The Best Pickleball Dinking Drills

A good dink has four properties, and every drill below is about one of them:

1. It lands in the kitchen.A ball that bounces past the non-volley zone line can be volleyed and attacked. Landing short of that line is what makes a dink safe — see what the kitchen is for why.

2. It stays low over the net.Not just low when it lands — low as it crosses. A ball that peaks high and then drops into the kitchen still gives your opponent a ball above net height to hit.

3. It arrives at your opponent's feet or wide. A dink to the middle of their body at a comfortable height is a gift. Placement is what forces the error.

4. It leaves you balanced. If hitting your dink puts you off balance, the next ball beats you regardless of how good this one was.

1. Cross-court continuous.Both players at the kitchen line, diagonally opposite, dinking cross-court continuously. Cross-court is the safest dink in a real game because the net is lower at the center and the court is longer diagonally — so it is the one to groove first. Standard: 50 in a row without one going above your partner's shoulder.

2. Straight-ahead continuous. Same thing down the line. Harder, because the net is higher at the sidelines and the distance is shorter. Most players are noticeably worse at this and never find out because they only ever drill cross-court. Standard: 30 in a row.

3. Figure-eight.Two players per side. One pair dinks cross-court, the other straight ahead, continuously, so the ball traces a figure-eight. It forces you to move, reset, and dink from wherever you end up — which is what actually happens in a game. Standard: two minutes without a break.

4. Target dinking. Put a towel or a ball tube in a corner of the kitchen and aim at it. Precision, not survival. Standard: 5 hits out of 20 attempts. It is harder than it sounds.

5. Dink-and-attack. Dink cross-court until one player deliberately feeds a ball above net height, at which point the other attacks it and the point is played out. This is the drill that teaches you to recognize the attackable ball, which is the skill that converts patience into points. Standard: attacking the right balls and only the right balls.

6. Wall dinking.Find a wall, mark a line at net height with tape or chalk, stand seven feet back and dink continuously above the line. A wall returns the ball faster than a person, so this is harder than partner dinking — which makes it excellent practice. Standard: 100 consecutive above the line.

7. Rebounder dinking. A rebounder nettilted back returns the ball softly and at a realistic height, which a flat wall doesn't. It is the closest solo equivalent to a real dink rally. Standard: 100 in a row without one rising above your chest.

8. Paddle bounce control. No net, no wall. Bounce the ball off your paddle face, keeping it below eye level, alternating forehand and backhand faces. Trivial-looking, and genuinely useful for developing the soft hands a dink depends on. Standard: 50 alternating without losing control.

9. Dink to eleven. Play a full game to 11 where every ball must be a dink— no drives, no speed-ups, no attacks. If a ball goes above net height on your side, you lose the rally.

This is the drill that exposes what your soft game does under pressure rather than in practice. Everyone can dink fifty in a row when nothing is at stake. Doing it when you are 9-9 is a different skill, and it is the one that shows up in matches.

Thirty-five focused minutes beats two hours of aimless hitting.The difference is that each block has a purpose and a standard. If you can't say what a drill is fixing, you are just moving.

Frequency beats duration. Twenty minutes three times a week produces more improvement than an hour on a Sunday, because soft-hand skills are built by repetition and decay quickly. If you have a net at home, this is the single best use of it.

Your dinks keep floating high.Almost always contact point — you're hitting the ball too close to your body or too late. Move your contact further in front and get lower with your knees rather than reaching down with your arm.

You're hitting the net.Usually the opposite over-correction, or a paddle face that's too closed. Open the face slightly and think about lifting the ball rather than pushing it forward.

Your dinks are too short and sit up.A dink that lands right at the net gives your opponent an easy angle. Aim deeper in the kitchen — near the kitchen line rather than near the net — while keeping the trajectory low.

You get tired and it collapses.You're dinking from a standing position and using your arm. A proper dinking stance is knees bent, weight forward, paddle up. It is more tiring at first and far more sustainable once your legs adapt.

You're gripping too hard.The most common invisible fault. A tight hand cannot feel the ball. If you can't hold the paddle loosely, the grip may be undersized — see grip size— or the paddle may be too poppy, in which case a control paddle with a 16mm core will do half the work for you.