What is the best way to improve backhand dinks for a pickleball player with a great two-handed backhand drive? The wide backhand dink is the one dink that I struggle to hit with consistency.
- Sandy
Hi Sandy,
Firstly, congratulations on your two-handed backhand drive, no easy task on the pickleball court! To answer your question, we must first look at the most important quality of a consistent wide backhand dink: balanced footwork.
The pickleball backhand relies more heavily on footwork than the forehand for one main reason: leverage. More specifically, the lack thereof. The forehand has three effective levers at work: the shoulder, the elbow, and the wrist. These combine to give a player a large comfort zone of which to make contact with the ball. The backhand by contrast only has one: the shoulder (the wrist movement on this side is typically very weak). The result of this imbalance is that the comfort zone on the backhand is significantly smaller, and as such requires a lot more footwork to get into the perfect position.
Cross-step to the rescue! If, like many people, you’ve been told never to cross your feet on the pickleball court, then it’s time to let go of that antiquated notion. The cross-step on the backhand side does a fantastic job of killing two birds with one stone: getting you to the ball and turning your shoulders to prepare the paddle. If you have been attempting to get to every shot with just your side steps, then you will certainly be feeling uncomfortable and often cramped.
I imagine, given your two-handed ability from the baseline, you’d like to also use it for your dinks also. Great, join the club! There’s just one problem, the job descriptions for the two shots are entirely different. Here are some tips to get your citizenship in the rapidly expanding “Twoey Nation.”
Get low. I mean it, low! With both hands on the pickleball paddle, one shoulder can’t simply drop down to get the paddle appropriately low enough to then brush up on the ball. This means your knees and your hinge at the waist need to do the job for you. Remember, your mind will trick you, you may think you’re low enough — but to be sure, set up a camera and don’t be surprised when you see yourself standing tall.
Open stance. Using the open stance is a great way to give the ball more lift and more topspin. As you move into position make sure you are initiating the shoulder turn as you move, as it will be too late once you arrive at your final contact destination.
Grip pressure and positions. Relax your hands to let the paddle drop naturally and allow some bowing of your lead wrist (right for right-handed players). This should get the paddle down towards a 6 o’clock position, giving you ample room to brush up on the ball. Keep in mind, however, this will only work for dinks that you can contact near the center of your stance. For wider dinks, the paddle will need to stay more sideways. Because of this, you will need to put in some extra work to get the pickleball paddle lower than the contact. Knees are made for bending!!
Contact point. Don’t be in a rush to contact this ball out in front. This is a very different shot than the drive, and any added leverage will easily give your paddle too much force to play the shot well. Allow the ball to get close to your body, and you will effectively be nerfing the potential energy of your combined arms. As you get right up to the point where you can’t wait any longer to make contact, brush up the back of the ball with good speed and then watch it rotate. Challenge yourself to put more and more spin on the ball, knowing that to do so means you have effectively put in place most, if not all of the tips I’ve mentioned.
I hope these tips help you on your way and feel free to keep the questions coming ;-)
Cheers,
Morgan
