Dinking has a role at every level of play in doubles pickleball and gets more important and common as you play at higher levels. Once players start to get a hang of it and are consistently hitting good dinks, they sometimes hit a wall and are unsure how to advance their the dinking game to consistently set themselves up for an attack.
My goal with this article is help you break through that wall and take your dinking game to the next level.
Advanced Doubles Pickleball Dinking Strategy
Dinking is a means to an end, and that’s setting up an attack to win the point. When you’re dinking, you want to be the team that is controlling the rally and dictating the pace and movement. This means you are keeping your opponent unbalanced while you are balanced and ready to attack when the chance arrives. How do you do this? You do it by being intentional with your dink targets and pace. More on this to come. First, let me show you a rally from the 5.0 men’s doubles gold at the 2020 APP Chicago Open, there are some things we can learn here.
This video snippet comes from the Chicago Open Pro Men’s double gold.
I’ve marked the spots where each dink was hit during the rally. First, notice the groupings or areas they were targeting their dinks.
The team that won the point had 4 main groupings. The two corners and the two spots inside, circled in the image. Remember those spots. When you hit these spots it forces your opponents to move and potentially gets them out of position and off balance.
The second thing I want you to notice is how the team that won the rally hit several different spots while the other team only hit one spot. If you can move your dinks around to spots that make them move more or catch them out of position then you have a better chance of setting yourself up for an attack.
You’ll also notice that the team that won changed up players who were hitting the dinks to take advantage of different angles and they even hit a volley dink in there. Changing it up like that keeps you unpredictable and your opponents off balance.
In summary, here are the 3 takeaways from this video.
1) Be intentional with your dinks and aim for the 4 spots shown above
2) Mix up your dink spots to keep your opponents off balance and moving
3) Hit a variety of dink shots like a volley dink, step back dink, or give up a dink for your partner to take advantage of a different angle
Now that we’ve seen a good pickleball dinking strategy from the pros, here’s a drill to help you execute it well.
Advanced Dinking Drill
Start with you on the side opposite the cones and a training partner on the side of the cones, facing cross-court from each other. The orange cones are your main targets and the green cones are your targets if you get in a tough spot and need to bail out.
Do this drill with your partner until you are consistently hitting near the orange cones. Then, in games, remember this drill and hit your spots when you’re dinking. You’ll be amazed how difficult it will be for your opponents to keep up with you. You’ll get more attackable return dinks and you’ll force your opponent to hit more dinks into the net.
After doing the drill several times and applying it to your games, it will eventually become second nature and you won’t have to think about it as much, you’ll just do it.
I do have one word of caution for you. When you are aiming for the spots in the corner, if you hit it to close to the net then it sets up your opponent for an around the post shot. Do your best to keep it closer to the kitchen line to avoid setting up that shot.
