Pickleball 101: Dinking Strategy

Make your dink difficult to stop by understanding the placement and depth of where to hit the ball.

When you nail a solid dink in pickleball, your opponents won’t be able to easily attack it. To do this successfully, players need to think about placement and depth when hitting the ball.

“Whenever the option is available, “I prefer to dink the ball across court,” Founder of Level-Up Pickleball Camps Wayne Dollard says.

When you’re dinking down the line, your opponents tend to be very close to you. That makes it difficult to place a ball in front of them that they won’t be able to easily attack.

A good strategy to help make your dink more effective is to send the ball across the court when the opportunity is there.

“By going crosscourt, you have an extra 8' to 10' of room to hit a nice high drink and drop it into the kitchen,” Dollard says. “So it’s always going to be a safer shot.”

To keep your opponents off guard, you can also mix up your dinks. By throwing a few forehands before switching to a backhand, it can help add variety to your shot selection and keep your opponent from settling into a groove.

By working on your dinking strategy, you can help keep a game’s momentum on your side of the net. So, grab your paddle, hit the pickleball court and get ready to leave your opponents in awe of your dink skills.