In October of last year, I blogged about Joe Baker’s video – Doubles Pickleball Strategy 101-How to Play Smart Pickleball, Ten Tips
If you haven’t watched it and you are interested in raising the level of your doubles play, I suggest you read the post and review the video. It is an excellent video and Joe Baker teaches the strategies in a very understandable and deliberate manner. Diagrams and game footage are interspersed to make the concepts clear.
You can find this blog post, including Pickleball Strategy 101, at the link below – [Video is at the Bottom of the Page]:
Pickleball Strategy – 10 Tips to Help Win the Point
For those who have already watched the 101 series of tips, here is the follow up:
Joe Baker’s Tips for Doubles Strategy in Pickleball – 102 (Below)
Joe starts out by emphasizing that smart play that often leads to winning points and not necessarily strokes or shots.
As Joe points out, most pickleball points are lost and not won. The improper use of force causes many balls to go errant. That is to say, players often hit the ball hard when they should hit it soft and hit it soft when they should hit it hard and thus lose the point.
As Joe Baker points out, power and control are opposites:
- Hitting the ball harder reduces control – increases errors
- Hitting the ball softer increases control – reduces errors
Two Rules of Thumb:
- When you must hit up on the ball, hit softly
- When you hit down on the ball, hit harder
Watch the video for complete explanations of the above ideas! I hope you learn some great points as I did!