How to Turn Your Opponent's Attacks Into Your Own

Welcome back to The Pickleball Clinic Coaching Newsletter!

We keep talking about how much faster pickleball has been getting over the past couple of years.

If you want to keep up with the pace of the game, you need to learn how to deal with fast shots and shut down your opponent’s speedup attempts.

Today, we’re going to break down the counterattack so that you can become an unattackable pickleball player and dominate at the kitchen line.

Let’s get started.

Being able to defend against speedups is incredibly important. You need to show your opponents that they can’t beat you just by hitting the ball hard.

The way that we defend against speedups is by hitting a counterattack, or counter for short.

When countering a speedup, you want it to be powerful and assertive. Ideally, you would win the rally on that shot, although it is not necessary. If you are able to win the rally on your counterattack, it sends a message to your opponent that they should not speed up at you.

When it comes to hitting counters, there are some fundamental mistakes that players commit all the time. Addressing these mistakes can make or break the entire shot. Here are my keys to executing strong counterattacks.

Play Paranoid Pickleball

First and foremost is embracing a concept that we call paranoid pickleball. Playing paranoid is expecting your opponent to attack every time the prepare to hit. If you are always expecting an attack, you will never be caught off guard. If they choose not to attack, no worries, you’ll have time to readjust for a dink. Many players get caught losing rallies to speedups simply because they weren’t ready for the attack. So rule number one of counters, always expect the speedup! 

Keep Your Paddle In Front of Your Body

This one is key for generating power. It’s a common misconception that you should keep your paddle close to your body because you’ll have more time to react. The amount of time you gain from keeping your paddle close is negligible, but when you keep your paddle out in front the difference in power that you can generate is massive.

You’re simply much stronger when your arm is extended. Think about it, if you were to push a heavy piece of furniture, you wouldn’t get as close as you can to it and try to push it with your arms bent. You would stretch your arms out to get into a more powerful position. The same is true of counters.

Keep Your Elbow Within Your Frame

In addition to having your paddle out in front, you want your dominant elbow to be within the frame of your body, so that if you pulled your arm back your elbow would hit your side. This will allow you to efficiently switch between hitting forehands and backhands. It is true that most counters will be backhands because you must defend your body with your backhand, but that doesn’t mean that you should be sitting on your backhand with your elbow flared out. If the speedup comes to your forehand side, you better be able to get there. That is where your elbow position comes into play.

Keep Your Arm Lose, But Your Grip Firm

For this one you, you need to learn the difference between how it feels to have a loose gip and a loose arm. You need a firm grip, about a six out of ten, so that you can counter forcefully. However, your arm needs to be loose so that you can move it quickly and defend both forehands and backhands as well as generate power. If your arm is tight, it will not be able to move very fast. When you only have a split second to react, you need your arm to move as fast as possible!

See you on the courts!

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

The fundamentals mentioned above are some of the reasons why it looks like the pros have superhuman reaction time. You don’t need super fast reaction to defend speedups, you need good fundamentals.

How many of the fundamentals that we discussed could you spot in that firefight? 😄 

It’s Really Important to Keep Your Grip Dry…

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Insights from World No. 4 Ranked Pro Andrei Daescu

In this edition we will talk about defending a speed up and everything that’s has to do with it.

When defending against a speed up there are a couple of important things to consider:

1. The height you’re being attacked from: Having a good soft game is imperative in terms of being able to defend a speed up. The lower you can keep your drops and dinks, the smaller the window of attack you are giving your opponent. If you’re being attacked from a knee high position let’s say, then your paddle can afford to start chest high in the ready position as the net will protect anything lower than that. So all you would have to defend is your chest and shoulder area as anything higher than that goes out.

2. Where the speed up is coming from and how to defend your body with your paddle: Cross court attacks are the easiest to defend as you can sit heavy on the side that’s pointing at the attacker (for a right handed player you would sit forehand if the attack is coming form your right, and you would sit backhand if the attack is coming from your left). If the attack is coming to the other side of the paddle it is very likely that the ball will go wide because it is traveling fast on a diagonal trajectory. The tougher attacks to defend are the ones that are being initiated from in front of you. For those it is very important to know that (for a right handed player) the backhand side of the paddle should cover from your right hip all the way out to the furthest point you can reach on your left side. The forehand side of the paddle should only cover the balls that are outside of your right hip line.

3. The speed of the attack: One of the most important aspects of defending against speed ups is the ability to get out of the way of balls that are going out. The speed of the attack can sometimes be predicted by the amount of backswing your opponent is taking; when you see someone with a good size backswing at the kitchen line you can start moving out of the way before the ball is even hit.

To recap everything we discussed the keys to having a good defense against speed ups are having a good soft game, having a good paddle positioning based on the height of your previous shot, and getting out of the way of balls that are overhit.

See you all for my next bulletin!

-Andrei

^{For more from Andrei, check out his Instagram!}

Luckily, speedups and counters are super easy to practice with a partner. Here is one of our favorite drills to get your counterattacks rock solid:

The Bad Dink Drill

1. This drill is done one on one at the kitchen line. Designate one player to be the player speeding up, and one player to be the player countering.

2. The player who is countering should hand feed a ball to the forehand of the player speeding up. This simulates a dead dink.

3. The player receiving the feed should speed that ball up and play the point out. After the speedup and the counter, everything goes.

4. After 5 minutes, switch roles or sides of the court so that both players get to work on speeding up and countering from each side.

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

• Play paranoid pickleball: always assume your opponent is attacking

• Keep your paddle out in front: this is where you are strongest

• Keep your elbow within the frame of your body

• Keep your grip firm, but arm loose

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