I'm glad Catherine and Athena made a video on offensive lobs. Obviously, with all players being at the kitchen line, the best way to remove at least one player from the kitchen line is the offensive (top-spin) lobs and keep the opponent team on defense. This is such an important skill for rec and high level tournament players to master. I'm glad Catherine brought up the pro-tip of making the lob shot initially look like a dink & taking the shot out of the air before the ball bounces in the kitchen. For me, personally, when I'm doing backhand cross-court dinking, I perform a backhand variant of the lob towards the back-middle or cross-court. Barely anybody expects someone to Lob using a backhand. I recommend to any player mastering lobs to try and balance height, depth, and pace of the lob. The perfect lob would be around 10ft (3 meters) in height, deep enough to where the ball lands within 1ft (0.3 meters) from the baseline, and fast enough that the opponent cannot react fast enough to respond with an overhead shot and have trouble moving backwards to recover. Lastly, to Catherine, amazing job at the PPA Sacramento tournament! You played so much like a boss! 👏👏👏 You and AL have dominated the match with power, precision, and finesse to earn the gold 🥇🏓
Thanks for these great tips for an offensive lob. I would love to see a video on the best strategy for retrieving an offensive lob. I've been taught to do a drop shot if possible. My question is where do I go if my partner is retrieving the lob? Do I stay at the kitchen seeing she's going to drop the ball? Or do I go back with her? Thanks for considering this for a future video!
Another great video! Thank you! When lobbing, do you simply “bump” it up into the air or do you put some top spin on it? Could you do a followup video on how to defend against an offensive lob? Do you try to drop it back in kitchen, lob back or drive?
If you are new to lobbing, I would suggest getting comfortable bumping it up first and then later adding a little bit of top spin on the lob! Will work on doing a video on how to respond to offensive lobs! The best option is to drop it if you are able to get there early enough. Second best option is to lob it back, and last option is to drive it!
Not Athena being pissed (at 4:26) when she loses a point against, oh I dunno ONE OF THE TOP PRO PICKLEBALL PLAYERS OUT THERE! Guess it's different when it's your life partner (no excuses, right?) 🤣
Actual question though - sometimes when I try to lob I'm thinking too much about putting topspin on it to bring the ball down... would you say I just need to keep drilling the shot with topspin, or would it be more beneficial to work on hitting the *right* contact point (even if it has less topspin)?
I would definitely say focus a little less on the top spin to start and then as you get pretty consistent you can try to implement the top spin back. Even when you do, it shouldn't be that much spin, mostly getting the ball up!
