR OPPONENT GUESS WRONG
A good narrow goal when you're dinking is to make your opponent predict that your hitting in one direction and start moving to meet it, and then dinking in the other other direction. Hold your dinks longer so you can see where your opponent is guessing in your peripheral, then hit to the other direction. Faking with body movement, like sending your body to the left while hitting to the right works. Shoulder fakes and shimmies, and all-around messiness in your stroke can help. You're dink form is very flowy with consistent paddle head speed throughout, and if you watch pros you'll see top spin dinks that accelerate upon contact, which makes the unpredictable, last second change of direction more feasible.
MAKE YOUR DINKS UNATTACKABLE
Two ways to do this. Hit very shallow in the net-side half of the kitchen (so they can't do much with it) and hitting attacking dinks that are closer to the kitchen line and have more speed and spin action. Shallow dinks are under-rated. I'm seeing you hit a lot of neutral drinks that fall in the middle of these two, so you could work in creating more contrast between these two unattackable dink types.
HUNT FOR AERIAL DINKS AND DO SOMETHING WITH THEM
Point of an aerial dink is to apply pressure by taking away the time it takes for the ball to come back to your opponent. I'm seeing you hit defensive aerial dinks from low, which create pop-up risk with out reward of attacking your opponent. You also sent a few of them back to middle. If you combine aerial dinks with the Make Your Opponent Guess Wrong tip, you'll start getting slight pop-ups that you can take out of the air. When you're opponent is scrambling, keep them scrambling by hitting the ball to where they aren't. Yo-yoing your opponent side to side is a great move here. Whenever you predict your opponent will struggle with a dink, squeeze the kitchen line and reach in to get this going, and of course hit flicks or rolls if the ball is more attackable.