How to Hit a TWO-HANDED Backhand Counter in Pickleball

Hi, I'm Ava Gnatovich. I'm a pro pickleball player on the PPA Tour, and today I will be teaching you about the two-handed backhand counter and the two-handed backhand attack. All right, so let's get into it. I think that the first thing that kind of intimidates people about the two-y counter and the two-y attack is the grip. They don't know how to hold the paddle. They've only ever had a one-handed counter or a one-handed backhand. So the way that I like to explain it is I use a continental grip on my right hand when I do this shot. So the way that that looks is I'm going to put the U here between my thumb and my index finger, right on the edge guard, and I'm gonna slide it all the way down. And then that is how you find a continental grip. And then with my right hand, all I'm going to do is stack it on top. So here, the other U, the U in my right hand between my thumb and my index finger, I'm going to put that directly over the grip flat, and then I'm going to just close my fingers and then shift it up so that it's comfortable, right? You want one hand stacked directly above the other. How you hold it is really personal preference. For me personally, I've been choking up on it a little bit and kind of putting my finger at the back of the paddle right here, my index finger on my right hand. I've been doing this quite a bit because I feel like it's been giving me a lot more control lately. So I've been experimenting with that. If you struggle to find the right feel on this shot, I suggest that you kind of play around with how high you hold up your grip on the paddle so you could choke up on it like this, or you could hold it directly at the bottom. Again, up to you, personal preference. You also don't have to put your finger here. You can just kind of close it normally like this, and that's totally fine, totally fine. Now for the footwork on this shot for our legs, we're not going to be doing too much, right? Because we want to be balanced while we hit it. I'm always going to be square to the net and I'm going to have kind of an open body towards the net because when we're at the kitchen, we never want to be sideways while we're hitting our shots, really. So usually I'm not going to be doing too much with my feet. Occasionally, I'll be taking a step this way, a step towards the middle with my outside foot if the ball is coming towards the middle and I have to reach for it. However, most of the time, I'm just going to be kind of doing my split step and then preparing for the shot and swinging through. So all movement here should be pretty much lateral. Occasionally, I'll end up moving while I hit this shot, but only if I'm reaching, only if I absolutely have to. You always want to have your feet be still while you hit the shot because that's how you're going to be the most balanced. There's only so much I can cover in a video, but lucky for you, I've put together a 58-page, in-depth, complete pickleball system, roadmap from beginner to pro. It covers every shot in pickleball, high-level strategies. It has over 20 different drills that I use, and it even has structured practice plans for every single level from 2.5 to pro. If you're interested in really transforming your game, this is The Missing Piece, a collection of everything I've learned for the past few years playing on tour. Secrets from the best players in the world. I'll leave a link in the description and pinned comment down below. I highly recommend you check it out. Now for the stroke itself, I feel like this is kind of what confuses people. They don't know how to find the right feeling between their two hands. It's easy to hit the ball with one hand, but when you're using two hands, it's kind of confusing. I like to say that I want to have 90% of the feeling in my left hand. If you really want to practice this, and if you really want to dial in this feeling, you could even try and hit some lefty counters or lefty attacks out of the air. Or if you're already a lefty, then righty. And this will kind of help you just build up that strength in the left arm and build up that control as well. And then once you've done that a little bit, put the right arm or the, okay, just for the sake of this video, pretend that there's no lefties watching. I'm getting confused. So after you hit a few of the non-dominant hand attacks, put the dominant hand back on and just practice again and just really try and kind of feel the feeling in your left hand and then your right hand. If it's too much in your left hand, you can even add a little bit of right hand and just kind of try and find your perfect medium for where you feel the most comfortable hitting this shot. Now for this shot, I want my backswing to be pretty compact. I don't want too big of a backswing because I almost want it to be so that I can never mess up my timing on this shot. If I'm taking the paddle all the way back and the ball catches my paddle while it's all the way back, it's gonna go right into the net and that's not what we want. We want a really compact swing and we just kind of wanna take the ball out in front and to the side and almost like just a tiny little baby loop. If you watched my drive video, you'll remember the Nike swoosh. It's a really small baby Nike swoosh in the air and then forward. So I'm square to the net. I have a really compact backswing and what that really means is small, right? Compact is a fancy word. It's kind of confusing. Small backswing, just a short backswing. Not like this. Like this. And what's different about the two-e counter and the two-e attack at the kitchen line versus the baseline two-e drive is we're not gonna be rotating quite as much. If anything, we're just kind of slightly rotating a really small shoulder turn to kind of get this shoulder in front facing the court a little bit and then a slight unturn at contact. It's not gonna be this giant rotation. It's not a full body rotation. Most of it is going to be arm. It's gonna be really army. A lot of arm, not too much body and that doesn't mean entirely arm. You're gonna rotate a little bit with the shoulders but you're not gonna do a full turn every time. No full turn, no full unturn. Yeah, so I feel like the power in this shot is gonna come from your shoulders but what's gonna get it to stay into the court is you wanna come over the ball with your left hand. So the left hand here generates the spin. So it's gonna be a little wristy and you want it to be a little wristy, right? Because if it's just arm here, where's the ball going? It's gonna go up. You wanna close the paddle face so that you're hitting over the ball at contact. So for this shot, it's important to try and hit the ball out in front of you. Sometimes if a really fast paced ball is coming, you're going to catch it a little bit more to the side of you and that's totally okay as long as you have that compact backswing, right? Because if you have a big backswing and you catch it to the side of you, you're really playing games with your timing there and you don't wanna risk that. It's so much easier if you have a short backswing if you're catching it a little late which is gonna happen, right? We don't always play perfect all the time. I catch it late probably 50% of the time but I get away with it because my backswing is so short and I'm able to roll over it a lot with a lot of spin and keep it into the court. When you're practicing this shot, I recommend starting out if you've never hit a 2E counter or attack before. So the difference between the 2E counter and the 2E attack, right? The 2E attack at the net, it's gonna be higher. It's gonna be a slower ball and you're gonna be hitting really down on it. The 2E counter is similar. It's just gonna be on a lower ball and you're gonna have to swing. You're gonna have to take back your paddle a little bit quicker because you're gonna be more rushed. Now, try not to do this shot on really low balls. If the ball is dipping, don't hit a counter on that. Don't hit a two-handed counter on that because if you're swinging up on the ball from right here, that's just never a good idea. If it's coming below your waist, just reset that ball. So if you really wanna get this ball down, I recommend practicing it with some fed ball work. So maybe get a coach, get a friend, have them feed you some balls, just kind of hit it to you so you can kind of get the feeling down. Film yourself doing it, right? If you take videos of yourself doing it, you'll be able to see, oh, my back swing is so big or, oh, this looks really awkward or I'm not taking the ball out in front enough. So it's good to film yourself. That's how I always practice things and get them down. I really like fed ball work here. I would personally say practice it with balls coming from the baseline before you practice it on counters at the net. So yeah, fed ball work, drilling is good. So if you're in a game and you're on the right side, make a habit out of practicing it. If any ball is coming sort of high past your inside hip, try and take it as two hands. It's tough to get a feel for it at first, but once you do, this is such a great weapon in pickleball. You're never going to get as much pace on a one-handed counter as you will with a two-handed counter once you get it done. That was a little rambly, but I hope you get the point. And if there's anything I didn't cover or anything you're still confused on, please let me know in the comments and I will 100% always respond to any questions you have about a specific shot. So just let me know if you have any questions. I'm here to help. Thank you so much for watching. Remember to like and subscribe and comment down below what you want to see me cover next. And check the pinned comment and description. I've created a complete pickleball system roadmap from beginner to pro with 20 drills, practice plans for every level and high-level strategies from the best players in the world.