7 Pickleball Mistakes That Are Quietly Killing Your Game (And How to Fix Them)
Most players who feel stuck in their pickleball game share one thing in common: they keep looking for a new shot to add to their arsenal instead of cleaning up what they already have. The uncomfortable truth is that your game is probably not suffering because you lack a new technique. It is suffering because you are repeating the same mistakes over and over, and those mistakes are costing you points every single match.
These seven fixes come from pro-level competitor and coach Cam Luhring, who has watched the same errors repeat across hundreds of players at every skill level. If you can identify and correct even a few of these, your game will improve faster than any new shot could ever take you.
Mistake 1: Chasing the Perfect Drop Instead of Hitting a Drip
This is one of the most common and damaging pickleball mistakes that recreational players make. The obsession with executing a textbook-perfect third shot drop sounds reasonable on the surface, but in practice it backfires constantly. Players chase a shot they can only land five times out of ten, when what actually wins them points is a shot they can land nine times out of ten.
Cam’s solution is a shot called the drip. It sits right between a full drive and a traditional soft drop. You are not hitting the ball as hard as a drive, but you are not floating it up softly either. The mechanics involve a shortened backswing combined with an extended follow through. The goal is not to make the ball bounce at the feet of your opponent. The goal is to keep the ball so low over the net that your opponent is physically forced to hit upward on their return, which takes away any real attacking option from them.
When you can execute this consistently, you create a much more manageable fifth shot situation for yourself rally after rally. That is real, sustainable pressure. Not a perfect shot one out of ten attempts, but a reliable weapon you can deploy every time. If you want to go deeper on the mechanics, there is a solid breakdown of the third shot drip and three steps to master it worth reading.
The mindset shift here is significant. Stop trying to hit the perfect shot and start trying to hit the right shot consistently. In pickleball, consistency under pressure will almost always beat occasional brilliance.
Mistake 2: Using the Same Swing Speed From Start to Finish on a Drive
When most players attempt a third shot drive, they swing at a single constant pace from the moment the paddle starts moving until the moment it finishes. That approach simultaneously kills both control and power, which is a brutal combination of flaws in one shot.
The fix is actually straightforward once you understand it. You want a slow, deliberate backswing followed by real acceleration through the follow through. The backswing being controlled keeps the shot compact and repeatable. The acceleration on the follow through is where the pace and spin come from. You are not swinging hard from start to finish. You are swinging smart from start to finish and then explosive at the end.
This adjustment keeps the shot from feeling forced or wild. Players who try to generate pace by swinging hard from the very beginning often sacrifice accuracy and end up hitting the net or sailing long. The slow-then-fast rhythm is the key, and once you feel it click, drives become a much more reliable weapon in your game rather than a risky gamble.
Mistake 3: Rushing Through the Transition Zone
The transition zone is the area between the baseline and the kitchen line, and most players treat it like a burning building they need to sprint through as fast as possible. That urgency causes them to rush forward at exactly the wrong moment and get caught by a ball at their feet with no good answer.
The smarter approach is to read where your opponent is making contact with the ball, not just where the ball is going. Cam uses a simple color-coded system to make this decision faster in real time:
- Green zone: The ball is well below net height on your opponent’s side. Their attack options are severely limited. Move forward freely and confidently.
- Yellow zone: The ball is near net height. Use caution, slow your approach, and read what is coming before committing to a direction.
- Red zone: The ball is at an attackable height for your opponent. Stop where you are, prepare to defend, or be ready to reset before anything else.
If your opponent is making contact from below the net, they physically cannot attack you with pace and angle. That contact point is your signal to keep advancing. If they try to attack from that position anyway, the shot will be going upward and you will have an easy ball to handle. The three keys to mastering the pickleball transition zone expand on exactly this kind of decision-making framework in detail.
The key insight here is that you do not need to wait for the ball to bounce before you decide to move. Watch the contact point. That tells you everything you need to know about what is coming before the ball even crosses the net.
Mistake 4: Dinking Without a Purpose
In recreational doubles, targeting the same player on every single dink is one of the most exploitable habits you can develop. It works at the lower levels because opponents are simply not consistent enough to punish predictability. But the moment opponents improve even slightly, predictable dinking becomes your biggest liability on the court.
The rule Cam recommends is simple: never dink to the same spot more than twice in a row. Move the ball around, change your angles, go crosscourt then switch to the middle, go at the feet then go wide. Make your opponents guess where the next ball is going. Make them move. Make them uncomfortable.
The closer you are to the kitchen line, the more powerful unpredictability becomes as a weapon. A well-placed dink with direction and variety generates far more errors from opponents than grinding the same crosscourt shot to one player repeatedly. If you want to understand what dinking really is and why it matters, the fundamentals are worth revisiting even for experienced players.
Purposeful dinking is about building pressure over the course of a rally, not just keeping the ball in play. Every dink should have an intention behind it, even if that intention is simply to move your opponent slightly out of position for the next ball.
Mistake 5: Attacking the Wrong Ball
This happens constantly at every level below 5.0, and it might be the single mistake that costs players the most points. The problem is not that players attack. The problem is that they attack balls that give them no real advantage, turning a neutral rally into a free gift for the other team.
Cam breaks the attack decision into three questions you should be asking before you swing on any ball:
- Ball: Is it in the green zone above net height, giving you a legitimate downward angle? Or is it too low to attack cleanly without sending it into the net? Only attack balls that genuinely set you up.
- Body: Are your feet set? Are you balanced and leaning slightly forward? Attacking off your back foot is almost always a losing play. If you are not planted, reset instead.
- Opponent: Are they out of position? Leaning too far forward, pushed back off the line, or caught moving? A balanced and ready opponent is not a good target for an attack. Wait until they give you something.
All three conditions should line up before you pull the trigger. If even one of them is off, resetting and waiting for a better opportunity is almost always the right call. Attacking in pickleball is about being smart, not being aggressive for its own sake. Understanding ball height and court positioning for shot selection ties directly into developing this kind of discipline in your decision-making.
Mistake 6: Swinging Big When the Point Gets Fast
When a hands battle breaks out at the kitchen line, the instinct for most players is to swing harder. That instinct is exactly backwards from what actually works. The pace is already on the ball in a fast exchange. Your job is to redirect that pace with precision, not to generate even more speed on top of it.
Big swings take too long to execute and give you almost no control over placement. Compact, wrist-driven swings are actually faster to execute, easier to recover from, and give you far more control over where the ball goes. Players who understand how to win kitchen line hands battles know this intuitively.
Watch Gabe Tardio in a hands battle and you will notice something immediately: his paddle almost never goes behind his body. It stays out in front of him at all times, controlled and ready. His elbow stays tucked, and the movement comes from his wrist. That compact preparation is why his hands battles look almost effortless even against elite competition.
The mechanical adjustment is straightforward. Keep your elbow tucked. Move primarily from the wrist. Keep the paddle in front of your body. Do not let the backswing get behind you. When you are playing with pace already on the ball, that compact position is what lets you redirect with accuracy instead of just slapping and hoping. Understanding why speed-ups fail in fast exchanges shows you the wrong version of this in practice.
Mistake 7: Mentally Checking Out After a Good Shot
This last mistake sounds like a mental issue, but it has very real mechanical consequences that show up in your footwork and positioning. Most players stop moving and stop preparing the moment they think they have hit a winner. They stand and watch. They admire the shot. And then the ball comes back and catches them completely flat-footed.
The rally is not over until the point is actually over. That sounds obvious when you read it, but watch yourself on video during a match and you will probably see it happening multiple times per game. Off-ball positioning and stopping ball-watching is a skill in itself, and elite players work on it deliberately.
Even on an overhead with both opponents pushed back to the baseline, the goal of that one shot is not to end the rally. The goal is to set up an easier attack on the next ball. Think one shot ahead, not one shot at a time. Top pros plan multiple shots ahead as a matter of habit, and that forward-thinking approach is a big part of what separates them from recreational players who react to each ball in isolation.
Pickleball is a chess match, not a series of disconnected individual shots. Your opponent will get balls back that look impossible. Expect it, stay ready, and keep moving your feet after every single shot you hit regardless of how good it felt coming off the paddle.
For Players Who Are New to Pickleball: Here Is What All of This Means
If you are newer to pickleball or still getting your head around all the terminology, here is a plain-English breakdown of what these seven mistakes actually look like in a real game and why fixing them matters so much.
Pickleball is played on a court similar to a badminton court with a low net in the middle. Players use solid paddles to hit a plastic ball back and forth. There is a zone close to the net on each side called the kitchen, and a lot of the game is decided by what happens around that area. The transition zone is the space between the back of the court and the kitchen line, kind of like no man’s land where a lot of recreational players get into trouble.
The third shot is the third hit of the rally, which usually belongs to the serving team. It is one of the most important shots in pickleball because it sets up whether you can get to the kitchen line safely. Most beginners try to hit it perfectly every time, which leads to more errors. The drip is a simpler, more practical version of that shot that is easier to repeat consistently.
Dinking is the slow, controlled exchange that happens when both teams are at the kitchen. It looks boring from the outside but it is actually one of the most strategic parts of the game. The mistake most beginners make is just keeping the ball in play during a dink rally without any real plan. Experienced players use dinking to set up attacks by moving opponents around and finding a weakness to exploit.
Hands battles are the fast, rapid-fire exchanges that happen when both teams are at the kitchen and the ball starts flying back and forth quickly. It can look chaotic, but the players who win hands battles are almost always the ones with the most compact and controlled swings, not the ones swinging the hardest.
The biggest mental mistake — expecting a rally to be over after a good shot — is something every level of player deals with. Even experienced recreational players fall into the habit of relaxing after a great hit. Staying ready and mentally engaged until the point is fully over is one of the simplest things you can do to immediately win more points.
Putting It All Together
Seven mistakes. Seven specific, actionable fixes. And not a single one of them requires you to learn a brand new shot. That is the real lesson here. Better pickleball almost never comes from adding more. It comes from doing what you already do with more consistency, more awareness, and more intention behind every decision.
The drip gives you a more reliable third shot option that you can actually execute under pressure. Accelerating on the follow through of your drive adds control and pace without the risk of a wild swing. Reading contact points in the transition zone tells you exactly when to move forward and when to hold your ground. Varied dinking keeps
