Change Your Game With Topspin Dinks And Drops

Welcome back to The Pickleball Clinic Coaching Newsletter!

Pickleball is changing constantly… There’s no question about it. 

The style that the pros are using today is wildly different from what they were using several years ago.

If you don’t want to get left behind in this evolving world, there’s something that you need to add to your game: topspin.

Today, we’re going to break down how to add topspin to your dinks and drops, and why you should be doing it.

Let’s get started. 👇

In today’s game topspin is a bigger weapon than ever before. This is largely in part due to the ever evolving paddle technology, which continues to enhance our ability to impart spin on the ball. Topspin is also associated with tennis players. But don’t worry, you don’t need a tennis background to use topspin to your advantage. 

Topspin is advantageous in tons of situations, but today we’re going to talk about two topspin shots that you can add into your game immediately (and better yet, practicing one will get you better at the other):

Topspin Dinks and Topspin Drops

First of all, the fundamentals (and benefits) are nearly identical for both of them.

You can hit a topspin dink/drop deeper and harder, because topspin brings the ball down. Therefore, a good topspin dink/drop is more likely to bounce than a flat dink/drop hit with the same trajectory. Plus, if your opponent does manage to take it out of the air, he/she will be hitting it lower, which makes it less attack-able. 

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, we need to establish how topspin is produced. Spin comes from friction between the ball and the paddle. The ball will spin in whichever direction the paddle is moving at contact. When you swing upwards in a low to high motion, the ball will spin forwards with topspin. So any time you’re looking to hit spin, you should be swinging from low to high, starting from under the ball, and finishing above it. 

💡Topspin Pro Tip: The faster you swing, the more spin you will create. Topspin shots require a faster swing than flat shots, so you need to find a balance between spin and control.

Here are three keys for perfecting your topspin dinks/drops:

1. To start, exaggerate the low to high motion. It’s important to nail down the feel of creating topspin. You should start your swing with your paddle tip pointing towards the ground.

2. Keep your paddle out in front. Just because you’re hitting with topspin doesn’t mean that you should be taking a bigger backswing. This is where most players go wrong and end up overhitting their dinks. Your follow through should be more aggressive than a normal dink, but your backswing should not be. 

3. Follow through back to your ready position. One of the biggest mistakes I see is players “covering” over the ball too much with their followthrough, finishing with the paddle face parallel to the ground.

4. Choose the right ball. You should not look to hit topspin dinks on the run, or on low balls, or else you’re risking a popup. Any time you’re looking to create topspin, you should be comfortable with your positioning.

See you on the courts!

- Matt Slowinski (Co-Founder, Pro Player & Coach)

If you want to see a textbook exhibition of both topspin drops and dinks at the pro level, check out this video.👇

Woah, that was a lot of topspin! Notice how the topspin dinks and drops came down super fast and throughout the point, both teams used them to push their opponents off the line. Players like Quang Duong (near left) represent a new generation of pickleball players who are using topspin more than ever to create offense on dinks and drops, shots that are traditionally considered part of the soft game.

The Master of Muscle Memory

We all know what muscle memory is, right? The concept that the more repetition you get, the more your mind and body get used to doing something — and as a result, you get a lot better at that thing.

It's part of the reason why professional athletes are better than the rest of us at sports. They may have a little more natural ability, but they've also drilled their sport's motion hundreds of thousands of times. There's nothing that replaces repetition, nothing. And there's nothing that gives you repetition in pickleball quite like The Dink Master from Enhance Pickleball, which allows you to hit thousands and thousands of balls at the exact right height and with targets. Get one today, and save $15!

Insights from World No. 3 Ranked Pro James Ignatowich

Adding topspin to dinks and drops comes down to using the “big muscles” more than the “small muscles.”

What that means is, more knee bend, and a low to high motion with the arm and shoulder.

This is how to generate topspin consistently, instead of using the wrist. Consistent top spin on dinks and drops does not come from extra wrist motion.

Another important part of topspin is being loose with your arm. If you are tense with the arm, you will not be able to brush the ball with as much spin.

See you all for my next bulletin!

-James

^{For more from James, check out his Instagram and YouTube!}

The one thing about topspin dinks and drops is that they take WAY more practice than flat and slice dinks and drops. That’s because you need to swing faster to create your topspin while you’re still aiming for the same small target that is the kitchen! Here you can watch Coach Matt break it down so you can add it to your game.👇

And while the swing for topspin dinks and drops is nearly the same, Matt has a specific video on the topspin drop as well that you can check out here.

Well, that’s a wrap… so let’s recap what we learned this week:

• Topspin makes the ball go down and shoot forwards off the bounce. It makes your shots less attackable.

• Make sure you get behind the ball and only hit topspin when you’re in position. Otherwise you’l risk popping the ball up.

• Practice makes perfect! Topspin takes longer to learn and can be frustrating, but if you put in the work you won’t regret it.

Thanks for reading! We hope you can put these tips to good use the next time you’re out on the courts.

Reply to this email with anything you want to see in our future newsletters 😄 

- Your Friends at The Pickleball Clinic