4 Topspin Drop Mistakes Holding You Back

If you want to play an advanced level of pickleball, you need to be hitting a topspin drop, but it's also a difficult shot to master and you're probably making some of these mistakes. So today I'm going to share with you my top four mistakes that I see players making all the time on the topspin drop. The first mistake is going to be all about our preparation. And when I say preparation, I actually mean how I'm positioning my body with my feet. So a topspin drop is a more offensive shot. In order to hit offensive shots, I need to have good positioning and I need to be stable. So that way I can hit the ball out in front and I'm able to really brush and get my spin. So what I can't do is hit a topspin drop from behind my body. If the ball gets back behind me, I can't spin it up like this. If I want to hit a topspin drop, I have to hit it comfortably out in front here. I'm not really gonna be able to hit it from out here. I can't hit it from back here. I have to make sure that I'm grabbing it right in front of my body. Ideally, especially for a forehand, right in front of that outside knee. So if I'm a righty, it's gonna be in front of my right knee. This is my contact point. So to find that, I'm just gonna have to move my feet a little bit. I need to make sure that I'm always getting behind the ball and I'm always hitting it out in front. So if the ball moves over a little to my right, if it comes to my left, if it's coming deep, I just have to move my body to find that ideal positioning. I don't really have to take too many steps. I'm able to just step into it, keep it out in front, and I'm good to go. When the ball starts moving around, that's when I have to take a few more steps in order to make sure that I have solid positioning. See here, I'm moving up. I might be moving back. I might be moving left. I might be moving right. But wherever the ball comes, I need to make sure that I'm positioning my feet right behind it so that I can hit a solid drop. Whether it's forwards, backwards, left, right, I'm always moving my feet in order to put myself in the best position to hit my best drop. And the second mistake is covering over the ball as you hit, and that mistake actually comes from trying too hard to get your top spin. A lot of players think that when you cover over the ball, you get more spin, and that's true on a drive when I'm swinging really hard. I can really whip and get over the top of it, and that's gonna generate those revolutions. But on a drop, it's a little bit of a slower swing. It's a more compact swing. This is just gonna cause the ball to go down or just completely cause me to lose control. So what I have to think about is starting under the ball, out in front, and I'm gonna brush from low to high, almost like I'm skinning the back of the ball. I'm just gonna come up the back of it. I'm gonna keep my paddle face to my target the entire time. So if I'm keeping my swing on the same side of my body the whole time, whereas I make contact and follow through on the same side for forehand, that's my right, that's okay, I can do that. Or you can follow through more towards your left and come across it. That's also fine, but either way, you wanna make sure you're keeping your paddle face right to your target. If I cover over, I'm just gonna send the ball down, lose control, so I have to brush up the back and send the ball up. So I finish on the same side of my body, see how my paddle face faces towards my target the entire time. I'm just brushing up the back of it. If I follow through across, same thing. Even though I'm coming to the left, my paddle face is gonna stay towards my target the whole time. It's gonna stay fully open, and I'm not gonna close it. That's my preferred way to hit the drop, is to come across my body. It's a little bit more like a drive follow through, but I'm not gonna come over it and close. This is gonna send the ball down, I'm gonna lose control. And if I hit and then do this, I'm also gonna lose control. What you do after the swing influences what you do before the swing. So if I follow through like this, then before I follow through, I'm gonna start closing, which is gonna send the ball down. The third mistake is taking way too big of a backswing. So when I'm hitting a drive or even a drip, which is the hybrid between the topspin drop and a drive, then I might be looking to take a bigger swing and swing through it. But the difference is that those balls, I don't really want to be bouncing in the kitchen or close to it. I might wanna look to have those balls bounce maybe three, four feet behind the kitchen. A topspin drop, I want it to be bouncing ideally within the line, especially if my opponents are already established there, or let's say a foot behind the line maximum, especially if I wanna move it away from my opponents or if my opponents aren't quite there yet. It's a little bit of a slower shot. So if I take that big backswing with the intention of hitting a topspin drop, I'm kinda counteracting the idea of the drop. So that's gonna cause the ball to go a little bit farther when I take the big backswing, because I'm gonna swing faster through it, versus if I take a nice compact backswing where I just set out in front and I swing forward only right around my contact point with the ball, that'll keep the ball a little bit shorter in the court and it's gonna stay in the kitchen or at least very close to it. If I take a big backswing, I'm sending the ball past the kitchen. That ball had some topspin on it, it was a decent shot, but it landed about that far behind the kitchen line and my opponent was already established there, so it's not really gonna do as much to help me. So instead what I wanna do is set the paddle right out in front where I'm not taking a backswing behind my body at all, that I'm just gonna brush up and through and that's gonna allow the ball to stay a little bit shorter because it's gonna be a little bit slower, but still have heavy topspin. So right here, and I brush up and through, that ball bounced a couple inches inside the line, had heavy topspin, and because my opponent was already there at the kitchen line, gave him much less options to work with. And the fourth and final mistake is when players don't have intention behind where they're hitting the ball and don't follow it up aggressively. So if I'm hitting a topspin drop, I need to be thinking ahead. I need to be thinking at least one to two shots ahead of what I want next, because if I just hit and I don't have any intention of where I'm hitting, I'm just hitting it to hit it and I stand back by the baseline and move in a couple steps, I'm not gonna be able to take advantage of the opportunities that a topspin drop can give me. So what I wanna do first is pick a good target. My best targets for a topspin drop are gonna be towards the middle of the court or cross court. So there's one shared advantage between both those spots and then a couple different ones for each. So the shared advantage is that if I'm aiming right through the middle or aiming sharp cross court, then it's not going straight to somebody, presumably. So especially if I'm playing players that aren't really comfortable or confident going for the middle, maybe there's some switching, some stacking going on, then they're gonna be reaching across their body for the ball. So if I'm standing right here in the middle of my box and the ball comes towards the middle, then you have to reach for it. Same thing on the other side. It's the same for both players. Same thing when you're going cross court is now if the ball crosses your opponent's body and they're reaching out this way, then they have less reach straight ahead. That ball's gonna come across their body, they can't intercept it here, and then they have to let it drop all the way off to the left or to the right. So that's where the cross court and middle advantages are gonna be about the same is they make your opponents reach so you have more kitchen to work with because of it. The more individual advantage for the middle is that it takes away your opponent's angles. So if you hit an aggressive topspin drop towards the middle, your partner gets very aggressive and crashes straight up to the kitchen, gets big in the middle, then there's nowhere for your opponents to really go to get past them easily. So if you go to the middle, the ball usually stays in the middle, at least for the next one or two shots until someone builds up an angle over the course of a couple balls. Usually once the ball gets sped up and it goes towards the middle, it's gonna stay in the middle until it gets soft again. So if you hit a topspin drop towards the middle and your opponent tries to attack it, it's probably gonna come back within the reach of your partner who got up and got big in the middle, at least within his wingspan. The individual advantage to going cross court is that now you're creating some angles so you can isolate the player on that side with your partner going straight up to cover the line, you come in hard to crash towards the middle. And now if your opponent wants to get out of it, he has to hit an angle either diagonally to you in the middle, straight ahead to your partner. So there really aren't too many attack opportunities because if he wants to speed up and get aggressive, that ball is gonna go straight to either you or to your partner. So if he wants to hit the ball away from you guys, he has to go soft, which then gets you neutral at the kitchen or better yet, if he attacks, you're all over it. So that's gonna be the advantage that this topspin drop cross court gets you. Either way, it allows you to be very aggressive through transition, but in order to take advantage of those opportunities, you just have to make sure that you're moving up. So if I hit my drop and I stand at the baseline and my partner stands at the baseline, well then my opponent has too many options. They can speed up, great, we're not there to cover. They can dink, well now we have to run and get it. So you wanna make sure that you're following a topspin drop. As soon as you recognize that that ball was nice off your paddle, you recognize you hit a great shot, just go straight up. As soon as you hit, don't hesitate, swing and then move and then get right on top of it. And your partner, as your partner sees you hitting a topspin drop, when they see your paddle prepared like this, they should recognize it's gonna be aggressive, it's gonna have some topspin, so they should go up there and get big as well. And if you're ready to start crushing those topspin drops, make sure you leave a comment and let us know which tip you like the best and which mistakes you were making that we know you're not gonna make anymore. And of course, if you want more where that came from, because there's plenty more of it, make sure you give us a subscribe.