Welcome back to The Pickleball Clinic Coaching Newsletter!
Today, we’re going to give you a key tip to maximize your topspin drives that you probably aren’t thinking about yet.
Pros and 5.0s do it, but amateurs often don’t, because they aren’t approaching their drives in the right way. Plus, we’re going to give you a couple of our favorite drills to make sure that your groundstrokes are always on point.
Let’s get started.
Most of pickleball is played from the kitchen. I don’t think that anyone would debate me when I say that your kitchen game is the most important to master to play at a high level.
Because of that, most amateurs spend the majority of their focus on their kitchen skills and techniques, and rightfully so!
However, when you spend a disproportionate amount of time working on your kitchen skills, the techniques that work best for kitchen shots (dinks, volleys, speedups, and counters) will naturally bleed into your baseline shots (drives and drops) unless you practice your technique differently.
When playing at the kitchen you should:
Keep a minimal backswing that doesn’t cross behind your body
Make contact directly in front of your body
Use a minimal followthrough that doesn’t come over your shoulder
Keep your shoulders square to the net
To be clear, these techniques do translate to your third shot drops. However, they are all terrible for your drives, and will prevent you from creating maximum topspin.
Notice the above dinks and speedups are hit completely in front of the body.
The main reason why we keep everything compact and out in front at the kitchen is to save time. When you’re at the kitchen, you’re only 14 feet away from your opponent. You don’t have time to turn your body, take a backswing, or take a large follow through, and even if you did, you’re likely to hit the ball out.
So at the kitchen, your goal is to balance your time with your technique.
However, let’s say you had unlimited time to hit the ball. In that scenario, you would focus on using a technique that optimizes power, spin, and control without regard for how big your swing is or how much you have to move.
Of course, you never have unlimited time in pickleball, but when you’re hitting from the baseline you have substantially more time than you do when you’re hitting from the kitchen. Therefore, your swing should move towards optimizing power and spin, and away from saving time.
In order to maximize topspin, you should make contact with the ball not only out in front of your body, but also to the side. Take a look at the clip below of pro player Eric Oncins, who has one of the best forehand drives in the world. Pay close attention to his contact point, the point where the paddle makes contact with the ball.
Notice how he uses his left arm to stretch out to the side and create space from the ball. He makes contact with the ball about a foot to the right of his body and about six inches in front of his body.
Making contact to the side of your body rather than directly in front gives you some key benefits:
Longer swing path: Hitting to the side and in front lets your paddle travel upward and forward through the ball, increasing the vertical component of paddle velocity that produces topspin.
Greater low-to-high brushing action: Contacting the ball to the side creates room to accelerate low-to-high rather than crashing the swing into your body, so the paddle can brush upward from the bottom of the ball to impart topspin.
Better use of body rotation and weight transfer: The larger backswing combined with a contact point in front allows you to transfer weight into the shot while uncoiling the hips and shoulders, combining linear and rotational forces that enhance both spin and power.
The key to finding this new contact point is to work on your spacing. That is, you want to practice having about a foot of space between your body and the ball to the side, and about six inches of space to the front when you hit.
Your non-dominant hand is key when it comes to spacing. Notice how Eric’s left arm is fully stretched to the side in the above clip. Wherever you place your left hand during your backswing is usually where you will contact the ball. So as a rule of thumb, you should be an arms length away from the ball when you make contact.
My favorite drill to practice your spacing is in the section below, so keep reading!
See you on the courts!
- Matt Slowinski (Co-Founder, Pro Player & Coach)
Pay close attention to the third shot drive in the clip below. 👇
Did you notice her spacing? As the third shot came towards the player on the left, she moved out of the way and gave herself plenty of space before going for the forehand drive.
Our Favorite Way to Practice Topspin Drives
The challenge with practicing highly technical shots like the topspin drive is that it’s very difficult to execute them correctly in full speed with the ball.
When learning a new swing, it’s usually best to practice it in slow motion without the ball. But that isn’t realistic!
That’s where our new favorite training tool, the TopspinPro comes in. It’s a stationary device with a real pickleball that you can position in the exact spot that you need to work on your swing. The ball allows you to feel the contact point and simulate the swing with real-time feedback to make sure you’re doing it correctly.
To work on your spacing, place it about a foot to the side of your dominant side, and six inches in front of your body. You know you have it in the right spot if you can stretch your left arm and just meet the ball.
From there, go through a full topspin drive swing without moving your feet. You’ll have to stretch a bit out to the side, but that’s the correct motion for topspin. Once you get the feeling for the swing, have a partner feed you some forehands, and try to replicate the exact same swing!
And, you can get 20% off a TopspinPro right here or just use code clinic20!
Insights from World No. 3 Ranked Pro James Ignatowich
Creating topspin is an essential part of playing pickleball at a high level. Players are hitting topspin more often than ever, and as paddle technology continues to evolve, creating consistent topspin will be essential.
Firstly, using your legs to get “behind the ball” is necessary if you want to create topspin. If you reach for the ball and let it get behind you, you will have to slice or cup the ball, which makes it impossible to hit topspin. So, use your legs to be able to make contact with the ball in front of your body.
Topspin is created from a low to high motion. Usually, the amount of topspin is dictated by how much acceleration a player can get within this low to high motion. Acceleration is easier to achieve with a loose arm, instead of being “tight” and trying to muscle the ball. I’m not always focused on “maximum topspin,” but when I am, I make sure to be very loose, so that I can “swing fast,” instead of “swing hard”.
On topspin dinks and drops, do not overuse your wrist in an attempt to hit a ton of topspin. On “soft shots,” or dinks and drops, I just look for a smaller amount of topspin roll to help get my shot to dip. The most common cause of errors on topspin drops at the rec level is too much wrist.
See you all for my next bulletin!
-James
If you want a paddle that maximizes topspin, check out James’ new RPM paddle, and get 15% off with code “clinic15”!
Now that you’ve learned how to find the correct spacing for your topspin drive, it’s time to drill it! One of the best ways to practice your drive is by hitting groundstrokes with a partner. Here’s a breakdown of the how and why!👇
Well, that’s a wrap… so let’s recap what we learned this week:
The fundamentals of playing at the kitchen do not necessarily translate to the baseline
When hitting a topspin drive, you want to contact the ball to the side of your body, as well as out in front
Once you get a feel for your spacing, practice hitting drives full court!
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
