3 Pickleball Strategies to Beat ANYONE

These three strategies that I'm about to show you will beat literally any opponent. Every pro does these three things that I'm about to show you. You can use it whether you're a beginner or an advanced player. There are three fundamental strategies in pickleball that will beat literally anybody on the court. If you're not using them, you're putting your game at risk of losing. The first strategy is you want to hit to your opponent's backhand. Everybody has a forehand and a backhand, and everybody always is weaker on one of those two sides. Very few players are exactly the same on both their forehand and their backhand. Usually about 80% of players have a weaker backhand, so you always want to locate which side their forehand and backhand is on. If they're a righty, of course their backhand is going to be straight ahead from your forehand. If you're playing a lefty, their backhand is going to be cross-court from your forehand. Whether you're at the kitchen, hitting serves, hitting returns, hitting offensive overhead, third shot drop, third shot drive, as a matter of any shot, you can always use this strategy to target the backhand. I'm going to start off here at the kitchen line. I'm cross-court from my opponent. I notice my opponents are righty, so I'm going to try to hit my dinks out wide to his backhand. Every time I hit to him, I'm going to go wide cross-court, and he's going to come back in. I want to keep that ball on his backhand side. Then every time I'm hitting that ball, if I'm all these backhands, he's probably not going to attack me. Most players are a lot weaker on that side, and the best they're going to do is dink it back. The problem is a lot of players in the kitchen line give up too many forehands to their opponents because they're not picking a good target. Watch what happens when I dink my opponent's backhand and leave him a dead dink to his forehand. He's going to end up attacking that, speeding it up, where I might not have an advantage to win that point. But if I keep going at the backhand side, he's probably not going to attack me. He might dink aggressively, but I can deal with dinks. What we don't want is for our opponent to speed up at us, or if they are going to speed up, we want them to speed up a low percentage shot, which is going to be that backhand side. Your serves are a great opportunity to target your opponent's backhand as well because you have 100% control over where you hit your serve. Where you go with your serve does not depend on anybody except for you. So before I serve, I'm going to take a look at my opponent. If they're a lefty or a righty, that's going to tell me which side I should serve to. So here I'm playing a righty. So I know his backhand is towards the middle of the court. So when I hit my serve, I'm going to aim more towards the center. So when I go there, I know he's going to hit a backhand. Most players have much weaker backhand returns than forehand returns. So if we go to play this one out, there's a better chance he's going to give me a short one that I can then drive and try to win the point on. There you go. I got an easy return. I served to the backhand. Most opponents also have a really weak backhand third shot. So whether they're going for a drop or a drive, the backhand is usually less consistent and weaker than a forehand. So if I return to my opponent's backhand here, he's more likely to pop it up so I can slam or just miss it outright so we can get a side out. So to review, when we're dinking at the kitchen line, we're going to find our opponent's backhand. When we're serving and returning, we're going to find our opponent's backhand. Those are the three times that it's easiest to get your opponent's backhand and when it's going to be most effective. But you can use this on any shot too. You can drive to your opponent's backhand, you can drop to your opponent's backhand, you can speed up with your opponent's backhand. Usually the backhand is the weaker side. So figure out first are your opponent's righties or lefties and then target their backhand. The second strategy that you can use against any opponent is to make your third shot in the court. Don't miss your thirds. Giving away third shots is making easy unforced errors that are completely avoidable. Now it's a little easier said than done, right? That's what everybody thinks. Of course, I have to get my third in the kitchen. That's so hard to do. But if you leave your third shot up really high and get it over the net and force your opponent to make the next shot in the court, as long as you stay back behind the baseline, you can react to a slam. The pickleball is just a wiffle ball. It's not aerodynamic. It could be the strongest person in the world that hits the ball at 100 miles an hour. By the time it bounces and gets back past the baseline, it's going to be really, really slow. In fact, I've seen beginners that have never played before return really hard slams from behind the baseline because the ball is just not aerodynamic enough to hold the pace. It always slows down by the time it gets back. So when I'm hitting my third shot drop, I want to err on the side of caution by hitting it over the net. I don't care if it's too high. I just need to get it over the net. If it bounces, great. If my opponent hits it from below his knees, so that way he has to hit it up, great. But if he slams it, no problem. We're just going to stay back on defense. Here's what I mean. So when I go for my serve here, if I hit my third shot super high so that my opponent has an easy slam opportunity, I can always rally that back because the ball slows down enough by the time it gets back to me, where eventually I'm going to get an lower one that I like more that I can approach on and then claim the kitchen line. As long as I stay alive in the point, I'm always going to eventually get an opportunity where I can drop it and move up. I just have to be patient and not worry about missing it high. And our third strategy that you can use against any opponent that you're going to encounter is to attack when the ball is high and reset when the ball is low. We always want to be paying attention to the height of the ball when we're deciding what to do with it. Remember, when the ball is low below the net, you can't attack that. But if you put it in the kitchen, your opponent can't attack it either. So that's when we use our dinks and our resets, our drops, to make sure that we're not doing anything that our opponents can attack. We can play nice and neutral, be patient and continue the point. But when they give us that high one up above our shoulder, we have to capitalize and try to end the point right there on those high ones. When I get into my dink rally, I'm always looking at the height of the ball. If the ball bounces in the kitchen, I'm probably going to dink it back. If it doesn't rise up above the level of the net, I'm going to dink it back. But as soon as I get that one to tie, I have to strike there and I have to attack and take advantage of that opportunity. What a lot of players at some of those lower, advanced, even intermediate levels are doing is they're resetting from up here because they're afraid to attack. So if I get that high one and I decide to reset instead of attack, I'm leaving money on the table where I might hit it too soft and I didn't get it to the net. Or I'm just going to dink it back. I wasted an opportunity to win the point. Anytime that ball is high, I have to make sure that I'm not doing that and resetting, but I'm taking advantage and attacking. So attack when the ball is high, but when the ball is low, so if my opponent's attacking me by hitting down or if they're giving me one that I'm reaching in on, that's where you reset. We reset from below the level of the net because we can't attack and we're hitting up. So anytime my opponent gives me those lower ones, I'm going to reset right in the kitchen. Off the bounce, in the kitchen. Or if my opponent's hitting down on me, let's say I'm in the transition zone, he's aiming for my feet. That's where I'm also going to reset because if the ball is low and I try to attack, now I'm popping it up for him to attack. Attack when it's high, reset when it's low. Every pro uses that strategy and you can use it too against literally any opponent.