Nearly every new player I meet believes the same thing: that the way to win at pickleball is to hit the ball harder than the person across the net. It is one of the most natural instincts in sport, and one of the most misleading. The players who quietly dominate our courts across Bayside almost never look like they are trying hard at all — because they have learnt that where you stand, when you stay patient, and how you move as a pair decides far more points than how hard you swing.
Why power is over-rated at the net
Pickleball is played on a small court with a low, non-bouncing kitchen zone and a ball designed to slow down in the air. That combination punishes power in a way tennis and squash never do. When you unload on a ball from close range, you give your opponent almost no distance to work with — the harder it arrives, the more of that pace they can simply redirect back at you. Power, in other words, is often a gift to a calm opponent.
There is also a hidden cost to swinging hard: control. Every extra kilometre per hour you add is an extra bit of margin you take away from your own accuracy. A big swing that lands two centimetres long is worth exactly zero points, no matter how impressive it looked. Meanwhile a soft, well-placed ball that lands in an awkward spot forces a weak reply almost every time.
The paddle that wins the point is rarely the one swung hardest — it is the one placed where your opponent least wants it.
None of this means power has no place. A well-timed put-away or a firm drive to set up an approach is a real weapon. But power is a tool you reach for once your positioning has already earned you the opening — not a substitute for earning it.
The value of getting to the kitchen line together
If there is one piece of positioning that separates winning teams from everyone else, it is this: both players getting to the kitchen line (the non-volley zone line) and holding it together. The team that controls that line controls the point. From up there you can hit down into the court, take balls out of the air before they drop, and cut off the angles your opponents want to use.
The team stuck back near the baseline is playing defence by default. They are hitting up over the net, covering more ground, and reacting rather than dictating. Watch any competitive match and you will see the same pattern over and over — the point tilts the moment one team reaches the line and the other cannot.
- Move up as a unit. Advance when the ball is travelling away from your opponents' strike zone — typically behind a soft third shot that lands in the kitchen.
- Split the court evenly. Each player owns roughly half the width, with the middle shared and communicated.
- Do not rush. Getting to the line one controlled step at a time beats sprinting up and getting caught in no-man's-land, that awkward mid-court zone where balls land at your feet.
Coach's tipIf you can only fix one habit this month, make it this: after every serve return, ask yourself "am I at the line yet?" Simply getting there and staying there will win you more points than any new shot in your locker.
Moving as a pair and keeping connected
Doubles is not two singles matches sharing a court. The best teams move like they are tied together by an invisible rope roughly four to five metres long. When your partner slides to cover a wide ball, you slide with them to protect the middle. When they step back, you step back. That connection is what closes the gaps good opponents are constantly trying to open.
The most common mistake I see is one player chasing a ball wide while their partner stands frozen in place. The instant that happens, an enormous lane opens down the middle or into the vacated side — and a patient opponent will find it. Staying connected means the court always looks "covered" to the other team, which quietly removes their easiest options.
Coach's tipPlay a few games where your only job is to stay level with your partner's shoulder. You will be amazed how many balls that used to sneak through the middle suddenly find a paddle waiting.
The neutral reset and taking pace off the ball
Here is the shot that changes players' games more than any other: the reset. A reset is a soft, controlled ball — usually played off a hard drive or a ball at your feet — that floats gently into your opponents' kitchen and buys you time to recover your position. It is the opposite of panic. Instead of trying to blast your way out of trouble, you take the pace off, drop the ball low, and calmly re-enter the point on neutral terms.
Taking pace off is a genuine skill, and it is counter-intuitive at first. Under pressure our instinct is to swing harder; the better answer is often to relax the grip, soften the hands, and let the paddle absorb the ball like a cushion. A good reset turns a losing exchange into a neutral one, and neutral is a position from which patient teams win.
You do not have to win the point on the shot you are under pressure on — you only have to survive it well enough to fight for the next one.
Learning to reset is exactly the kind of skill that comes on fastest with a coach feeding you controlled balls and adjusting your contact point in real time. If you want to shortcut months of trial and error, our private coaching sessions are built around drilling these high-value habits until they hold up under pressure.
Shot selection: forcing errors, not hitting winners
Amateur pickleball is largely a game of errors. In most recreational and even solid club-level matches, far more points end with someone missing than with a clean, unreturnable winner. That single truth should reshape how you choose your shots. Your job is not to end the point with a spectacular strike — it is to keep applying gentle, relentless pressure until your opponent hits the ball into the net or out of bounds.
Good shot selection looks like this:
- Hit to the feet. A ball at an opponent's shoelaces is the hardest ball in the game to answer well.
- Target the middle. Balls between two players create hesitation and "you-take-it" confusion.
- Play the percentages. Aim a comfortable distance inside the lines rather than painting them.
- Keep them back. Every ball that stops your opponents advancing to the line is a small win.
Do those four things patiently and the errors come to you. You will win a remarkable number of points without ever hitting anything that would make a highlight reel.
Unforced errors versus winners
Let me put some simple maths behind the philosophy. Imagine a rally where you have two options: go for a low-percentage winner you will make maybe one time in three, or play a safe, well-positioned shot you will make nineteen times in twenty. Over a long match, the safe shot doesn't just win more of its own points — it forces your opponents to manufacture their own winners, which drags their error count up too.
This is why chasing winners is usually a losing strategy. Every winner you attempt and miss is a point handed straight to the other team with no chance for them to make a mistake of their own. An unforced error is the most expensive shot in pickleball precisely because it skips the contest entirely. Position well, stay patient, reduce your own errors — and let your opponent be the one who blinks first.
Coach's tipAfter your next few games, honestly tally how each point ended. Count outright winners against unforced errors. Almost everyone is stunned by how lopsided it is toward errors — and that scoreboard is your strategy, written out for you.
How positioning applies from beginner to competitive play
The beautiful thing about a positioning-first game is that it scales with you. It is not a beginner shortcut you outgrow — it is the same foundation the best players in the world are built on.
- Beginners should focus almost entirely on two things: getting to the kitchen line, and keeping the ball in play. Do that and you will beat opponents who are still trying to smash their way to victory.
- Intermediate players add the reset, sharper shot selection, and true partner movement. This is the stage where patience starts to feel like a weapon rather than a compromise.
- Competitive players refine the same principles to razor tolerances — holding position under pace, resetting from impossible spots, and choosing exactly when a rare burst of power is worth the risk.
At every level, the equation is the same: position and patience create the opening, and power only ever finishes what good positioning has already started. We coach players right across Melbourne's Bayside — Brighton, Sandringham, Mentone and Cheltenham — and it is the players who fall in love with position, not power, who improve the fastest and keep improving the longest.
Key takeaways
- Power is easy to redirect and costs you control — it should finish points, not create them.
- Getting to the kitchen line together, and holding it, is the single biggest positional advantage in doubles.
- Move as a connected pair so the middle and the vacated side never open up for a patient opponent.
- Master the reset — take pace off under pressure and return the point to neutral.
- Most points end in errors, not winners, so aim to force mistakes rather than hit spectacular shots.
- Positioning and patience scale from your first game to the highest level — they are the foundation, not a phase.
