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Tom slow, yourself down prioritize balance before making contact with the ball. Always have your paddle in a ready position even when your partner is hitting the ball. Get your paddle in place early so you have a chance to pause before you hit the ball. Being off balance and swinging quickly puts you on defense.
I think return of serve is probably the most important shot. If you are consistently giving your opponent free points because you can't return their serve you have very little chance of winning.
3rd shot drop used to be most important but no longer.. 3rd shot topspin drive is the most important. the reason is because it is used in the serve. return of serve 3rd drive and speedup. 3rd drop is slowly being marginalized by 4th shot pressure. Drive or hybrid are genrally better options if it is deep. I would only use 3rd drop when return lands in transition
One reason why many players struggle with 3rd shot is that many of us come to pickleball from tennis. We never used this shot in tennis. The mechanics of the shot is totally different from anything we learned playing tennis.
If you are playing against tall, aggressive opponents who lean into the kitchen, you really don't have a huge window for a perfectly safe drop. Ideally, the moment the ball comes off your paddle you know whether to run forward, hold your ground, or fall back. Ideally, your partner is standing right beside you, maybe half a step forward, turned toward your execution, so that your partner quickly reaches the same conclusion. If you don't have all these other pieces in place, the 3rd shot drop doesn't accomplish what it needs to accomplish. Several other recent videos explain that in high level play, the floaty drop is now being replaced by a drive/drop with topspin on a much lower arc. This puts more pressure on the opponents, and it's more survivable when you screw up, if you have the right defensive skills. You also need to know how to best assess whether to hit a 3rd shot drop or drive before you even go here. And if you do go here, it helps to know precisely which spot to target, and this involves assessing the play dynamics of the entire group. The actual shot is not that hard to master to decent level, but the complex of the many other factors around the shot are quite difficult to steer to a good outcome during the learning process.
Working on the shot and need more practice. Many of the yt tutorials on this shot show a wimpy 2nd shot to work with. That's not usually the case. Softening up that hard drive to the baseline is a challenge.
Ben Johns just put out another video this week about how to hit a drop and how not to hit it. He says to not hit a drop in a closed position, as you do in this video. He says to hit them from a semi-open position, which you do not do.
I’m not sure you understand what a closed and open position is. In this video, her body is facing the court, that is an open position. Closed position is when you turn the body perpendicular to the court.
In the Ben Johns video, he does not recommend an open stance facing forward to the net for a 3rd shot drop - as CJ uses here. Ben recommends a semi-closed stance.
I’m glad it’s not just me that suffers with the yips! It comes on with a strange feeling down my arm and even though the people I play with are very understanding it’s very embarrassing. As soon as the ball is in play I’m fine - sometimes playing even better, perhaps to compensate for my inability to serve!
CJ 🤝 you are a true pro coach and teaching professional - excellent technical explanation and demonstration here of the 3rd shot drop - that I will steal and use for my beginner lessons 😅thank you!
If you get targeted, that's the chance you train your returns. If your teammate is being targeted, work on the poaching and anticipation game to minimize the internal whining😅😅
I'm about a month into Pickleball. I've tried to find videos that explain the scoring rules. You guys are thorough but you too are just doing things at times without explaining. Could somebody explain when you can and can't score points. At around the 8:05 mark, the ladies said you'll notice we are both standing back behind the baseline. Yeah I noticed but could you tell us why you're doing it?🤔 Thanks
Well. It helped and confused me. I understand the Server number now but the explanation of when you score and when you don't is confusing. There were side outs but no points until the end of the video when someone got a point.🤪
