Hold That Paddle Straight

We are often taught to hold our paddles so that the face is pointing where we want the ball to go. Makes sense right? Well, usually.

There is a law of physics that says that things reflect off a surface at the same angle as they hit the surface. Take a ball on a pool table for instance - if you hit the side rail of a pool table with a ball, it bounces off at exactly the same angle as it hit the surface. As a matter of fact, the whole game depends on this.

In pickleball we can overcome this rule by hitting the ball hard, in other words by moving our "surface" in the direction we want. This happens almost all the time, so people tend to teach us to hold our paddles pointing where we want the ball to go. Good advice actually, as long as we hit the ball hard enough to overcome the natural laws of physics.

There is one common situation in pickleball, though, where we need to know, understand, and be able to overcome this.

For example, you are in a cross-court dinking rally and your opponent pushes you wide. Not wide enough for an ATP, but wide enough that you can't get behind the ball to hit it back cross-court. Plan B is an easy-to-execute soft dink to the opponent across from you. You face your paddle down the line and softly lift the ball over the net AND OFF THE COURT. I see this all the time and I have the battle scars to prove it.

In these cases we MUST respect the laws of physics and compensate for where the ball wants to go. So we need to angle our paddle more towards our opponent, so that the ball will go down the line.

You can drill this with a bucket of balls and two partners on the opposite side - one to hit you balls and one so you can see where the balls are going in relation to your opponent.

See you at practice!

Michael Gauthier

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