Common misconception: “No mans land”. There is no such thing in pickleball like there is in tennis. Get comfortable in the transition zone. Attacking if the ball is high, resetting if it’s low. Short hopping balls in transition zone.
Hot take from this guy and I have to agree. “There is no split steps in pickleball”.
“The minute you split step, your chest goes back, your contact point gets late, and you pop the ball up. Colin Johns said it best, ‘it’s about accelerating and decelerating as you move up”.
Dekel Bar says the same thing here:
Instead, stay low and take some small steps to creep in to the kitchen. Have patience. You can’t avoid the transition zones, it’s okay to be in the transition zones for many shots. Sure you want to get in there with little shots as possible, but be patient. Dekel says he averages 2-4 shots to get in.
Chop Steps On Closeouts
Don’t do abrupt stops, it’ll “spill the water bottle” like Zane says. If you split step, will almost always “spill the water bottle”.
What you see pros doing is, they do the choppy steps at the end. Like when a basketball player closes out on a guy on the three point line, they run and then when they get close they shuffle step.
Basically this allows you to explode to either side if they dink wide to the side. And if they pop it up, you can still close on it and attack.
Like a basketball defender closing out on the three point line. The defender can still go to either side if the offense tries to drive in and the defender can still jump up to block if the guy shoots the ball.
Drive and follow through forward. Momentum forward.
Instead of having your follow be through to the side turning your shoulder.
Why? This way your momentum goes forward. So you don’t have to uncoil after you drive, which takes away valuable time getting through the kitchen and forces you to rush.
This is sort of a hot take, to instead of following through to your shoulder, follow through forward. I had this take as well and was glad to find someone who had a similar thought process. Pickleball isn’t tennis or table tennis, that valuable time to uncoil is way more important in Pickleball.
Transition Zone Movement: How Should You Move After Dropping The Ball.
Your Non-ball dropping Partner has ideally moved up to the kitchen. So opponent will want to keep the ball away from your partner and thus likely dink/flick out wide.
This means 90% of the time, after dropping, you should cover the sidelines and let your off-ball partner cover the middle.
See how the person dropping’s partner is crashing the net. And the net player on defense is aiming it (red line) crosscourt to not get poached.
The off-ball person should cover most of the court and cut off angles so the dropper can come in down the line.
Move With Your Paddle In Front Of You
“Does this ever happen to you where in transition they drive at you and you hit the ball [late] into the net?” – Tanner
Run with your arm out in front, this way you won’t have a timing issue and can just place the paddle to block if they drive at you in transition. Instead of having to move the arm forward and time hitting the ball.
Don’t have your arm stretched too much out in front though, otherwise there is no power and you’ll just hit the ball into the net. Don’t have your arm fully straight. He says it should be fully extended, that is incorrect/an exaggeration, you can’t have control/softness or power if your arm is fully extended.
Priority Checklist
Maintain low body height
so you can maintain balance when you contact the ball and also be able to attack lower balls with accuracy
Take small steps to creep into the kitchen.
When dropping crosscourt, cover your sideline first and let your partner cover middle
A little counter intuitive, I know.
When dropping directly forward, cover your sideline first as well
Quick warning: with slice return you are basically allowing your opponents to generate more topspin off your backspin and get the ball dipping hard over the net. This is why a lot of pros generally don’t recommend it. Because if you mess up and pop the slice up too high, they can really wreck you at the net.
Priority Checklist:
Hit the ball in front of you instead of behind you or jammed up in your body.
Run in and contact the ball at it’s peak.
Account for the fact that your body is moving with forward momentum. So keep your swing tight and compact
Your swing is basically just from your shoulder to hip.
Attack the ball, knife it with your body, it’s an offensive shot. Run through the ball.
Make the opponents have to really lift up to get the ball over the net.
You take options away from your opponent/making it so they are forced to 3rd shot drive instead of drop
Lock your wrist. If you move your wrist, ball will float up.
You want your returns to be a laser beam instead of floaty.
Your follow through should be directly forward. It’s a lot more like an underspin drive than an underspin drop that floats.
Your paddle should always be on the side of the shoulder it starts on.
Your paddle/arm should never cross over your body to the opposite side.
Like a drive where you are just pushing the ball forward and you aren’t turning your hip and chest across your body for deception or rotation.
The key of course is to mix it up with regular returns, you’ll make the opponent have to constantly use their brain and adjust to the spin and cause “unforced errors”. It makes their third shot really hard to hit low over the net consistently.
IMPORTANT: Knife the ball and keep ball low… with underspin, the bounce will be low too. Which makes it a lot harder for the opponent to hit a third and keep their third shot low. It’s great.
Update: 1/22/2025: Rob Nunnery just released a video that agrees with exactly what I’ve written above.
At low levels 3.5 and below:
People have a tough time returning backspin and reading the spin on the ball and how much force they should put on it. So they often either hit too high which allows you to put it away at the kitchen, or not put enough force and it sails into the net.
At higher levels:
Like all things off-meta, it has the advantage of opponent not seeing it as much or often, thus catching opponent’s strategy off guard and throwing off their game the first few times you use it.
They might hit into the net, or too high the first few times you do it before they start adjusting, that’s free points.
Or you might find out that the opponent in front of you just sucks at returning against slices and has gotten away with it because no one used it well against them and they never practice against it. So you keep abusing that.
Because it’s off-meta
Even as a mix-up, it’s a viable strategy. Let’s say their strategy is to drop and then get to the net, but they are only good at driving against underspin… you can throw off their strategy entirely by suddenly slice returning, forcing them to drive high and play a fifth shot before coming into the kitchen.
They have to play your game. You dictate where the game is going to go.
It adds an additional thing they have to worry.
Instead of expecting a flat return every time where they know exactly what their strategy is for that and can pick and choose what they are going to do.
What To Watch For To Know You Have Your Opponents On The Ropes:
If your opponent starts dropping or driving high with big margin for error, high enough that you can putaway, keep slicing your returns. You are getting easy thirds.
If you see your opponent don’t come in right away to the kitchen like they usually do, you see they stay back and are not confident on their thirds, keep slicing. It means they have to hit one extra shot from the baseline and that means more % they miss. Every extra shot they have to hit to get to the kitchen is more % they miss.
If your opponent driving into the net like 1 out of every 3 shots, keep slicing. Unless 1 out of 3 of their other shots are also just straight up winners. If the 2 out of 3 of their other shots just get them to the net, this is advantageous for you. Keep slicing.
Only Slice Returning
Using it as your one and only return style, that will be harder to pull off because most pros will adapt to it and use the spin against you.
Mari Humberg does this, for both forehand and backhand.
She is so good at it that against some women teams, that it forces them to lob their serve to her so she has a harder time slicing it low with a lot of underspin.
Pros To Watch: Mari Humberg
Should slices hard with both forehand and backhand. One of the only people to do it.
She also slices on her drops on both sides as well.
Strategies and Patterns
This is the pattern Mari likes to do: She slices hard on the return, the opponent drives fast and hard and it goes higher over the net. She angles the putaway with her backhand, opponent barely resets it and ball flies high. She flicks it with her backhand and it goes across the court at a tight angle that is barely outside the kitchen. It’s a winner shot almost every time.
She does that all the time. You can tell she has seen that pattern a lot and know exactly what to do. Watch more of her games, and you’ll see she sets herself up for that backhand flick winner again and again.
Pattern: Deep slice that hits the baseline leading to attacker to step back and be forced to hit ball upwards in order to get the 3rd shot in. Easy putaway for you at the kitchen.
It’s already hard to keep the ball down and dip low when you are on your backfoot against a regular return. Against a backspin return, it’s basically impossible.
When opponents are tight, nervous, or frustrated, slice returns are very effective.
You also see her opponent get tight at the end of games like this one and they miss their return into the net on multiple points when the game score is at 10-8. Here is one example (and before this timestamp, there were a few more):
I’ve also noticed that Mari prioritizes underspin and low over the net OVER depth.
Because if the return is high underspin and low over the net, even if it’s not deep, there is no angle for opponent to drive it up towards the net and make it dip as it’s crossing the net. They either have to drive hard and fast and it flies high so Mari and her partner can put it away. Otherwise it’ll go into the net.
OR opponent have to learn to drop it from mid court. And if they only know how to drive and can’t topspin drop, they are screwed.
Because even if they have a flat drop or backspin drop but not a topspin drop from midcourt, they are in trouble. It’s hard to backspin against backspin without popping the ball up a decent % of time.
If opponents are beating you with third shot drives, short slice return to make them come up to the kitchen. “Short slice returns are effective at levels below pro” – Ignatowich https://youtu.be/6sA0zu5OBZs?t=70
If someone hits a really had fast pace serve at you, Ignatowich will just bunt the ball back instead of slicing it because it’s really hard to slice fast serves and keep it down because your paddle face is open. Which means you could accidentally do a short high slice return which is worse return possible.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that because opponents aren’t as confident that their ball will dip over the net and not sail high or into the net, they aren’t running in on their drop or drives.
This allows Mari to get a good spinny 4th shot out-of-the-air even if opponent’s drive dips over the net, because opponent’s aren’t crashing in. So if her 4th shots are a little high, it doesn’t get punished.
Great game with great POV of her slice returns from receiving end of it.
See how low it goes over the net.
What she does against lob serves?
If your opponent’s start lobbing their serve to you, you have already won, you should just drill/smash the ball back.
Of course Mari doesn’t do that, she continues slicing even on lob serves cuz her slices are just that good against people.
What she does against mens in mixed?
She returns it wide to the women more. But she’ll return to the men sometimes and you’ll see the men mess p on it as well.
What she does against fast serves?
Men’s serve a lot faster and harder, making it more difficult to slice. Against women, they don’t serve as fast (of course they still serve way faster than the typical players at your game, just not like 70 mph balls).
Pros to Watch: Tyler Loong
He still slices on his backhand, but drives return on his forehand.
Because he doesn’t slice with his forehand, it makes it so if his opponents aren’t good at returning underspin, they just hit to his forehand. Which is what he wants them to do anyway.
Advanced Dropping Tech: Put your weight forward on to your front foot when dropping. Move forward into the ball like you would on a return.
You are taught to always split step before you drop.
Once you master that, the next level is to ignore that. If you can consistently topspin drop while moving through it, why not do it.
If you can’t, drill it.
It’s like the fadeaway jump shot in basketball. In the beginning of basketball, coaches would tell you to never do it, always have your feet set. Nowadays most basketball even at the high school level will jump and then square their shoulders mid air to buy themselves more time. In modern basketball, if they split their feet, square up, and then shoot, they won’t get the shot off before the defender closes in on them.
Same in pickleball, as players get better, techniques get more advanced. Sure it’s harder to do, but that’s why it’s an advanced technique.
When you get good enough with the aggressive hybrid drop, you can move through it just like you would a return of serve. This way you are at the kitchen way faster and close off their angles after.
I remember thinking about this and DMing my friend about this in late April:
“I thought of this last Sunday. So from the defender aka the person at kitchen line’s perspective. What is harder to keep the ball from popping slightly high over the net:
A great topspin drop that dips with a lot of spin? OR a dink from when everyone is at the kitchen?”
My friend replied: “the first one.”
Me: “That’s what I’ve been realizing too.
The player basically has more room to create more topspin and make the ball dip from high to low from further back in the court. When I’m at the kitchen, there is only so much topspin I can put on it before it becomes too high. But when I’m dropping, there is naturally a lot of topspin.
So that actually flips the offense on it’s head. The goal previously for drops is to get to the kitchen for 50-50.
But if it’s easier to make the opponent make a mistake when coming in off of that drop, that’s actually when we should strike. It’s actually a 60-40 when dropping and transitioning in.”
Me: “So imagine this. We have the person returning the 3rd shot: topspin drop crosscourt.
He pinches middle, his partner moves up the line. Basically crowding the returner at the kitchen. A slight pop up occurs, both are already there to hit the ball down.”
My friend replied: “Interesting idea”.
And then months later Tyson McGuffin came out with the video.
Tyson McGuffin talks about it here when he analyzes Jaume’s running third shot drop:
“Jaume can hit this running topspin drop. It takes a good amount of feel. He sneaks in and is in right away.” – Tyson McGuffin
“He doesn’t just get to the line, he gets to the line with a gain!
He gets to the line with a weaker dink [from Ben Johns] and he is able to pull [speed-up] right away.
If he does a loopier third, and resets in transition, he probably gets to the line but for the first couple of dinks the Johns brothers are likely in control of the point. He might have to grind out some really high level dinking, just to get a look for a ball he might be able to speed up.
So again, sometimes it makes sense to take a little bit more risk and get out of the mindset of just getting to the kitchen line. But get to the kitchen line on your own terms.” – Coach McKenzie
He also talks about it here on ALW’s drop:
If you move through the drop, you might take only 1 drop to get to the kitchen, as opposed to 2. Or 2 drops as opposed to 3. And every additional drop you need to do, is additional % chance of missing.
Pickleball Journey has the same philosophy as me as well: “Now I’m taking a whole drop away that I have to hit. I might only have to hit only 1 or 2 drops [instead of 3].”
“I want you to be moving as you are hitting the ball”. – Pickleball Journey
Being able to do the Erne on defense shrinks the court down and forces them to have to drop / dink towards middle. It’s one of the strongest moves in Pickleball that is often underutilized at the 4.5 and below level.
If you don’t Ernie, a low aggressive topspin drop to corners (especially to your backhand) is very strong because it gives them more margin for error and makes you outstretched. It pulls you away from the middle.
By being an Erne threat, they can’t drop high/shallow at the edges of the court, which means you can crunch and protect middle more.
In dinking rallies, Erne also shrinks the court down and makes them not want to dink down the line.
In dink rallys can also set up Erne via dinking patterns. Patterns that force them to hit the ball late, outstretched, so they most likely will dink it down the line or risk dinking the ball out the court. Then you pre-jump and Erne it.
“Just showing that you want to Erneis that pressure. It’s that visible mental pressure you can apply. And the earlier you do it, the more it pays dividends throughout your game/match.
It really changes up where [the opponent can go] with [their] shots. You know what it feels like on the receiving end. It closes down an alley. Create a simmering energy and pressure just by trying to do it” – Ryan from Raise The Bar
Erne Footwork
Classic Jumping Erne Footwork
4 Simple Steps To Erne
This one is more committal so you want to do the jump only right after opponent hits the ball. So you don’t get caught out.
Walk Around Kitchen Erne
Andre Daescu does this one, it’s a lot less commital, because you walk around the kitchen. And you can always just bring your foot back. You are basically just straddling the kitchen.
So you can do this earlier right before opponent makes contact with the paddle.
If you are taller and need less reach, you can use this method.
Priority Checklist:
Wait until your opponent’s paddle has made contact with the ball before you jump.
If you jump too early, opponent will dink away from you.
Footwork: do the correct steps for an erne with more reach.
The important part here is this: For the Erne you jump with your inside foot (foot closest to the mid line), first.
Read and recognize the typical patterns of behavior from opponents.
Set yourself up to Erne by forcing opponent into the patterns.
Erne Against Drops
This is the easiest Erne to do and gives you the most amount of margin for error. Learn this Erne first.
Your mindset: if their drop is high enough for you to Erne it, you should always erne it, otherwise, it’ll land, bounce and push you way back off the corner and off the kitchen line and off the middle of the court… making your team at a disadvantage as the opponents get to the kitchen.
When you are first learning Erne, everything that you think you can Erne, go for it. It’s the only way to know if something can be Erne’d is to limit test. Miss and miss, a lot.
On defense even if you are hitting up and to the side on the Erne, it’s still really effective because it allows you to hit to the wide side angles, pulling opponents out of position.
Priority:
Try to aim it so the trajectory is inside the kitchen and it bounces in the kitchen.
With the trajectory in the kitchen, they can’t even hit it.
Tip: You want to flick almost backwards like you are aiming to hit the ball into their side of the net.
Tip: don’t be afraid to hit it wide and use the full kitchen, unlike with dinks they won’t be able to ATP it because it’s too fast.
Left Side Erne off a Drop (as a right hander)
If ball is high to your backhand side, switch your paddle to tomahawk grip and you can reach further and angle it to hit in the kitchen on the side for a winner.
Here is a great example by Christian Alshon:
He tilts his paddle here into tomahawk position
Right Side Erne (backhand) off a Drop
Hayden king of Ernes. They call him big H for a reason, he is able to shrink the court size down with his presence despite being shorter and having less reach.
Pattern: Hayden is in middle with his inside foot on the mid line. You can see as soon as the ball leaves Rafa Hewett’s paddle that Hayden knows it’s Erne time.
He shifts his body over to get himself closer to the sidelines.
And then he jumps and backhand flicks the ball down.
He aims inside the kitchen at a wide angle for a winner. Because, the ball’s trajectory is inside the kitchen, Johnson can’t even do anything about it even though he is right a the kitchen.
More Drop Ernes
9:24-12:04
First Erne in this video, he erne as the follow through after he hits it, and let’s his momentum take him across the court after he hits the ball.
He didn’t have to Erne it, but drop was high.
Erne Dinking Patterns
Dinking patterns to create Erne opportunities.
The key is to hit a deep dink at the sidelines that make them have to shift and stretch out to hit the ball.
If they are late to contact the ball with the paddle, they’ll often either hit it out the side or hit down the line.
When they have their head down looking at the ball, jump the Erne.
Another thing I noticed is if their feet and body is turned sideways and perpendicular to the kitchen line, they basically can no longer dink safely back crosscourt. The angles they can dink to drastically decreases the more perpendicular they are.
The more sideways there legs turn, the more likely they are to be forced to dink down the line.
Pattern: Forcing Down The Line Dink Erne
You dink deep to outside-foot of the person directly in front of you.
Opponent: is turned to the side and thus likely to dink down the line.
As soon as you see opponent head look down, arm outstretched, and paddle face open up, he will be unlikely to bring it back to the middle.
You jump and Erne.
Example 1
Example 2: 7:21-9:20
Pattern: Split Line Erne aka Forcing Inside-Out Forehand Dink From Middle
You dink middle to the forehand of the left-side player.
Opponent Left Side Player: crosses over to take the ball with their forehand and dinks inside-out forehand. 90% of the time they will do this because the inside-in Erne is more unnatural motion.
You: jump for Erne
This Erne comes up in-game the most.
Example 1: 3:54-6:00
Example 2: 12:04-13:00
This one was a more dangerous one because they could’ve gone behind him for a winner.
Physical: How To Jump Longer Distances
The longer you jump, the more you are as an erne threat.
Once I figure out how to apply long jumper’s training to here, I’ll add it over.
Due to my table tennis background, since starting pickleball I had faster hands than basically anyone else on the court. People on the court have often commented on my hand speed and asked how to get fast hands.
Most people think hand speed is just pure reaction time, they think how fast your hands are is purely based on your reaction time. It’s not.
So what is hand speed? It’s actually multiple things:
Anticipation
knowing what’s going to happen, what could happen, limiting the options.
For example: if you speed up and get countered down hard, that means the opponent had that hands sitting there waiting for you to hit into it.
You got “Read”, that’s anticipation not reaction time.
The opponent anticipated where you were going to hit the ball, and put there paddle right there. And you speed up right into there paddle.
Reaction time
If you didn’t expect the ball to come, and you instantly put up your paddle and got the ball, that’s reaction time.
Example: when I’m anticipating a speed up to my backhand, I put up my backhand up ready to counter. And the opponent attacks my forward and I flip my paddle and block it back with forehand. That’s reaction time, NOT anticipation.
Strength
How far back do you need to pull back to hit a hard counter back at opponent. The less far back you need to pull back, the more time you get to hit the shot. The bigger your stroke, the slower your hands.
If you watch pro JW Johnson play, he flicks every ball in hands battle using mostly his wrist, there is very little swinging movement.
Dexterity (hand-eye coordination)
For example, my left-hand and right-hand both have the exact same anticipation, reaction time, but my non-dominate hand isn’t as good as my right-hand because it doesn’t have the dexterity to get the paddle to the right place.
These are the 4 things you need to work on to get increase your hand speed.
