Tennis players transition to pickleball in 3 easy steps: HOWTO

There's so many people coming into pickleball nowadays. It has been the fastest growing sport in the world the last seven years straight. Tennis players coming into pickleball and they can certain strokes really easily. But there are some things that tennis players need to change sooner rather than later to get better at pickleball faster. So, I decided to ask one of my teachings here, Mason White, about his transition and what things he thinks would be most beneficial for new tennis players coming into pickleball to learn. My name is Mason White. I'm a tennis and pickleball teaching professional down here in the beautiful state of Florida. I've been teaching for the past 10 years and I want to share a few things about what I've learned and a few mistakes I've made along the way playing pickleball. One of the things I've learned is the forehand drive. Working on that one, transitioning from tennis to pickleball, shortening that swing, using the legs more, and really trying to go for a shorter swing, softer ball, than just hitting it. Let me demonstrate a few really quick. First, I'm going to demonstrate a tennis forehand in slow motion, and then I'm going to demonstrate a pickleball forehand in slow motion. On the tennis forehand, we want to load our racket back, bring our racket back behind us, and then drive through the ball. Like I was saying, in pickleball, we want to shorten that swing, keep our paddle out in front, and really use our legs to generate the power, as opposed to the tennis racket, pretty much more just legs using legs to generate more of the power. Now for the open stance in tennis, we want to load and then use more of our both legs and really power through with those legs just like a spring. Now for the open stance in pickleball, we still want to use both legs and drive through, but now we're shortening our swing, so we need more legs than tennis to get the power that we need. There, we talked about the ground strokes, the forehand and the backhand ground strokes. You're going to shorten the strokes. You're going to keep the paddle out in front of you a little bit more than with the tennis racket. You're going to let the body create the power versus the racket pulling through very long strokes. The second thing that we want to talk about are the volleys. The volleys are vastly different. Mason, tell us what's different about the volleys. So one other topic that we have to talk about today and the key differences or big differences for this shot is the volley. So in tennis, we want to keep our racket out in front and really push through and come under the ball, come straight through and under. We want to keep our legs moving and then splits up into the ball. Now I'll show you some backhands. Now I'll show you a few pickleball volleys, and the key difference is, now I'm coming over the ball and I can't step into the kitchen, and so I have to generate my power here and drive straight through with my paddle in the straight line, and one of the big differences is you want to reach further as opposed to that tennis volley where it's close to you. Now we have to really reach and lean forward into the net. Now I'll show you a few backhand volleys in pickleball. Then here, now we have to move side to side since we can't move forward, and we have to really put our elbow out in front and really snap and push forward and lean into the ball. Good. Now the last area that I think is very key for tennis players is the transition area. This is something that's a little bit different from tennis to pickleball because you don't have as much time. You've got to kind of start and stop and step your way up to the kitchen where most of the points are won. Mason, show us what it looks like. One of the key things or differences in tennis and pickleball is transitioning. So in tennis when we're transitioning forward, we want to move all the way up to the next line which is going to be the kitchen line. But in pickleball, we have to move step by step inching forward a third of the way and then another third of the way and then all the way up to the kitchen line because we have less time as opposed to tennis. And one of the similarities is kind of split-stepping or stopping and resetting before each ball or each shot that's coming right at you. And so before it comes to you, we have to reset, really make sure our paddle is out in front ready, we're in a stable balanced stance as we're about to hit this ball. One of the biggest struggles or learning moments I had was playing up at the kitchen line. In tennis, you want to power through and really keep pushing until the point's over, but in pickleball, you want to play more defensive, play more kind of with touch, and be patient with the point. One of the big key things up at the kitchen is dinking. In tennis, we really want to keep pressing, keep moving forward and hitting this ball as hard as we can, but in pickleball, we have to go for more precision touch, holding our paddle a little bit lighter, and making sure we keep our paddle out in front of us and moving side to side as opposed to moving forward. The reason we don't want to power through is that we don't want to leave the ball up or have the ball rise on us because otherwise now we're going to get that one's going to happen and kind of push through us and we're going to lose the point. So we want to be patient, we want to make them hit the popup and really trying to move them around here as opposed to really going for the winner that's going to ultimately hit the net or pop up to where they can put it away or go out. One of the shots that is not common in tennis is the drop shot, the third shot drop. This is not a common shot in tennis; this is something that is a regular shot in pickleball, one of the most important shots in pickleball. One of the big things in pickleball is we want to hit this drop a lot more. In tennis, if we hit this drop, we run the risk of getting this ball slammed right down us, but here in pickleball, this allows us time to really move into the court, keep inching forward, and then ultimately taking the net away from our opponent. You want to see what happens when a tennis legend plays pickleball? Check these out. Oh yeah, he's one of the best, fastest hands I've ever played.