How to Hold a Pickleball Paddle

Use the continental grip, and squeeze about four out of ten.The continental — sometimes called the handshake or hammer grip — puts the V between your thumb and index finger on the top bevel of the handle, which leaves the paddle face neutral. From there you can hit a forehand, a backhand, a volley, a dink and a serve without changing anything, and in a sport where exchanges at the kitchen happen in under a second, not having to change grip is the whole point.

The pressure matters as much as the position and gets discussed far less. Most recreational players hold the paddle at something like an eight out of ten. Four is enough to stop the paddle twisting on contact, and a loose hand is what lets you take pace off a ball instead of blocking it back hard.

1. Shake hands with the paddle.Hold the paddle out in front of you with the face vertical — like a blade pointing at your opponent rather than a frying pan — and shake hands with the handle. That is almost the whole technique. The error most people make is rotating the handle in the palm afterwards until the face feels "flatter", which turns it into a different grip.

2. Check the V. Look at the V shape formed between your thumb and index finger. In a continental grip it sits on the top bevel of the handle, in line with the top edge of the paddle face. If the V has rotated toward your forehand side, you have drifted into an eastern grip.

3. Separate the index finger slightly. Let the index finger sit a little apart from the other three, with its knuckle resting on the side bevel of the handle. This is where face-angle feel comes from. Some players extend the finger up the back of the paddle face; that gives even more feel at the cost of some stability, and it is a personal preference rather than a rule.

4. Keep the wrist relaxed and slightly laid back. A locked wrist kills your touch on dinks and your ability to flick a counter in a hands battle.

5. Hold the handle where it fits your hand.Not choked right up at the face, not hanging off the butt cap. If the heel of your hand sits off the end of the handle, the handle is too short for you — which is a real buying consideration, and one our grip size guide covers along with circumference.

Grip pressure is the most under-taught thing in pickleball, and it is the difference between resetting a ball and popping it up.

The pattern is that almost everything in pickleball is a soft-hand shot and you firm up only briefly. A player who grips hard all the time has a paddle that rebounds every ball, which is why their blocks fly long and their dinks sit up. If you have ever wondered why a control paddle did not fix your resets, this is usually the reason — grip pressure overrides core softness.

Grip pressure is also the main driver of arm and hand strain. Sustained squeezing is what aggravates tennis elbow and arthritic hands, and loosening it is free.

In practice, the honest answer is: use the continental, and only consider an eastern forehand if you play a lot of singles and your forehand drive is the shot your whole game runs through. Everyone else gains more from one reliable grip than from a slightly better forehand and a much worse backhand.

If you want to play a two-handed backhand, that is a legitimate choice, but it constrains your paddle: you need a handle of around 5.5 in, which rules out most widebody paddles. Our tennis-player paddle roundup and elongated paddle roundup list the models with long enough handles.

How you hold the paddle when you are not hitting matters almost as much as the grip itself, because at the kitchen line you often have no time to move it.

Paddle up, in front of the chest. Tip above the wrist, face slightly open, elbows in front of your body rather than tucked at your sides. From there, a ball at either shoulder is reachable without moving your hand across your body.

Favor the backhand side slightly. Most players are faster to the forehand than the backhand, so holding the paddle slightly on the backhand side of center evens out your coverage. This is standard practice at the kitchen line.

Do not rest the paddle low. A paddle held at waist height has to travel upward and forward to meet a speed-up at your chest, and in a kitchen exchange that time does not exist. Paddle-down is the single most common reason players get beaten by a speed-up they saw coming. There is more on kitchen-line positioning in our guide to the kitchen, and dinking drills is where to practice it.

1. The frying pan grip. Holding the paddle with the face horizontal, like a frying pan, so the paddle is an extension of your palm. It feels natural, it works fine for a forehand volley at chest height, and it is nearly useless for a backhand, a low dink or anything on your off side. If you are a self-taught recreational player and nobody has ever corrected your grip, this is probably what you are doing. Fixing it costs one awkward session and pays back permanently.

2. The death grip. Squeezing at eight or nine out of ten all the time. It makes every ball rebound off the face, which ruins dinks, blocks and resets; it tires the forearm; and it is the main equipment-adjacent cause of elbow and hand pain. The practical cure: between rallies, deliberately relax the hand until the paddle feels slightly loose, then play the next point from there. It will feel insecure for about ten minutes.

Sometimes you cannot hold the paddle loosely because the handle will not let you. A grip that is too small forces you to squeeze to stop the paddle twisting, and a slick grip forces you to squeeze to stop it sliding. Both are cheap to fix, and both are worth fixing before you blame your technique.

Hesacore Pickleball Paddle Grip— who it is for: anyone who cannot stop gripping hard, or whose hand hurts after playing. A molded replacement grip whose raised hexagonal pattern spreads load across the palm instead of concentrating it on the handle edges, which lets you hold the paddle genuinely loosely and still control it. It is the single most effective product on this page.

Tourna Mega Tac (10-pack)— who it is for: dry hands, cool conditions, and anyone whose paddle slides. An extra-tacky overgrip that sticks to the hand so you do not have to squeeze to keep hold of it. Ten wraps to a pack makes it the cheapest per-wrap option, and each wrap adds a little circumference too.

Hesacore Hesatac (6-pack)— who it is for: sweaty hands, hot weather, and anyone who wants cushioning rather than tack. A soft, stretchable, absorbent overgrip that adds padding between the handle and your fingers. Softer grips wear faster than tacky ones, so expect to re-wrap more often. More options in best pickleball overgrips.

Shake hands with the paddle, keep the V on the top bevel, let the index finger sit on the side bevel, and squeeze about four out of ten. Hold the paddle up in front of your chest between shots, slightly favoring your backhand side. If you cannot hold it loosely because it slides or twists, the handle is the problem rather than your hand — check your grip size and add a wrap. Everything else in the soft game gets easier once the grip is right.