How To Hit A Drop Volley | A great shot option when you are facing bangers
5 Video Views·May 6, 2026
When your team has captured the net and your opponents (or at least one opponent) are at the baseline, it is usually very wise to keep them back with deep, hard driving volleys until eventually you hit a winner or they make a mistake.
However, it is also smart to sometimes do the unexpected because it will catch them off guard, get you an easy point and keep them guessing for points to come.
When you are sure that they are expecting yet another driving shot that will keep them back then it's a good idea to mix in the drop volley.
Often, it will be a clean winner. The last thing they will expect when bracing themselves for an attack is to have to do a full sprint forward.
Hi, welcome to Primetime Pickleball. My name is Nicole Havlicek.
In today's video we're going to be talking about
the drop off of a drive. Jordan and I teach this also that
typically when you're up at the
non-volley zone line and you're getting the ball, you're
receiving a drive, you're going to want to keep that person
back. You're going to want to hit firm volleys back deep, but in this
particular instance, you're going to want to hit a drop in
certain instances like this one, where let's assume that Jordan, I
pushed him or me and my teammate, we pushed him
way deep or way off to the side and he's just in a really bad position
and he's expecting that we're going to run him again on that next one.
Okay, so you really want to set it up so that you have them
thinking that you're going to drive that ball deep again.
But instead of that, what we're going to do is we're going to hit a drop shot
and very often that ends up being a clean winner because they're so
committed already to having to chase a difficult ball down either left, right
or back that all their momentum is leaning
to that side or back. They're really bracing themselves for an attack
not to have to do a full-on dead sprint forward. Okay, so this is specifically
what you're going to do in that instance where you feel that
they are 100% expecting you to hit it deep
hard again. You're going to want to trick them and drop it short
when they least expect it. Okay, so how we're going to execute that, we'll talk
about it right now just on the forehand side.
If Jordan rips it at me, I'm going to basically stick my paddle out,
try to get a little lower. I can't right now because of a back problem, but
really the important part is to put that racket out
and just kind of receive it a little. You receive the ball and you
want to absorb some pace off of it so that it just drops over the net.
Okay, so it takes a lot of touch and it's a very
subtle move. There's really not a lot going on. You have to feel it and just
somewhat move forward with your body, but then
you're kind of retracting your paddle back as you move to it.
All right, so here we go. Jordan's gonna rip some at my forehand.
Okay, so that's how we do a drop off the drive
and you want to use it again when they're not expecting that and they have
all their weight committed to be going in a different direction.
Thanks so much for joining us today and we'll see you in the next video.
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