Spin It to Win It: The Fundamentals of Topspin

Welcome back to The Pickleball Clinic Coaching Newsletter!

Topspin is like a spare tire: you don’t always need it, but when you do, it will certainly come in handy.

It is also one of the harder skills in pickleball to learn. But once you know how to do it, you can apply it to nearly all of your shots.

Today, we’re going to break down the how and why of hitting with topspin, so that you can employ it in your game and use it to your advantage.

Adding topspin can enhance almost all of your shots. Whether it’s dinks, drops, serves, returns, or drives, being able to impart topspin on the ball is beneficial for a couple reasons:

1. Topspin keeps the ball in the court. Topspin makes the ball go down. If you were to hit two balls at the same speed, but one had topspin and one didn’t, the one with topspin would land first. That means that with topspin you can hit the ball harder without worrying about hitting it out.

2. Topspin makes the ball jump towards your opponent after it bounces, making your shot harder to deal with. Applying topspin to your shots will make it more offensive.

No matter what shot you’re hitting, topspin works the same. It is also created in the same way. Basically, if you know how to use topspin for one of your shots, you know how to use it for all of them!

Here are a few universal keys to keep in mind if you want to hit with topspin:

Swing From Low to High

Topspin is created by swinging from low to high, and brushing up on the ball. Your paddle should be under the ball before you make contact, and finish over the ball after you hit. It should be moving in an upward motion as you strike the ball in order to impart the spin.

Use Wrist Lag to Contact the Ball Out In Front

If you want to hit with the best blend of spin, power, and control, you should contact the ball in front of your body.

In order to do this, you need to use a technique called wrist lag. Wrist lag is when you bend your wrist back at contact, allowing you to hit the ball in front of your body while keeping your paddle face square towards your target.

Notice in the image below how my wrist is bent back right before I make contact with the ball in front of my body.

Follow Through All the Way to Your Shoulder

Just because your follow through happens after you make contact with the ball doesn’t mean that it isn’t important!

What you do in your follow through affects what you do in the swing before contact. If you don’t follow through, you will decelerate before you hit the ball. The faster you swing, the more spin you will get. Topspin requires that you accelerate your paddle, so following through over your shoulder will help you ensure that you aren’t slowing down before contact.

Employ these tips and you’ll be spinning your opponents off the court in no time!

See you on the courts!

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

In pro pickleball, the first team to impart topspin on the ball is usually the team that wins the rally. Here’s an example. 👇

Notice how the team on the far side hit topspin on all of their dinks, and the team on the near side did not. That allowed the far team to dictate the rally and eventually set themselves up for an Erne finish! 💪

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 top spin more often than ever, and as paddle technology continues to evolve, creating consistent top spin will be essential.

Firstly, using your legs to get “behind the ball” is necessary if you want to create top spin. 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 top spin. So, use your legs to be able to make contact with the ball in front of your body.

Top spin is created from a low to high motion. Usually, the amount of top spin 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 top spin,” but when I am, I make sure to be very loose, so that I can “swing fast,” instead of “swing hard”.

On top spin dinks and drops, do not overuse your wrist in an attempt to hit a ton of top spin. On “soft shots,” or dinks and drops, I just look for a smaller amount of top spin roll to help get my shot to dip. The most common cause of errors on top spin drops at the rec level is too much wrist.

See you all for my next bulletin!

-James

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

We’ll be the first to say it… Topspin is not the easiest skill to master. 😬

But like any skill that is worth learning, it takes a lot of practice!

Here is a drill that you can do that will help you master topspin on all your shots. The best part is, you can do it all by yourself!

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

• The fundamentals of topspin are the same on all shots: If you know how to do it for one, you can do it for all

• Swing from low to high and make contact out in front of your body

• Follow through all the way over your shoulder

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