DINK SHOT
work with. You have to hit about an 11-foot shot to hit a good
dink. If I’m dinking diagonal, I can hit that 11-foot shot, or I
can hit an 18-foot shot. So, a big advantage of dinking crosscourt is it allows you to hit shorter balls so that your opponent
doesn’t smash it back at you.
HEIGHT ADVANTAGE
Another advantage of dinking cross-court is you have a
greater margin of error on height, so you can miss a little bit. If
you’re dinking directly across from you, you have to stay very
low over the net. By dinking cross-court, I have about another
8 inches that I can work with. If I hit it just a little bit too high,
I still have length to work with. So, if it lands in the non-volley
zone, my opponent can’t smash it back at me.
VISUAL AID
people about the
length that you
have when you dink
cross‑court. I’ve
attached a pickleball
at the end, and it
telescopes. So now
my students can
visually see how
much more room they have when they dink cross-court. The
advantage of this visual aid is that it shows I don’t have very
much length to work with if I dink directly across, whereas
if I dink cross-court, that’s a great dink. I even have more
space to work with. This visual aid will also show if you dink
directly across too high, you’re going to get smashed. But if I
dink cross-court, the ball’s going to have time to drop with the
same height, so that my opponent can’t smash that shot back
at me. So, work on your cross-court dink. It’s actually easier
than hitting directly across from you. You’ll find that it really
improves your game.
Rusty: That’s your Pickleball 411 for today. We really hope
this has been helpful. Now there’s only one thing left to do, and
that’s Go Play! •
To watch the complete video version of this article and to
see the cross-court dink demonstrated live, visit Pickleball
Channel online.
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Special Thanks to: Steve Paranto
Rusty Howes is the Executive Producer and
creator of Pickleball Channel. Rusty worked for the
likes of Warner Bros. and Disney before creating
Pickleball Channel to develop and provide fantastic,
professional video content for the pickleball
community. He is deeply involved in promoting the
sport of pickleball at home and across the country.
Sometimes when you visually see something it makes it
easier to understand, so I use a golf ball picker-upper to teach
JUNE 2016 |
MAGAZINE
41