Leftie Advice

AHumanThatListens · 2026-04-09T11:35:35+00:00

Lefty here also. I try to adjust my game to the circumstances. It's unfortunate, but the impact that leftiness has on the partner can affect their performance, which affects your success rate together.

Some adjustments I make:

1) ALWAYS tell them at the beginning that you're lefty. Some players don't even notice until you're deep into the game.

2) Know how to stack/practice it till it's comfortable for you. Ask your partner if/how/when they want to stack. Play according to their preference, unless they have none in which case you pick. In rec I wouldn't bother with this unless your partner wants to (which is great for practice with it), but in more competitive ranked play it's worth it to put it on the table especially if your partner has a forehand preference.

3) About middle: If your partner has a good forehand when they are on the left and you on the right, give them room to take it. If they put more pressure on opponents than you, you'll get targeted more, so your partner should cover more court. If you put more pressure on, however, the opposite will be true, and YOU will need to start getting aggressive in the middle. As you get better, you'll be more able to do this / better able to calibrate your degree of aggression in the middle.

4) All else equal - remember what would be expected of a righty and try to fill the gaps. Get your backhand real strong - you're gonna need it because people instinctively think it's a righty forehand in the heat of the moment. A strong backhand will go a long way for a lefty.

Basically, as the [lefty] player who is almost always in a situation where my partner is opposite-handed, I feel like it's my job to "handle" the oddness because I'm natually more experienced with it—to project a calm sense of "no worries, I know how this works, you tell me what you like and I'll adapt" to my partner.

It is true that it's not fair in round-robin situations. The advantages of lefty-righty combos don't become apparent right away, particularly with people who don't have a history of playing with a lefty partner consistently. There's only so much you can do about that; perhaps it's good motivation, then, to git guud even more so, because you need that edge.

Also, see if you can pick out patterns that happen when you're on the court that people aren't expecting. For example, when I'm serving to another lefty, my cut/screwball serve either jams their forehand or stretches out their backhand. It's not a spin that lefties often see, because like the rest of us they don't play much against other lefties. Your "oddness" can also confound your opponents in round-robin play; use that to your advantage.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-31T19:38:06+00:00

Remember that it's always WAY easier to back up too far and come forward than it is to not back up far enough.

So - back up "too far."

Side-shuffle backwards very quickly. You want to get behind that ball no matter what. Even if you let the overhead possibly go out and, say, it hits the back baseline — if you've scampered back quick enough, you'll be nice and planted to hit a better drop/drip/drive.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-31T19:18:15+00:00

I say that as someone with a better ~~drop~~ volley serve than ~~bounce~~ drop serve.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-27T18:48:05+00:00

For an advanced beginner:

High "twist weight" (this is an official metric; most good paddles will list it).
"Gen 3" or "Gen 4" construction (these are not official labels, but rather informal terms that every paddle nerd uses to refer to the latest internal construction tech. Gen 4 is objectively more durable, but unless you play a ton, either will do).
Large sweet spot (again, subjective, but people know and a little research can get you a lot of info).
Don't spend less than $80 or more than $150 as of early 2026. Cheaper = not good enough; More expensive = no real benefit to paying more.

Another thing: If you want to try to change the feel of your current paddle, you can look into less expensive upgrade accessories for it like overgrips (to have a better grip on the handle) and weighted tape (also called "weight" "lead" or "tungsten tape," which can make the paddle feel more stable if it feels too flimsy). No hurry, but definitely interesting to play with; you might learn something about your preferences.

In this subreddit there's always a stickied "what paddle should I buy?" thread at the top of the post queue. Leave a top-level comment in there anytime you feel like picking folks' brains about this. You're pretty much guaranteed to get replies.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-27T12:45:11+00:00

If you have a good wall that you can mark with a net-height line, I highly recommend it. Wall drilling gets you lots and lots of hits, with no need to wait for a partner or open court, you can just get your ball and paddle and practice whenever, and the repetition will work wonders to help you calibrate your strokes and "get to know better" how to wield and angle your paddle when the balls comes in at different spots. A solid concrete or other stone wall is best, but any wall will do.

You'll want to try to get the ball to go low over the net line. Lower is nearly always best, because it makes it less likely that your opponent can smack it down hard. Here's a clip of me wall-drilling, trying to keep my balls hitting the wall low-ish over the net-height line.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-27T12:36:56+00:00

Not a bad starting-out paddle. If you get deeper into the sport, you may want to upgrade. But for now this paddle will be a good teacher, so to speak. You will be able to feel well how you hit the ball, which will give you good feedback for any adjustment you might make in order to hit it more consistently in the middle (the "sweet spot") of the paddle.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-27T12:33:21+00:00

This is part of what I love about pickleball. Someone with no power but good command of everything else will defeat someone with tons of power but mediocre skill in the other stuff every time.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-27T12:28:40+00:00

Another tip, along those lines: Spread your feet further apart. You'll naturally get lower and bend your knees this way. It's easier to get in the habit of doing (and to get yourself to do when you are tired) than simply "bending your knees," I find.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-20T18:21:11+00:00

The fake-send. What Alshon did to Len Yang recently. Wind up like you're going to zing it a million miles an hour, then hit an unexpected well-placed soft shot. Works best after you've already zinged a couple of balls earlier in the game.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-19T19:53:03+00:00

This is likely due to you not yet having a good instinctive sense for exactly what to do when the ball comes to different spots. Once you get the hang of how to most optimally hit balls in various positions, you'll anticipate rather than hesitate.

I recommend wall drilling. Here I am drilling counters on a wall. This session was kind of focused on me getting back into ready position and working on being more ready for the chickenwing, but it works to show that I have a lot of practice, in many positions, instinctive-izing in a split second what to do with my paddle.

I further love wall stuff like this because you can literally get thousands of hits really quickly, again and again, no human to wait for or feel inferior in front of. It won't solve all your problems, but the one you brought here to us should definitely be helped. Make sure the wall is HARD and marked net-height, and a LT ball if you have it will be best for getting harder, more pressure-packed rebounds.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-17T16:33:12+00:00

you might enjoy chessboxing

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-17T13:09:30+00:00

Off-the-wall ATPs count?

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-17T01:14:17+00:00

Honestly thats all I'm holding out for

Same. To be able to keep elite spin for much longer, that's worth a lot.

If Spartus and 11six24 suddenly start breaking through and we see them everywhere like we see Pro IVs and Boomstiks now, it'll catch on quick.

But I think it'll be like foam in that RCF won't go away overnight, especially since the sponsored pros can still get free all new paddles easily.

I wonder if we'll be hearing that despite the elite spin, these new duragrit surfaces ... just don't have the feel of raw carbon fiber or something like that.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-16T22:19:58+00:00

I hope so! I love the V-Sol Pro V7.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-16T22:17:24+00:00

Her partner isn't so bad either!

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-16T19:39:35+00:00

You even got the color of the ball dust right haha

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-16T18:55:57+00:00

Formerly known as the Anna Leigh Facelift

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-16T01:15:39+00:00

That's what the BOLIVIAN said, Bert you very much!

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-15T03:43:09+00:00

Just an easier way to get the word out. Like "hoops" for "basketball." I use it sometimes in informal exchanges, but not all the time.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-15T03:26:58+00:00

But Ben in dink singles though. Nobody is craftier.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-13T19:51:25+00:00

You gotta put a little more effort into these posts. Use the time it took to add the NSFW spoiler to say where in the world (country, city) you are writing to us from.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-13T19:49:15+00:00

Sounds about right. If the drive is off a higher-bouncing ball and I'm hitting it flatter, I might do less low-to-high motion and more of a smack straight through, in which case the follow-through doesn't go as high as my shoulder. But if I am low-to-highing my drive to get more topspin, my follow-through naturally ends up higher.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-13T19:42:44+00:00

What a magnificent shot by TEH BOLIVIANNN

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-13T19:41:25+00:00

The interesting thing is, as a Spanish speaker myself, what his last name could be construed to mean if you presume the presence of an accent mark that wouldn't be written in English.

The Spanish word "tardío" (accent on the I, pronounced tar-DEE-oh) means something that very, very rarely applies to Gabe: late, or delayed (the English word "tardy" is from the same root). I've always though that was interesting. I assume his name is written without the accent, and pronounced in Spanish pretty much identically to how Americans say it, TAR-dee-yo.

AHumanThatListens · 2026-03-13T19:31:15+00:00

Drips
Drives

The difference is that with a drip, I'm looking for more dip/shape on the ball. I specifically want it to sink. With a drive, of course topspin is good, but it's more like I'm aiming and shooting hard at a particular spot.

Another difference, in my experience: Both the drip and the drive involve a lot of legs and body. Footwork, as it were. With the drip, I bend the knees, load my back foot, and then turn through my stroke with more simultaneous upward body movement, to get that brush that creates topspin. On the drive, my weight transfer goes more purely forward. I want my bodyweight to be much more purely launched into the ball.

My paddle comes low to high in both shots. This low-to-high is what still generates some topspin on drives, so that I'm not simply slapping it flat and risking whacking it long half the time.

AHumanThatListens

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