5 Effective Advanced Pickleball Shots and Serves
As pickleball players master the basic shots like groundstrokes and hitting returns from the volley zone line, most players develop an interest in learning new, more challenging, and effective shots. Most new players will have mastered the fundamentals of a forehand, backhand, crosscourt dink, and lob shot within a few short months. But how many have learned to control a pop up, return a hard shot, or master the third shot drive?
If you’re seeking to add new tricks to your arsenal, the following shots and serves offer the opportunity to do that. Take your pickleball game to the next level and throw your opponents off-guard with these advanced techniques.
#1. The Chip Shot (Forehand Roll)
This shot takes advantage of the “shoulder high, let it fly” rule that most players follow. Hit down the center line, a chip or forehand roll is accomplished by pushing your wrist forward and rolling it through as you hit the ball upward. This puts a topspin on the ball that causes it to appear shoulder-high but drops at the last minute to remain in play, effectively tricking your opponent into letting a good shot go.
Watch this helpful demonstration from Pickleball Kitchen for the chip shot here:
#2. Backhand Roll
The backhand roll is taken from a shot in the non-volley zone that comes in at about net height. It’s best used when the ball isn’t high enough for an overhead smash onto your opponent’s side of the court. Similar to the chip or forehand roll, this shot is hit from a low, squatted position with the goal of hitting the ball upward but with a backhand swing as opposed to the forehand. The key to success here is to really go for it without hesitation!
This video from Pickleball Kitchen shows the backhand roll positioning:
#3. Reset Shot
Not every shot needs to be a drive with tons of power. Sometimes, it’s necessary to reset the level of play and get yourself out of the transition zone by using a “reset” shot. This soft shot is intended for balls that come to you at knee height and may resemble a dink shot with a few differences.
In some cases (excluding the skilled rolls mentioned above), hitting the ball higher will make it easier for your opponent to make a play. When you go for a reset shot, you get low enough to return their knee-level shot and keep the point of contact so low that they struggle to hit it back to you. As opposed to the rolls, in the case of a reset shot, you want to keep the paddle in front of your body and your wrist fairly rigid to place the ball correctly.
To see the reset shot and to understand the strategy behind it, Jordan Briones from Primetime Pickleball demonstrates here:
#4. Kitchen Corner Serve
If you want to switch up your serve, whether to surprise your opponent or improve your skills, a kitchen corner serve is the next shot you should learn. To execute this move, serve from the corner of your baseline and hit it into the opposite corner of your opponent’s kitchen. This forces a deep return from close to the sideline, which will hopefully lead to a poor return of serve that you can hit back. Remember that you might want to hit softer on this serve than you normally would because it’s a shorter shot.
To see the kitchen corner serve and four others, check out this video from Pickleball Kitchen:
#5. Hybrid Lob with Topspin
The hybrid lob with topspin is a difficult shot, but it’ll be worth having in your bag of tricks. It’s a mix of a power serve and a lob serve. You want to hit the ball deep into the court by brushing up on the ball to give it the topspin. It will feel like hitting a lob, but make sure to give it an upward trajectory. The topspin will make the ball go higher so that the receiver has to back up to return the serve, which is often a shot that many players aren’t used to hitting. If done correctly, the receiver will not be able to return the serve, resulting in an ace, or it will be returned poorly, giving you the upper hand for the 3rd shot, arguably the most important shot in the game.
Pro pickleball player Simone Jardim demonstrates how this shot is performed here:
