These three tips are from Tony Roig with In2pickle.com. Tony is a former tennis player who discovered and completely switched to playing pickleball in 2016. He is now an IPTPA pickleball master teaching professional.

Shorten your back swing. A long back swing can result in losing control of your shot. As you accelerate your paddle forward to make contact with the ball, it is difficult to slow the paddle down to the speed you need to properly dink the ball. You can avoid an accelerated paddle pop up by simply shortening your back swing.

Lighten your grip pressure. Gripping the paddle too tightly can cause balls to pop up. Avoid these pop ups by loosening your grip on the paddle. Using a scale of 1-10 (light to tight), grip the paddle closer to a 2 or 3 than a 5 or 6 when dining at the non-volley zone.

Dink cross court. Dinking straight is more challenging than cross court because there is less space to operate to avoid your opponent’s attack. The net is also one to two inches higher at the sides than in the middle of the net — 35 or 36 inches versus 34 in the middle. As a result, dinking cross court is less likely to result in pop up than straight on dinking.

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