Good dinking skills are required to play advanced pickleball. Once the third shot drop is in play, you’re likely headed into a dinking rally. The goal is to hit a soft shot that barely clears the net and lands in the kitchen, in a spot that’s tough for your opponent to attack. Pickleball dinking mistakes often end the point. Avoiding mistakes sets good players apart and will advance your game.
Pickleball Dinking Mistake – Lack of Patience
The illustration below shows a player losing patience in a dinking rally and hitting an unattackable ball into the net.
Dinking is a skill and patience game. One of the most avoidable mistakes when dinking is to simply not lose patience.
When you get good at dinking you can softly drop it over the net and place it in different spots.
Good opponents will respond in kind with good dinks. Dinking can go on for a while when there are no good attackable shots to put away or speed up.
Many times, the team who loses the dinking battle loses because a player lacks the patience to continue and attempts a put away or speed up on an unattackable dink.
This often ends up with a ball hit into the net, hitting too high where it is attacked by your opponent, or hitting it too hard and out of bounds.
Keep dinking until you get an attackable dink return within volley reach at net height or higher. If you get an opportunity to hit an attackable dink, take it, otherwise stay patient and let your opponent make the mistake.
Pickleball Dinking Mistake – Broken Tether
As you are dinking you are moving side-to-side and in and out of the kitchen.
You need to stay tethered to your partner so you don’t leave a gap where your opponents can hit a speed up shot in the opening.
Good players will always see the opening and use a dink fake to hit a shot into the open court.
The illustration below shows a dinking mistake when players don’t stay connected at the net.
In this scenario:
1. You dink across the court. Your partner slides over to cover the line and defend where your shot lands. You don’t move over with your partner to the center of the court.
2. Your opponent sees this and speeds up a shot for a winner in the opening between you and your partner. In summary, always move back and forth on the kitchen line tethered to your partner. If you leave an opening a good opponent will see this and exploit your mistake.
Pickleball Dinking Mistake – Caught in the Kitchen
While dinking you may have to go in and out of the kitchen. This is legal as long as the ball has bounced in the kitchen. If you do go in, hit a return dink and get back out quickly.
If a ball hits you while you are in the kitchen you lose the point.
In some cases, you need to go deep into the kitchen to make a play on the ball. This happens with a good opponent dink shot or maybe the ball catches the top of the net and just bounces over.
In this scenario:
1. You go deep into the kitchen to get to a ball and dink it back. Deep means both feet are likely in the kitchen.
2. Your opponent sees this and hits the ball quickly (speed up shot) right at you.
You were too slow getting back out of the kitchen and got caught. Even an unattackable ball can be hit up and at you. As soon as you touch it, your opponent yells… “You’re in the kitchen!”.
You didn’t have enough time to get back out. Your opponent is experienced and knows how to get a point from this. Be mindful and get out quickly when you go into the kitchen. Try not to put your whole body in the kitchen while dinking, sometimes you have to but try to step in with one foot, reach and hit the shot and then step back out.
Summary
Good dinking skills are required to play advanced pickleball. Once the third shot drop is in play, you’re likely headed into a dinking battle.
Dinking is a patience game—whoever cracks first is usually the one who loses the point.
Use good footwork and stay connected to your partner not leaving gaps your opponents can exploit.
Move quickly in and out of the kitchen area as needed.
The more you practice, the better you’ll get—especially with dinking. It’s one of those skills that takes time to refine, but it’s worth it. As you progress, you’ll rely more and more on dinking, especially as drop shots and resets come into play to slow the game down.
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