Beginner pickleball players tend to make the same mistakes at the kitchen line, but many are easy to overcome. Learn how to recognize the mistakes you are making at the non-volley zone (NVZ) line and what you can do to improve those mistakes, including: where to position your pickleball paddle and feet, why you need to share the court with your partner, and three things to look for when determining if you are going to hit an aggressive or soft shot at the kitchen line.
Mistake #1: Positioning at the pickleball kitchen kine
One of the most common mistakes that beginner pickleball players tend to make is positioning at the kitchen line. When you’re dinking at the kitchen line and a ball pushes you back, many players will stay back instead of recovering back up to the kitchen line, which can make you vulnerable to attacks. If you're hanging out back in the transition zone area, it gives your opponents many options to attack you because you're creating a lot of gaps. One of the worst reasons this can be a bad place to play is because you're leaving the most offensive place to play on the court.
The kitchen line will give you more opportunity for offense because you'll be able to take dinks out of the air. If you're standing further back, there are limited attacks that you can do and even if you do attack from there, you're putting yourself in a vulnerable position.
Mistake #2: Late preparation of your pickleball paddle and feet
A lot of players have late preparation with their pickleball paddle, and late preparation with their feet. A good way to correct it is to think about your palm like a flashlight: Find the ball with that flashlight and get there early, almost beating the ball to its position.
When you’re dinking, make sure you’re prepping your paddle early. If you can get your paddle in position early and get your feet in position early and beat the ball to its location, you're going to have a lot more success and you're going to disguise those dinks much better.
Mistake #3: Thinking you can’t cross the center line
Another mistake a lot of teams make, especially when they're just starting out in pickleball, is they think that the kitchen works 50/50, meaning: “I'm just responsible for my half and my teammate is responsible for their half.” Instead, you should pretend the center line on your half of the court does not exist, the kitchen is not played 50/50, and you should think of the area as a team and slide accordingly.
Pickleball is all about angles and you’ll want to work on cutting off angles for your opponents to attack, especially the easiest angles. A great rule of thumb to remember when it comes to defense at the kitchen line is that you and your partner should always be within a paddle length apart: If there's ever a gap you're probably too far away from your partner.
The opposite is true as well: If the ball swings to one side of the court, you will want to make sure that you’re cutting off the easiest angle for your opponents to attack. Your partner should be close enough so they can touch your paddle. This will cut off so many angles from your opponents to attack your team and your defense is going to skyrocket.
Mistake #4: Zero Forward: Don’t backswing too far
We've all been playing pickleball and gotten one of those perfect pop-ups, but sometimes we dump it into the net or we hit it long. If you practice the Zero Forward concept you can eliminate those errors. For “Zero Forward” hold the paddle up and in line with your body (with the paddle face facing toward the net). Anytime you pull the paddle back, it’s “negative” space. Anytime you push the paddle forward, it’s “positive space.”
When the paddle is still at “zero,” it’s called Zero Forward, because when you get a pop-up you want to find zero and accelerate forward. You don't want to pull back into negative space because when you do that you start to get too big of a backswing and you're going to make way too many errors.
The pickleball court is much smaller than a tennis court so when you get that pop-up, find zero and accelerate forward and you will begin to win more pickleball points.
Mistake #5: Hitting every ball aggressively
People tend to panic and ensure that they win the point, so they'll try to hit an aggressive dink every single time or a speed-up on every single ball. This often causes many unforced errors by either hitting the ball out or in the net or you're hitting off balance.
You should be showing a little restraint, and know that sometimes it's important to hit defensive shots and offensive shots.
3 components to look for to determine an aggressive or soft shot
There are three components you should look for when you decide to hit either an aggressive shot or an attack:
- A higher bounce or a higher floating ball.
- A ball that doesn't have a lot of action on it.
- Whether your body is in position.
To see these three components in action, watch the video above.