5 Signs You’re Still a Pickleball Beginner (And How to Fix It)

I can spot a beginner pickleball player in about two minutes because they keep making these five mistakes. In this video, we're going to break down these five mistakes so that you don't do them on the pickleball court. Let's get into it. The first mistake is that beginners don't take the serve and return seriously. They just try to get it in. But there is a big tactical advantage to both aiming your serve to particular locations and also creating depth and spin on the serve and the same goes for the return. So when I'm serving the ball, a couple things I'm looking to do is I'm looking to aim toward my opponent's inside foot if their paddle is on the outside of the court. So if they're standing on the right side of the court like I am with their paddle on the outside, I'm going to aim for this inside foot on the return because then they don't know do I run around it with my forehand or do I hit a backhand. So it can really just create some confusion on whether to hit a forehand or backhand. So a couple things again, we want that serve to be deep, we want to place it to the backhand if possible, and we want to add depth and spin if possible. You should be missing at least two to three serves deep per match and if you're not, you're probably not going for your serve enough and you're just trying to get it in. You'd be amazed at what happens if you just go for it. And like the serve, the return is equally as important because remember if I have a good flat deep return, it makes my opponent's drop or drive that much more difficult. So when you're hitting the return, we want forward momentum with our legs and we want a flat swing. The reason that we don't want as much of a low to high swing on the return is I'm not trying to get that ball to dip over the net, I'm trying to penetrate it deep into the court with pace. Do these things on your serve and return and you'll win way more points. Stop just trying to get it in. Another way I can automatically spot a beginner is how they respond in the transition zone and moving up to the kitchen. A lot of beginners are really skittish in this area and they typically either A, stay back in the court and they never get up to the kitchen because they're so nervous about getting attacked, or B, they start at the baseline and they sprint through this area because they're so scared to play in it. Beginners are often just reacting and making really poor decisions when getting to the kitchen, while advanced players actually have a strategy for this. What advanced players will do in this area is they move up strategically, not based on necessarily what their ball is, but based on what their opponent is going to do with the ball. For example, if you see your opponent at the kitchen line and their paddle tip is down below the net, that signals to the players on offense that they're not going to do anything scary because if that paddle's down, the only way that they're going to hit the ball is up. Now, vice versa, if your opponent at the net has their paddle tip up and high above the net, then that signals to the offensive team that they're going to hit down on the ball and to stay back. It's really important as a player to start moving and taking ground to the kitchen, not necessarily based on the ball, but based on what your opponents are going to do with the ball and watching the paddle in body language as your way to decide whether to move forward or not. The next mistake I see all the time amongst beginners is that they're really afraid to play in the middle of the court, the transition zone as we call it, as we're transitioning up to the net. Now, when I first started playing, I would hit a drop or a drive and if I thought it was a decent shot, I would sprint my way to the kitchen, but then I would get caught off guard and the ball would come to my feet. I'd be off balance and I would miss. Once I learned this transition zone, I became a much better player. And the best thing that you could do is to learn the split step. So after I hit the ball and now I'm coming forward, I want to split step and stop before my opponents hit the ball. Now, if I hit the ball with a lot of pace, I'm not going to be able to gain as much ground before my opponents make contact. So I'm going to have to split step sooner. But if I hit a nice drop shot that takes pace off of the ball, a lot of people don't realize this, but one of the advantages to hitting a drop is not just to hit an unattackable ball, but it gives you more time. We say loft stands for lots of freaking time. When the ball has extra loft, it gives you more time to advance before you have to split step. Because again, we want to split step before they touch the ball. If you can learn a split step, then you're going to be in a much better position. Pro tip. If you are split stepping in this area and you see your opponents up here, we want to split step and prep low because if they're up here, the ball's coming down. If they're swinging from down here at us, now I can prep a little higher and get ready to attack that ball because it's going to be coming into this region. It's the teeter-totter effect. They go up, I go down, they go down, I prep up. The next way I can automatically tell if you're a beginner is how you respond and dink at the kitchen line. Let me explain. A lot of beginners will treat every dink the same, meaning they're just kind of reacting and they're not actually being strategic with what they're doing with the ball. For example, if a beginner gets pulled off wide, I see a lot of them just speed up the ball and it's kind of a panic response because they just don't really feel like they're in control of the point, which brings me to what advanced players and intermediate players do is they don't react, they dictate. Now, that can practically be a couple things. One, they're making decisions based on the type of ball that they're getting. If an advanced player gets a ball that pulls them out wide or pulls them off balance, they're never going to speed that up because they know that they're really vulnerable. Instead of speeding that up, they're going to probably hit a reset to the middle because they're thinking about two shots ahead of the current shot that's happening. When you're a beginner player, a really practical way to start working on this is to understand when to hit offensive dinks and when to hit defensive dinks. Like I said, a lot of beginners just kind of hit the same thing regardless of what they get. To work on this practically, if you ever get a ball that pulls you off balance, instead of speeding that up or treating that like an offensive dink, hit a defensive reset to the middle, get back in position, and wait for a better ball to be offensive on. Doing this one simple thing will automatically take your game up a level. This last mistake we're going to go over sounds simple, but it may be the most important one. And it's a lot of beginners give up too easily. So I'm going to tell you what to do if you pop the ball up. Maybe you're dinking, maybe you're at the baseline. This is what you should do if you pop the ball up. You should not give up. You should get in position and prep. And so what happens if I'm up here dinking and I pop one up? I'm going to do a couple things. I'm going to quickly take a shuffle step back and plant my feet to give myself more time. I'm also going to get my paddle down low because like I said before, if I pop the ball up, it's probably going to be coming down at my feet. And if the ball doesn't come down at my feet, it's going to stay on this trajectory and it's going to go out. So if I pop the ball up, I'm not giving up. I'm going to shuffle shuffle back. I'm going to plant before they touch the ball. And I'm going to get my paddle low and ready to defend. The same is true if I'm on the baseline. If I were to float my drop up really high and I know they're about to crush it, I'm going to start to get really active with my feet and begin to react because a lot of points can be won by simply getting the next ball back. So don't give up, prep for that next shot and you'll be surprised at how many points you'll come out on top of. Well guys, thanks so much for watching. Be sure to like and subscribe to the playfickleball.com YouTube channel and we'll see you on the next one.