10 Pickleball Tips I WISH I Knew Earlier...

When I first started pickleball, it felt like the Wild West. There was very little information online about how to get better. So in this video, I'm going to go over the top 10 things that I wish I knew when I was getting started. Looking back, I wasted so much time losing games that I could have won because I didn't know these tips. Make sure that you know all these, because if you don't, you might not be playing to your fullest potential. Our first tip of the day is that the ATP, or the around-the-post shot, is actually not as hard as it seems. See, I see a lot of players that are just starting out get the opportunity to go for an ATP, but they end up just dinking the ball back and leaving the whole court open, right? So if you get the opportunity to go for the ATP, even if you're just getting started, I think it's totally fine to go for it. You might miss it in the beginning, but as you get better, you'll start to make these, and it'll be a huge boost to your game. Just know that the opportunity for an ATP arises when your opponent hits a very angled dink that goes outside of the net post. The only thing that you have to have to go for a good ATP is the ability to draw a line from where you're hitting the ball around the post into the court. If you shot away from going for these before, I encourage you to start trying them, because the more that you do it, the better you'll get at using it. So right now, guys, I'm going to show you a quick example of what an ATP looks like. So when you're in a dinking situation like this, and you get a really angled dink, as long as it goes outside the scope of the post, you have the perfect opportunity to aim very low around the post, which is extremely hard for your opponent to return. Our next tip, guys, is that when you're dinking, it can be very effective to aim for your opponent's backhand. So when I first started out, I was always either dinking cross-court or down the line. I never had a specific target in terms of where I was aiming for on each opponent. If you think about it, though, most players prefer to use speed-ups and prefer to be aggressive off of their forehand side. They're also just usually a little bit stronger on their forehand side in general. So if you can keep it to their backhand, they're less likely to attack you, and you're more likely to get a pop-up. So as you can see here, I'm going to be dinking cross-court, but as I'm going cross-court, I can go more middle and target Drew's backhand. So Drew's a righty, so to hit his backhand, I'm going to go more towards the middle. I can be aggressive with this, which could cause a pop-up, giving me the ability to accelerate. And the same concept applies when I'm going down the line. Here, I'm going down the line, and I'm aiming all my dinks for Drew's backhand, which he doesn't have as much offense on. And guys, if you're aiming your dinks effectively, there's a good chance that you'll get a lot of pop-ups. I'm going to talk about how to capitalize on those later in the video. Moving on, though, I want to talk about serving strategy. When I was first getting started, I couldn't decide whether I should go for big hard serves, or more conservative serves that guarantee my consistency. To answer that question, it's only worth going for big, harder serves against players that it will pay off against. If you're playing someone really good, they may just get your serve in every single time, no matter what you throw at them. On the contrary, if you're playing someone that's not that good, maybe they just don't have a good return, big serves can actually pay off, and you can get some free points. So the key is that you test this out early in your game, so that you're always making the smartest possible decisions. So if I'm starting off a game, and I see that my opponent's struggling with my return, that's my cue to continue going for big serves until it stops working. But if they're not having any trouble with my big serves, that's where I want to start going for more conservative serves, like this, where I'm still getting the ball nice and deep, but it's going to guarantee that I'm very consistent. Speaking of smart decisions, though, next up, we have a cool play that you can run whenever you're at the kitchen to be aggressive. So if I'm at the kitchen, one of the best ways to attack is by switching from one player to another player. So think about it like this. If I'm in a cross-court dinking rally with Drew, Drew's getting into a rhythm, but his partner, he's just standing there, right? So if I get a floater from Drew, it could make sense for me to accelerate right at the partner. So like I said, usually you'll run this play by going cross-court with your dinks, and then accelerating down the line. The reason for this is that when you're dinking cross-court, you have a lot more space in the kitchen, so you can dink a lot harder. And when you're accelerating down the line, your down-the-line opponent's closer to you, so they have less time to react. And the same concept applies, guys, if Drew accelerates at me. So if Drew accelerates at me, there's a good chance that his partner didn't even know that he was going to go for a big shot. So it can be really surprising to them if you go really hard right at them. You can go from down-the-line to cross-court here too, just know usually going from cross-court to down-the-line is your best bet. And guys, I go through some other cool plays later in the video, so stay tuned. Okay guys, so this next step is something I say a lot on this channel. I don't want to make sure that it's engraved into your brains. If you take two players that are at the exact same level and have the same skill set, all else equal, the more patient of the two will win. It can be easy to come out onto the court and try to go big on every shot. But as you know, pickleball's all about decision-making, and most of the time, you'll need to be playing more conservative. So if you're ever playing opponents that are giving you a hard time, the answer could literally be just to increase your patience and make them be the ones to go for the dumb shots. This is something that you need to grail into your mind from the beginning of your career. Don't wait like I did. That said, you do need to take advantage of easy shots when they arise. So whenever you're closer to the net and you get a higher, slower ball, this is your sign that you should go big. So if I'm dinking here with Drew, and I get a higher ball like this next one he's going to give me, that's my sign to accelerate. When you're playing against good players, guys, these shots don't come around very often, so you need to make sure you take advantage of them when you have the chance. Just know, guys, there isn't such a thing as being too patient. I think when I started, I noticed that being patient was working for me. But it kind of backfired, and when I was getting easy shots, I wasn't taking advantage of them. So it's good to be patient when you don't have a good opportunity, but when you get these easier balls, you don't want to just get it back in the kitchen like that. You want to go big. So like I said, when you get one of those high balls, you need to attack. But just going hard on them is not going to cut it. I see so many players that get one of these shots and they go super hard, but they hit it right to their opponent and they get back in the point. The pickleball does not travel very fast. So when you get one of these opportunities, you need to make sure that you put the ball in a spot where it won't come back. This may seem simplistic, but depending on where they are on the court, your best bet is usually to go at their feet or to the open court. So if I get a high shot and Drew's at the kitchen like this, my best bet might just be to go right at his feet. And if I get a high ball while Drew's back, depending on where him and his partner are on the court, let's say he's more towards the middle. Here, I might just want to go off the court, right? And if he's more towards the sideline and I see a gap in the middle, I can go straight down the middle. Just always try to have a strong target and make the best possible decision based off your opponent's court positioning. But next up, I have another cool play that you can run with your partner. So if you ever find yourself in a situation where you're up at the kitchen and your partner's back, just know that your opponents are probably going to try to hit the ball to your partner because it's harder for them to get the ball into the kitchen, right? And they're farther away. So things are just more difficult back there. So as a smart player, you can anticipate this. And before they hit the ball, you can do what's called the poach and cross over and intercept that ball and kill it. If you can pull this off, this play is literally bulletproof at the 3.0 to 4.0 level. The key thing here is the anticipation. And if you've made it this far in the video, I know that you're super dedicated. So make sure to pay close attention to these next tips because these are some of the biggest things that held me back. Also, make sure to subscribe because if you're trying to improve, you want to make sure that you're consistently studying the game. If you're just aimlessly playing games every week, at some point, your progress is going to plateau. Don't let this be you. So subscribe and hit the bell. So this next tip is a mental hack that helped me so much when I figured it out. So whenever you're at the kitchen dinking, you want to be mentally expecting a speed up on every single shot. So every time that Drew hits the ball, I'm expecting him to hit a speed up. And if he goes for a dink, I'm ready for it, right? Because the dink doesn't come very fast. So I have a lot of time to prepare. But if he goes for a speed up, I don't have much time to react. So that's what I want to be prioritizing. So the two ways that you're going to prioritize that are with your positioning. So I want you to have your hands up high around here, not super high, but the tip of your paddle should be at about eye level. And the other thing, guys, is your awareness. So whenever Drew is taking his paddle back, I'm watching it to see if he's going to go for a speed up. If he takes it back a little bit further and I can see that he's going to accelerate, that gives me that little bit of extra time that I need to prepare myself for a shot. So it's mostly in your head. Make sure to try this out in your next game because it's something that you can implement immediately. And for our next tip, I'm sure you've seen a lot of information on YouTube about how you should drop every third shot. Just know that's not always the case. It's totally OK to drive your third shot too, but you need to do this at the right time. You don't want to just drive for no reason because you're trigger happy and don't like your drops. In terms of the right opportunity to go for a drive, usually you're looking for a higher, slower and shorter ball. You're not going to do much damage on the drive if the ball is coming at you super fast or it's really deep. So make sure if you're going to go for a drive, you have the right opportunity. So if Drew hits the return shorter and higher to me, this is my opportunity to go for a drive because I'm closer to the net, have a better angle, and he has less time to react. But if he hits a really good deep return that's hard, like this, this is probably where I should stay away from the drive so I can get into a better position and attack when I'm closer. And if you want to learn the number one skill to rapidly improve your game, watch this.