Pickleball Placement Strategy: EXACTLY Where to Hit the Ball

You just clicked on the best pickleball tutorial on YouTube. In this video, we're going to tell you where to aim in pretty much every shot in pickleball so that you win more games. Let's get into it. Let's talk about where to aim your serve. Now there's a couple spots that are really advantageous, that's really going to help you win more pickleball points. And those spots are right here and right here. And I'm going to explain why. Now this is assuming that you're playing against two right-handed players. What I'm going to do is I'm going to aim to the backhand when I'm serving this direction because oftentimes people don't have as good of a backhand as they do a forehand. This can also pull my opponent off the court. Now if I'm serving this direction and I'm playing a right-handed player, I'm going to aim here, finding the backhand again. But this is a great spot to aim because it makes me decide, do I hit a backhand or do I hit a forehand? So I like to take these two boxes, divide them in half and hit to this left side. If I'm facing the box on each side of the court, that's very advantageous places to aim when you're serving. Now obviously we want to make sure that serve is deep. We want to make sure it's got pace and we want to make sure it kind of kicks into your opponent. Those are all going to help as well. Now let's talk about the return. Now remember the most important thing for the return of serve is that you are targeting the back fourth of the court. The reason being, it makes the serving team's third shot the hardest for them to hit. And remember, as the returning team, the most important thing for you to do is hit and run to the kitchen because you really want to get that offensive advantage. However, there are some things you want to think about with the return. Now when I'm returning the ball, I do think about angles. Now remember, basic geometry here says if you give an angle, you get an angle. If you give kind of a straight line kind of down the middle, you cut off angles. So if I'm playing a serving team who I maybe think like, oh, they have a really good passing shot. They have a really good angle shot. I'm probably going to return more to the middle of the court because I'm not giving them those really hard angles to work with. So if you are playing somebody who has a really great passing angle shot, I'm probably not going to return a really hard angle. Now the other thing I want to talk about is stacking. So if your team is stacking as the return, it's really important to think about this. Remember, if you hit the return, you're having to run diagonal. You want to give yourself the most time because time is currency on the court to get there. So if I am returning and I'm trying to get to the opposite kitchen line, let's say I hit the return diagonal. Now they have a very short shot right to where I'm going. So I'm taking away time for myself. But instead, if I hit my return to this person down this line, now their longest shot is from this corner to this corner, giving me more time to get set for the next ball. So there's a couple of things strategy wise you want to think about when hitting the return. Now let's talk about the third shot. Now we know that there's a couple different options here when trying to approach the net. A lot of people hit that third shot drop and we're seeing it more and more popular to hit that third shot drive in order to get yourself and to earn an easier drop. But the important two things I want to talk about when it comes to aiming your approach shot is number one, our biggest goal is to get this ball to dip over the net. That's going to put my opponent in a spot to have to hit up on the ball and allow me to advance and be offensive. It does not mean that you have to land the ball in the kitchen perfectly every time. As long as we can get that ball dipping over the net, we're going to have a lot of success. The second thing we should talk about when hitting this shot is I see a lot of people go for angles, but it can be a very advantageous thing to drop the ball to the middle of the court. One, the net is lower in the middle than it is on the side, so you have more margin. Two, you're going to confuse people on whose ball it is. And three, you're taking away their angles, meaning they can't do as much with that shot. They're probably going to hit that ball right back to the middle, most likely, and if they go for an angle, they could hit it out. Doing this shrinks the court. Think about those things when hitting your third shot. Your goal is to get the ball to dip over the net. The middle is a great place to aim and only really go for those angles if you're really prepped early or if the ball sits up higher. Now we're going to talk about the fourth shot. So the fourth shot is your response to the serving team trying to approach the kitchen, typically off of either a drop or a drive. Now the biggest, most important thing is to keep that ball deep in the court. However, there is also some strategy here. Something that I think is really good to aim for are your opponent's feet. So you see how his paddle is down and the only way that he can hit is up, meaning your response is getting a higher ball. Now I see a lot of people really trying to work with angles and that's fine, but if you're not hitting to their feet depth in the court, then they can still run up and get in position and hit a better ball. So it's really important as you're hitting the fourth shot to again, make sure that you're keeping your opponents as deep as possible and the extra credit is to hit directly at their feet because that probably is one of the hardest balls to hit and if they hit it, it has to be defensive. So now let's talk about where to aim your dinks and there's a lot of different types of dinks and you can check out some of our other videos that overview those dinks if you would like to. What type of dink you hit is often decided on how prepped you are for that shot. So if I'm a little off balance, I'm probably going to hit a more defensive kind of lift dink. If I'm a little more on balance, then I can be a little bit more aggressive with that shot. But when choosing where to aim, especially if you're hitting kind of a dead dink, the middle is one of the most frustrating spots because my opponent doesn't have many options. I'm really not giving them an angle that they can be aggressive with and if they choose to speed it up, they can really only do it right back to my middle. If they try to pull it to the side, it's probably going out. The other great place to aim when dinking is typically to find people's backhands as that's typically a little bit harder shot for most people. Another great thing to do when dinking is to change up the location and as your opponent starts to pinch middle more and you get prepped early, then you can be aggressive to the outside of the court. But remember when you do that, you're opening up angles for your opponent. So just be prepared that the ball could come back to multiple different locations. Now we're going to talk about the lob. So the lob is actually a really great offensive shot because it pushes the opposing team off the kitchen line and then they have to work all the way back to get back into the point. However, there are some strategic things you want to keep in mind when you are lobbing. Now the biggest thing is to understand where forehands are in the court. So if my opponent is in front of me and I'm on the right side, their forehand is in the middle. So if I hit a lob going down the middle from this position on the court, I'm teeing my opponent up for a pretty great forehand if he can get behind the ball. So one of my favorite things to do if I'm playing the right side of the court, assuming everyone's right-handed, is I like to lob from this position and hit the backhand corner of the court. Now remember with the lob you do want to make sure you're hitting kind of the back fourth and maybe back third of the court. And also if you're on the right side of the court, a great place to lob and actually maybe one of my favorite is to lob cross court to the corner. Now the reason why I like this, again assuming everybody's right-handed, is one, it gives you a lot of margin because this is the furthest distance that you have to be able to hit the lob. So you have a little bit more margin to work with, but two, you dodge kind of their forehand and typically this opponent is the one that has to run behind to get it. So it's a further distance for them to run and kind of recover. So that's kind of my favorite areas to lob if I'm playing the right side. Again if I'm playing the left side, I'm wanting to keep this in mind as well. I'm wanting to dodge those forehands. So I'm probably not looking to lob this side and I am more looking to maybe lob straight over my opponent here. So again, I think it's probably the most advantageous to be lobbing from this right-hand side, but that's just maybe my personal preference. So now let's talk about attacking from the left side and also attacking from the right side. Now when I'm playing the left, I often am looking for a couple different locations to attack and some of that has to do with where the ball is located. Now if I get a ball to my inside foot, I can really only attack to the middle. And so if I'm going to do this, I typically like to take a little pace off as kind of a bait ball because I know that's probably not the winner, but I'm trying to set up the shot. If I get a ball to my backhand, I have some more options. I'm going to A, attack down the line. If I do this, I still want to make sure I'm getting that ball nice and low because oftentimes I'm going to have a forehand waiting for me. So I'm trying to set this up down the line and maybe slide to set up a combo. I also like pulling the ball across my opponent's body that's directly in front of me to where I'm not pulling it too far where I'm getting into the forehand side of my cross court opponent, but I'm kind of taking that ball and pulling it across my opponent's body so that they kind of have to react last minute. And again, I'm probably going to, if I pull across, look to set up the forehand counter attack. So those are some areas that I like to speed up from the forehand side. What about you? What do you like to do on the backhand side? So for the backhand side, something that I've learned is if that ball is coming to my inside foot, if I'm wanting to pull it in attack, it's pretty easy to know what I'm doing because if I go this angle, that ball is going out. If I go that angle, this ball is going out. So typically people will know if I'm pulling an attack from the mid court, it's going to go straight. So that's not my favorite place to attack just because people can anticipate that. I really look for a ball that's sitting here because this allows me to go straight down the line, down the middle, or hit a dink that's a hard angle from this side. Again, really just thinking about chess and thinking about the shot that's coming. I don't want my opponents to be able to anticipate what I'm doing. So if I have a lot of angles and options to work with, it makes it a lot harder for them to read where I'm going. Selkirk Academy is not your typical pickleball camp. While other camps just scratch the surface, Selkirk Academy goes in-depth making you a better player. All camps are taught by PCI certified coaches at some of the country's best facilities. For more information, go to academy.selkirk.com today. 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