Description:
Kyle Whatnall
Patience is critical in the game of pickleball, particularly at the kitchen line: It allows you to wait for the right opportunity to capitalize on a mistake made by your opponent and attack. Usually the mistake is a dink hit a little to high that you can punch or drive aggressively. Hitting dinks to different areas of the kitchen forces your opponent to move and can help create these attacking situations. Once you advance to the kitchen line, focus on hitting your dinks low over the net and wait for your opponent to make a mistake that you can capitalize on. You can do this by placing your shots in a variety of locations and making your opponents hit different types of dinks: forehand dinks, backhand dinks, out-of-the-air dinks, and so on.
Another key is to add angle to your game. Push your opponents wide, dink them down the middle, and play the lines. Cross-court dinks are especially effective because they increase your opponent’s margin for error. In fact, pro-level players dink cross-court on a regular basis for this reason. You can improve your scoring chances by adding it to your game as well.
When you play with patience and use angles, you can force your opponents to make a mistake that produces a chance for you to attack and win the rally.