How To Hit the Backhand Roll in Pickleball | Ben Johns

All right guys, so we're gonna go over the backhand roll. I'd say we get requested for this video more often than anything else, because I hit it so much. I've been hitting it for practically seven years. And people like the shot, they wanna know how to hit it. One, two, three, four. The backhand roll has certainly developed over the years in terms of how you can hit it. So I'm gonna go over how I personally hit it and some variations on it. The first kind of the drill setup that I do, I'm gonna give it to Colin's backhand here on the right, and he's gonna simulate a bit of a cross-court dink to my backhand, and I'll be able to roll that ball. He's trying to set me up to where I'm able to hit it out of the air, but I'm hitting it from below the level of the net. So let me see what this looks like. Give CJ a little backhand here. He's gonna hit it to me, and roll the next one. So that's the setup you want. You can do it with three people to where you get a true cross-court dink coming from that direction. I really like that one, because changing the direction is a difficult part of this, but also one of the best parts about it that makes it effective. So some things we're looking for. When we're receiving this ball, you're not ever trying to hit a backhand roll off the bounce. Okay, if it bounces, you're doing different stuff. So we're trying to hit this ball out of the air. The next thing is, I'd say people think that there's a ton of wrist in it. That's the first thing I'd tell you that is usually not very right, so they try to do this a bunch. If you have a really strong wrist, you are able to hit something called more of a backhand flick, which is a little bit different than a backhand roll, and we'll go over a variation on that, but I do want to emphasize first, we're talking about strictly a roll. I don't like the wrist coming into play too much, especially for lower-level players. So let's hit a couple and then go over a couple things. The most important things for me are swing path and paddle angle. So to create topspin, you need a closed paddle face combined with an upward swing, because the upward swing gets the ball to go over the net, and the downward paddle face gets the actual topspin that you need, and that's really instrumental in this shot. Another thing about the swing path is you need to be starting from pretty low. I feel like a mistake a lot of people make is they go forward on it, and that's when they miss into the net. So you want to be starting low and finishing high, okay? Another thing people do is as they go low to high, they roll their wrist over like this, okay? Not a thing you want to do. Try to keep this back at the start. When we get into variations, there's some other stuff you can do, but the basic backhand roll needs to be doing this kind of motion, okay? It should be almost going in front of your face, here to here. That is the most important part of the swing path. The other thing is if you're often missing long, you're opening the paddle face like so, okay? The wrist needs to be bent forward much like a motorcycle throttle. You can just turn like this. That gets the paddle face down, and that's where you're getting your topspin and keeping the ball down, okay? So if you are opening as you get to full extension, that's where it's really gonna go long and you're not gonna get the topspin you need, okay? So all important things there. Another thing here is that when we get the ball from a cross-court angle, most people tend to swing back on the angle that they get the ball from. And that can be effective for certain shots, but with the backhand roll, when we're attacking it, we usually want to be redirecting it down the line off of a cross-court ball. That's the most effective way to hit it. And to do that, it's very important that you take the ball from cross-court, but you're still swinging this direction. This is what's gonna guide the direction of the ball. So going from receiving this way and hitting this way is one of the most important parts. So try not to swing back towards the path of the ball in this direction. You want to take the ball and go this way, which will feel a little bit odd, but it's an important part of the shot. Okay, so we can see right there, that's my favorite one. We're getting good topspin. We're getting it down the line to that chicken wing area. That's usually gonna be your most effective one. And certainly off the cross-court, when we're changing direction, it's gonna be the most effective because typically this player is gonna be looking for a backhand, certainly not a forehand. Now let's talk a little bit about spin continuation. Spin continuation simply means that the spin we're receiving is the type of spin we're gonna be hitting on the ball. And what that means in kind of the real point situation is that if we receive backspin, it's a lot easier to get topspin. Because when we hit it, because the direction reverses, the spin also does. So we're just effectively putting the same type of spin that's already on the ball, and that makes it a lot easier. So if you're receiving topspin, it's gonna be harder to hit a backhand roll than it is when you're receiving backspin. Okay, so something like this heavy slice versus that topspin is gonna be pretty drastically different in terms of how much topspin we're able to get. Okay, so that is the basic premise of hitting a backhand roll. Again, some things to keep in mind are we need to get low to swing low to high. We don't wanna be flicking the wrist or rolling it over like a windshield wiper. It's more about swing path and closing the paddle face. And then really just change the direction off the cross-court to down the line is really instrumental in terms of how effective it's gonna be. Now let's talk just a couple variations here. First I like is change the direction a little bit. There's really two ways to change the direction effectively for me. You can certainly just change your swing path. So instead of this kind of motion, you're just changing it slightly over here to get it in that direction. But another method I really like that's very effective is just changing the paddle face in terms of where it's dropped. So usually I like to keep the paddle up in order to get it down the line. But if we drop it more like this and we hit it, you're naturally gonna get to the outside of the ball, which gets it more to the left shoulder of the person in front of you. So it'll look something more like this. So you can see right there as I get to full extension, it's still a similar motion, but instead of the paddle being like this, I now have it a little bit forward and drop slightly to where it's gonna be hitting the outside of the ball and getting it to the left shoulder area. So if you find somebody is either sitting forehand or they kind of know where your ball is usually going on the placement, you can just slightly vary your paddle where it's starting and that very easily gets it to change left and right. On a more, a little more advanced note, we're gonna talk a little bit about backhand flick here, which is something more like that kind of motion where you can see some actual wrist action. Two things about this. One, I'd say a flick is easier to hit when the ball is higher because then we're getting kind of immediate power from the wrist or extra power at least. And that can make it very hard to defend. But as far as hitting it from below the level the net goes, which is akin to a roll, we'd wanna be careful simply because using your wrist requires good timing and doing it from below the level of the net. If you don't have good timing, you're just gonna miss in the net. So when we get it from below the level of the net and we're using our wrist a little bit, I don't want you rolling your wrist like this, okay? That's the windshield wiper still no good. It's more this way, okay? Kind of like the last one we were just hitting where it gets it to the left shoulder. We're trying to get it both forward and out here. This kind of motion, not this motion, okay? Let's watch what that looks like in fast motion. Another thing you can use in conjunction with this is some people struggle to get here and then just use the wrist. This does require a fair amount of wrist strength, but you can combine it with some elbow snap. So you not only use this motion, but also tucking this elbow slightly here and getting to there gives you a little bit of extra paddlehead speed, which can get you the necessary topspin you need. So if you're struggling with just wrists, you can certainly add a little bit of elbow. About the flick here is you can kind of get to full extension, almost be outstretched waiting for the ball to where you get a very good view as to where the ball is. You're on the kind of the same level as the ball and the same level as the net. And that's really helpful for controlling the height. You often get a lot of net cords with this because you're in that kind of down low position and on the same level even before the ball comes to you completely. That is an advantage of hitting a flick instead of a roll. So I would say try both the variations. One may work a little bit better for you, but just try to keep in mind the form cues that I went over a little bit on both of those. But yeah, it's my favorite shot in pickleball and I think anyone should give it a go because it's a lot of fun to hit.