Pickleball Strategy, Shot by Shot

Updated October 13, 2026

Most pickleball strategy advice is thirty years of tennis instinct with the words swapped out. This is what named professionals said about winning points in the last eighteen months, shot by shot, in the order those shots happen.

Every position here is attributed to the player who took it and the outlet that published it. Where two pros disagree, we say so instead of picking the tidier answer — the disagreements are the most useful part.

The serve: find the uncomfortable spot, then live there

The serve is not a weapon in pickleball and trying to make it one is how you hand over free points. What it can do is put the returner somewhere they would rather not be.

Benson Parry, a three-time collegiate national champion, describes a warm-up routine that costs nothing: hit serves to the forehand, the backhand and the body, find which one produces the weakest return, then go there repeatedly. His framing is to push serves toward the uncomfortable spot as much as possible — while varying enough that you do not become predictable.

Two mechanical notes from the same session that are worth more than most serve coaching. Use a continental grip as your base, tilted slightly toward western if you want topspin. And aim at the back third of the service box rather than the baseline itself, because the margin you gain is worth more than the extra foot of depth.

Anna Leigh Waters, the world No. 1 in the women’s game, offers the simplest reframe available: “Think about hitting a forehand as your serve.” She also waits for the referee to finish the score call before starting her motion, so the swing stays fluid rather than rushed.

The return: depth first, and one real disagreement

Catherine Parenteau is unambiguous. “The number one goal is to hit it as deep as possible.” The reason is positional: a deep return buys you the time to get to the kitchen, and a short one does the opposite. Her warning is blunt — “If you mishit a return, you’re on defense right off the bat.”

Three of her habits translate directly to recreational play. She sets up to hit a forehand wherever possible, because the first shot of the rally should be your strength. She stands one to two feet behind the baseline against a strong serve and steps in against a weak one. And she does not run at the ball — “A lot of players try to run and hit the ball. That makes it very challenging.”

On height, she is pragmatic rather than dogmatic: if you need more time to reach the kitchen, hit a higher return, while still looking for depth.

The disagreement comes from mixed doubles. Mari Humberg and Ryan Fu argue for a return hit at 50 to 60 per cent pace with spin, so the ball dips at the opponents’ feet and prevents a clean approach to the kitchen. That is a different objective from pure depth — it trades some court position for a harder ball to handle on the way in. Both work. The tell is what your opponents are bad at: depth punishes slow movers, dip punishes people who approach carelessly.

The third shot: four pros, four answers

This shot has genuinely fractured, and it deserves its own treatment. Ben Johns pushes a flat drop. Jack Sock teaches two techniques and refuses to rank them. Christian Alshon says never drive a short return, which contradicts the standard court-position rule head-on.

We have taken the whole argument apart in Four Pros, Four Different Third Shots. The short version: build the flat push first because its failure mode is forgiving, and use ball height rather than court position as your trigger for going soft.

The fourth shot: green, yellow, red

Tyson McGuffin gives the cleanest decision framework in current coaching, and it applies to any ball arriving at you at the kitchen.

Green zone is chest high or above — take it out of the air and generate offence. Yellow is chest to knee, manageable, play it straight. Red is knee to ground, and the instruction is to stop trying: let it bounce instead of scooping a low volley.

From a low position his advice is to step back, find the forehand, let the ball reach the top of its bounce and then attack off it — rather than taking it early out of stubbornness. His stated objective against a team approaching the net is to “make them feel heavy traffic” on the way forward.

Resets: the shot that keeps you in points you should lose

Sock’s reset instructions are the most repeatable set we found. Keep the paddle low and angled forward, and do not take it back as if hitting a drive. Stay loose — “A tight grip turns pace into a pop-up.” Bend at the knees rather than the waist, keep the back upright, make contact in front of the body and follow through almost not at all. It is a redirect, not a swing.

The strategic half is the part people skip: a reset is a bridge, not a destination. You have to move forward after hitting it. A perfect reset admired from a standstill just buys your opponent another attack.

McGuffin adds a mechanical fix that solves most reset problems at once — drop the paddle tip toward the court before the ball arrives. It gives a cleaner contact point and a natural upward path, so the ball lifts safely instead of squirting off a late paddle face. When defending, he targets shallow near the kitchen line rather than deep.

At the kitchen: speed, and when not to use it

Hand speed has its own argument running through it — Hayden Patriquin says the wrist is where his power comes from, while Tyson McGuffin, Connor Garnett and Blaine Hovenier all say the wrist stays locked. We work through that split, and where each side is right, in Where Hand Speed Actually Comes From.

The strategic question sitting on top of it is whether to accelerate at all. Richard Livornese Jr. argues the team that speeds up first usually wins, and that if it is not working you change the location or the pace rather than abandoning aggression. Anna Bright argues the opposite discipline: she will pass up a speed-up when the ball is too low and the opponents are set, pushing a crosscourt dink instead, because the question is whether a decision maintains her advantage or risks it.

If you lose games by attacking the third dink of every rally, Bright is the one talking to you.

Positioning: the orthodoxy that is not quite true

Every beginner is taught that both partners should be at the kitchen line together. Analysing a Ben Johns and Anna Leigh Waters mixed point from an MLP season finale, coach Tony Roig makes the case that this is incomplete — pros deliberately stagger, with one partner handling offence while the other manages defence. The skill is knowing what your position is asking of you at that moment.

One safety note from the same analysis, worth passing on to anyone: when you have to reposition under pressure, move laterally off the line of the ball. Do not backpedal straight. That is how people fall.

There is also a live argument about how much court each partner should own. Dylan Frazier, a right-side specialist, told The Dink in January 2025 that he sees no reason to take a backhand at his left foot when he could move to the middle and take it with a forehand, and that he expects teams to be able to run right-side or left-side dominance depending on the matchup. The orthodoxy he is arguing against is the Johns brothers’ system — stated by Collin Johns back in 2022, so treat it as the historical position rather than a current quote — in which one player is responsible for more than half the court and the team never deviates from it.

What actually changed in 2026

Two things, and only one of them is a rule.

The rulebook. USA Pickleball’s January 2026 changes added the word “clearly” to all three volley-serve requirements, which raises the bar on a legal serve. Spin generated by paddle contact was confirmed legal, while pre-contact manipulation of the ball stays banned. Double and triple hits are legal if they happen in one continuous, unidirectional motion. Carrying a visible second ball during a point is now a fault, and out calls must be made promptly once the ball is dead.

The isolation tactic. The most interesting tactical story of the year had nothing to do with equipment. In an MLP mid-season final, St. Louis Shock beat New Jersey 5s by systematically refusing to hit the ball to Anna Leigh Waters, dinking dead balls in front of her partner instead. It ended a 25-game winning streak. Kate Fahey’s explanation was disarmingly simple: hitting to Waters was “a little bit scary, so we tried to avoid that.” Anna Bright, on the same team, called it a matter of discipline and patience.

It works at every level, and the counter is known. Zane Navratil’s published answer — written a month before that match, as it happens — is to attack the diagonal opponent’s backhand, dink directly at them to shrink their angles, use the middle to drag them off position, and stack so the partners can switch sides. As he puts it, stacking makes it harder to keep targeting the same player.

The five things to take onto the court

• Find their weak return in the warm-up and serve there. Free information, most players never collect it.
• Return deep and set up a forehand. Depth buys the position; the forehand keeps the first ball on your strength.
• Use ball height as the trigger for going soft — on the third shot and on every ball after it.
• Let the red-zone balls bounce. A low volley at your shoetops is a pop-up waiting to happen.
• Move after your reset. The reset is a bridge to the kitchen, not a shot you admire.

Going deeper: the third shot argument, hand speed and speed-ups, and what the kitchen rule actually says. Current standings for every player named here are on our Player Rankings page, and the tour coverage lives in the Pro section.

Sources. Every quotation was published by the outlet named, transcribing video its own team recorded — we did not conduct these interviews. Benson Parry on serving, The Dink, 26 May 2026. Anna Leigh Waters on the serve, pickleball.com, 17 April 2025. Catherine Parenteau on the return, pickleball.com, 10 March 2025. Mari Humberg and Ryan Fu on mixed doubles, The Dink, 16 June 2026. Tyson McGuffin on the fourth shot, pickleball.com, 12 November 2025, and on tip-down dinking, The Dink, 1 September 2026. Jack Sock on resets, The Dink, 17 August 2026. Richard Livornese Jr., The Dink, 27 January 2026. Anna Bright, The Dink, 26 August 2026. Tony Roig’s positioning analysis, The Dink, 9 August 2026. Dylan Frazier interview, The Dink, 8 January 2025; Collin Johns’ system as stated in 2022 via Kyle Koszuta. USA Pickleball 2026 rule changes as summarised by The Dink, 26 December 2025 — check the USA Pickleball rulebook change document for the authoritative text. Isolation coverage, pickleball.com, 15 July 2026 and The Dink, 13 July 2026; Zane Navratil’s counters, pickleball.com, 16 June 2026. Pickleball Insiders is not affiliated with any player or outlet named here.