When first stepping on to a pickleball court and playing your first games, you will see an array of shots coming at you, especially if you happen to be playing against more experienced players. As you learn the game and play more, there are certain basic pickleball skills that you will want to know so you can play at the same level as the opponents you will be playing against. We will discuss the five basic pickleball skills to learn first to set you on the path to becoming a solid pickleball player.
What Skills are Important in Pickleball?
We are going to keep this basic and focus on the skills that a beginning pickleball player should learn to progress and grow in to becoming an intermediate player. Before you can learn the more difficult shots that you see experienced players making, you need to build a skills foundation on the basic shots so those next level shots come easy.
We believe most players can build a solid pickleball skills foundation by learning these five skills, with more difficult shots coming later on in the pickleball learning curve.
1. Groundstrokes
The groundstroke shots make up the basic shots of playing pickleball and any racket or paddle sport for that matter. Your groundstrokes are foundational shots that must be learned at a solid level to become a proficient player.
Your groundstrokes include both the forehand and backhand and these shots will be the shots you use the most in any pickleball game that you play. Most pickleball players are forehand dominant players because that is the groundstroke shot you use most often, and for this reason many players favor their forehand and try to hit most of their returns using the forehand.
This is why I recommend for most players to learn to hit a better backhand with drills and practice. Having a solid backhand will take away a weakness in your game that more experienced players try to take advantage of against their opponents. Experienced players are trained to hit shots at their opponents backhands because many players have a weak backhand that creates a hole in their game.
2. Volley
The simple definition of a pickleball volley shot is any ball that is hit out of the air and returned across the net is considered a volley. This is a basic shot that should be learned by any new pickleball player.
The important thing to know here is that while most volley shots will come when you are playing up at the non-volley zone, you will need to learn to hit a volley shot from other areas of the court such as the transition area between the non-volley line and the baseline.
The beginning pickleball player should also know the rules of the non-volley zone, also known as the kitchen, which dictate that no ball can be hit out of the air from the kitchen area by a player standing in the non-volley zone. If a player is hitting a volley up at the kitchen, or non-volley zone line, their feet must be behind the kitchen line and their momentum must not take their feet in to the non-volley zone either while hitting the shot or on the follow through, or a fault will be called on that player.
Work on your volley game by learning paddle position when ready, stable feet at the non-volley zone, and shot placement when hitting a volley.
3. Serve
The pickleball serve is a basic pickleball skill that every pickleball player must learn. The challenging part I see for new pickleball players is learning the underhand serving motion.
The pickleball serve is unique to other games in that the serving motion must start with the paddle below the waist and progress in an underhand motion while hitting the ball over the net into the opponents proper serve receiving area. The challenging part for new pickleball players is the underhand serve motion and learning how to propel a ball over a net while hitting it underhand. This is understandably unnatural and takes a while to get used to.
There are generally two types of serves in pickleball:
Drop Serve: the player is allowed to drop the ball to the ground, and on the bounce, hit the ball (serve) over the net in to the opponents receiving court. The pickleball drop serve in my opinion is a great way for beginning pickleball players to learn how to serve using the underhand motion because it is more natural to hit a ball underhand when hit off a bounce. We talk about the drop serve in more detail in an article we have written here.
Volley serve: this is the serve you will see being used most often on your local pickleball courts. This is a serve that starts with a toss, and as the ball comes down from the toss it is “volleyed” out of the air using an underhand motion with the pickleball paddle and hit over the net in to the opponents receiving area of the pickleball court.
4. Serve Return
Learning to serve is an important skill to learn, but just as important is learning how to return a serve. You will play many different levels of players in your pickleball journey, and each will have a unique serve. You will need to learn how to return a variety of serves as well as to be able to return a serve from different areas of the court based on where the server places their serve.
In addition, you should understand the double bounce rule so you understand about hitting your serve return deep in to your opponents court with the goal of keeping them at the baseline for as long as possible while you move up after your return to the kitchen line. This is pickleball strategy you will learn as you play more games.
There are also times when you may be playing an opponent that is standing unusually far back and beyond the baseline on the serve. In this case, you may want to take advantage of the opportunity and hit a short return that draws them in towards the non-volley zone and may be either difficult to return based on the court position where they started from or will result in a weak return that you can turn in to a winner.
When you learn those skills and can use the return of serve to your advantage, you will play more points from an “offensive” position and keep your opponents on their heels, rather than from a “defensive” position and letting them dictate the points.
5. Dink
While most of the other shots on our list are basic and what I like to call “foundational” shots that are building blocks of anyone’s pickleball game, the dink shot might also be called a basic shot and a “must have” shot for any pickleball player, but I think it is also a solid strategy shot.
A dink in pickleball is when you are playing up at the kitchen line and you hit a ball softly over the net and it lands in your opponent’s kitchen area of the court. The goal here in the kitchen area of the court to hit the ball softly enough where it goes just over the net and lands in your opponent’s kitchen area forcing them to hit a weak return dink shot back to you.
The end goal of any of these dink shots is for one opponent to mistakenly hit the ball a bit too hard so it sails high enough over the net where you can hit a “put away” winner shot.
You will start to hit dink shots almost immediately in pickleball games so you might as well learn how to dink right away. In the beginning, don’t worry about being too sophisticated with dink shot placement, that will come later. Focus in the beginning on a “soft touch” and consistently being able to dink the ball just over the net and in to your opponents kitchen area, with emphasis on “just over the net” so your dink return is not to high over the net creating an opportunity for your opponent to hit a winner on you.
Mastering the pickleball dink shot along with the other pickleball skills we talked about will build a solid foundation for your pickleball game and make you the envy of all of the new players on your local pickleball courts.
What is the Most Important Skill in Pickleball?
At this stage in your new pickleball journey, mastering the basics is what is most important to build a skills foundation which will allow you to become a better player.
But beyond the basics and for the skills we discussed, learning how to Dink in pickleball is probably the most important skill you can learn to really elevate your pickleball game. We talk more about the pickleball dink shot in our pickleball intermediate skills article where we talk about dink shot placement, cross court dinks, and so forth.
Begin your new pickleball journey by learning the basic skills we talked about in this article and that will set you up to be a solid pickleball player as you begin to play more and more. Your goal is to become proficient at the basic pickleball shots to take away any weaknesses in your game that your opponent may try to capitalize on. Once you master the basics, now start to learn some of the more difficult strategy shots and you will soon be one of the better players on your local pickleball courts.