The Key to Playing Great Pickleball? Great coaching

Heidi on court

In the end, YouTube can only get you so far. When it comes down to it, there are two things you need to play better pickleball. a) Actually playing pickleball and paying attention to what's going on on the court around you, and b) Coaching.

A dozen of us signed up for the first in a series of skills clinics led by PPR Coach Developer, UK, Heidi McCune, who represented Ireland in the European Pickleball Championships last year and has probably forgotten more about pickleball than most of us will ever know. The idea was to break the game down into individual components and go through a series of drills that were designed to help us focus on getting them as good as we possibly could.

This first session covered dinking, serving, and returns, with a huge emphasis throughout on your court position and being in the right place at the right time. Heidi had lots of really useful advice, but possible the main one was that you should think how your game is going to evolve in the future. Standing at the back of the court and wellying the ball over the net as hard as you can might do you okay now when so many of us are learning the game (and let's face it, it's fun), but come across better players and they will take you to the cleaners.

So, learn to get to that kitchen line, learn to stay at that kitchen line, and learn patience so you can dink and dink again until your opponent makes a mistake that you can capitalise on and win the point.

More classes are planned so keep an eye on our social feeds to find out when and where. In the meantime, it's going to be fascinating to see how many of us put some of these lessons into practice in the usual rec play nights and, instead of floating haphazardly round the court, will be found steadfastly at the kitchen line dinking for all we're worth.