7 Pickleball Tips That Cut Errors Fast — Straight From a PPA Pro

Most players who want to get better at pickleball assume they need to tear everything down and start from scratch. New technique, new footwork, new strategy from the ground up. That’s almost never true. The real gains almost always come from fixing a handful of small, repeatable habits that are quietly bleeding points out of every match you play.

These seven tips come from professional PPA Tour player Ashley Griffith, who broke them down on her YouTube channel. She’s not talking about drills that take months to feel. She’s talking about adjustments you can apply the next time you walk on the court. If you’ve been stuck at the same level for a while, this is the list to read carefully.

Who Is This For? A Quick Note for Newer Players

If you’re relatively new to pickleball or still getting comfortable with how the game works, here’s the short version of what this article is about. Pickleball is a fast-paced paddle sport played on a smaller court than tennis, with a net in the middle and a non-volley zone near the net called the kitchen. Most points are won and lost based on small decisions and positioning rather than raw power. The tips below are about fixing the most common habits that cause players to give away free points — things like watching your shot after you hit it, swinging too big near the net, or hitting your return too short. None of this requires you to be athletic or experienced. It just requires attention and repetition.

Tip 1: Stop Watching Your Shot

This is the simplest tip on the list and probably the one most players ignore the most. The habit of watching where your ball went after you hit it is so natural it feels harmless. It isn’t. Pickleball moves fast enough that the moment you pause to see what happened, you’re already late for what comes next.

This is especially costly at the kitchen line, where exchanges happen in fractions of a second. If you’re dinking and you watch the ball travel to your opponent instead of immediately resetting your position, you will get caught flat-footed on the very next shot. The fix is mechanical and simple: treat every shot as the setup for the one that follows. Hit, recover, reset. Hit, recover, reset. Run that loop on every rally and you’ll feel noticeably more in control at the net. It’s the least flashy tip on this list and the one that tends to pay off the fastest because it’s purely a mental habit, not a technique problem.

The concept connects directly to how the best players think about disguising dinks — every setup should look the same, and every shot should flow into the next ready position automatically.

Tip 2: Split Before They Hit

If you constantly feel like the ball is catching you while you’re still moving, your split step timing is the problem. The split step is a small, low hop you take just before your opponent makes contact with the ball. You land with your feet shoulder-width apart, weight balanced, ready to push off in any direction. It sounds minor. It changes everything.

The most common mistake is rushing to get to the kitchen and skipping the split entirely. Players arrive at the non-volley zone still moving forward, which means they’re off-balance at exactly the wrong moment. When you split early and finish the movement before your opponent hits, you get low, you get stable, and you stop reaching for balls that should be comfortable. That one change eliminates a significant number of errors on transition shots.

Understanding split step timing in detail is worth your time if this is something you’ve never drilled deliberately. It applies whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned recreational player, and it’s one of the most overlooked fundamentals in the entire game.

Tip 3: Give Yourself Real Margin Over the Net

Here’s where players get tripped up by sound advice taken too far. Yes, you want to keep your dinks low. That’s correct strategy. But when players obsess over keeping the ball just barely over the tape, they start missing into the net on balls they should make nine out of ten times.

The logic here is simple. A dink that floats a little high gives your opponent something to deal with, and the rally continues. A ball that hits the net ends the point immediately and hands your opponent a free one. There is no upside to the net error. Under USA Pickleball rules, a ball that hits the net is dead on contact. Miss high, not low.

Ashley Griffith’s take on this is direct: she would rather pop one up and stay in the point than drive it into the tape. Try playing an entire match with the explicit goal of zero unforced net errors. The number of free points you stop giving away will surprise you. If your dinks consistently fail under game pressure specifically, it usually comes down to aim and margin, not mechanics. Knowing the official net height — 34 inches at the center and 36 at the posts — can actually help you calibrate your target zone mentally before each shot.

Tip 4: Hit Your Returns Deeper

A short return of serve is one of the most generous gifts you can give the opposing team. You’re handing them an easy third shot from a comfortable position, and you’re starting the rally already on defense. Your return’s job is not just to get the ball over the net — it’s to make the serving team’s third shot as difficult as possible. That means depth, weight, and intention behind every return.

A deep, heavy return that pushes them toward the baseline forces a weaker response. A short floater gives them time and the optimal angle to work with. The target zone for your return should be the back third of the court, ideally landing within a few feet of the baseline. Three things help you get there consistently:

Build a solid ready position before the serve arrives so you’re not reacting late
Swing through the ball with a full, committed stroke rather than a tentative poke
Stay low in your legs and avoid running through the contact point

The data on deep returns winning more rallies supports this clearly — depth beats pace when it comes to the return of serve. If you’re regularly struggling with consistency on this shot, there are specific return strategies worth studying that will help you take control of rallies from the very first shot.

Tip 5: Take More Balls Out of the Air

Every time you back up and let a dink bounce instead of taking it out of the air, you’re doing two things that hurt you. You’re giving your opponent extra time to recover and reset their position, and you’re putting yourself on the back foot physically. Both of those outcomes compound over a long rally.

Taking balls out of the air flips that equation. You remove time from your opponent and stay in a forward, offensive position instead of scrambling off your heels. The effort difference is real — reaching in to intercept a ball while you’re already at the kitchen line is significantly easier than retreating, letting it bounce, and hitting from behind your ideal contact zone.

Staying engaged and forward also helps you identify attackable balls earlier. When you’re already positioned at the net and reading the ball in flight, you’ll spot the ones that sit up just a little too high long before they bounce, and you’ll have the position to do something aggressive with them. This tip changes your court positioning more than your actual technique, which is part of why it has such an outsized effect on how your game feels. Ball height should drive your shot selection at the kitchen, and staying forward means you’re making those reads with full information rather than guessing from behind.

Tip 6: Smaller Swings Equal Faster Hands

This is one of the most counterintuitive ideas in pickleball, and it’s one that players resist because it goes against instinct. When you watch a fast exchange at the kitchen and feel like you’re getting beaten on reaction, the natural response is to try to swing harder and faster. That impulse makes things worse every time.

Big backswings slow your reaction time because they pull the paddle away from the contact zone and require more time to get back into position. Compact swings kept out in front of your body let you reset faster, stay balanced, and get to the next ball with your paddle already where it needs to be. Players who struggle in kitchen line hands battles almost always have too much swing, not too little.

Ashley Griffith makes this point from direct experience competing on the PPA Tour against players who are stronger and have more physical reach than she does. Her compact, controlled stroke keeps her competitive in those exchanges because she’s ready for the next ball before her opponent is. The practical checklist for what this looks like in real play:

No big backswing — the paddle stays out in front of the body at all times
Contact made well ahead of the body, not beside or behind it
A low, stable base with active footwork between shots
Short, punchy strokes rather than full swings with follow-through

If you want to develop this deliberately, studying fast hands drills will give you a structured way to build the muscle memory. The technique and the drilling go hand in hand here — knowing what compact looks like is step one, training it until it’s automatic is the part that takes work.

Tip 7: Stop Trying to Win Every Hands Battle

The last tip is about decision-making, and it might be the most important one for players who feel like they’re losing ground at the kitchen even when they’re doing everything else right. Not every ball that gets sped up at you requires a speed-up back. Responding to every fast exchange with another speed-up is predictable, and a smart opponent will use your own pace against you.

The better framework is to let the ball tell you what to do. Low ball coming at you below the net? Reset it. Waist height with a reasonable angle? Counter it. High and soft with time to load? Attack it with intent. That read-and-respond process is what separates players who have genuine intention at the net from those who just swing and hope something works.

Resetting a fast ball is not passive or weak play. It’s smart play that keeps you in the point and forces your opponent to construct another attack from a position that may be worse than the last one. Mastering the reset shot is one of the highest-leverage skills in recreational pickleball precisely because most players at that level refuse to use it. When you mix resets, counters, and attacks based on what the ball actually gives you, your kitchen game becomes genuinely hard to read. For a clear framework on which shot fits which situation, this shot selection guide gives you a decision tree you can actually apply mid-point rather than thinking about it afterward.

What These Tips Look Like When You Put Them Together

None of these require you to rebuild anything about your game. They’re adjustments. The kind that stack on top of whatever you already do and make it work better. Here’s the full list in one place:

Hit and recover — don’t watch your shot
Split before your opponent makes contact, not after
Give yourself real margin over the net, miss high not low
Drive your returns deep and with intention every time
Take balls out of the air to remove time and stay forward
Keep your swing compact and your paddle out in front
Read each ball and choose the right response, not always the aggressive one

The players who improve fastest are not the ones making the biggest changes to their game. They’re the ones who identify the small habits costing them points and fix them consistently over time. You don’t need a new serve or a new grip or a totally different strategy. You need to stop watching your shots, start splitting earlier, and give yourself a few more inches of margin over that net.

Start with one tip per session if that’s what makes sense. Get it to the point where it feels automatic, then layer the next one on top. If you want a structured way to put this into practice, a 90-minute drilling blueprint from a PPA pro gives you the full framework. And if you want to understand the bigger picture of what separates players at different levels, the breakdown of what 6.0 players see that 4.0 players miss is worth your time.

Small adjustments, applied consistently, are how real improvement actually happens in this sport. Pick one thing from this list and make it your focus today.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does split step mean in pickleball?

A split step is a small hop or weight transfer you make right before your opponent contacts the ball. You land with your feet roughly shoulder-width apart in a balanced, ready position that lets you push off in any direction quickly. Most recreational players either skip it entirely or time it too late, which is why they constantly feel like they’re one step behind during exchanges. Fixing your split step timing is one of the highest-leverage fundamentals you can work on regardless of your current level.

Why do my dinks keep going into the net?

You’re giving yourself too little margin over the tape. The instinct to keep dinks low is correct, but players take it too far and start aiming for a target that gives them no room for error. Try aiming a few inches higher than you think you need to, especially on cross-court dinks where the net is lower at the center. A dink that floats up slightly keeps the rally alive. A ball that hits the net ends the point immediately with no upside whatsoever.

How do I get faster hands at the pickleball kitchen?

Shorten your swing. Fast hands come from compact, controlled strokes kept out in front of your body, not from swinging harder or faster. The bigger your backswing, the slower your effective reaction time because the paddle has to travel further to reach the contact point. Learning to reset speed-ups effectively is just as important as learning to