NEUTRALIZE any dink with this drill

James Ignatowich

Top 5 Pro Player James Ignatowich

Hey guys, this is James Ignatowich, and today I’m going to talk about the dead dink. So what a dead dink is—is a ball that’s very short over the net, bouncing in what some players or people call the “kitchenette,” the very short part of the kitchen, almost halfway between the net and the kitchen line. And it’s meant to just completely neutralize things, just to get yourself back in the point—hopefully back to 50/50.

Drill to Practice Dead Dinking

So now we’re going to go over the best drill, in my opinion, to work on your dead dinking—to neutralize things. So I’m going to be on the left side of the court (if I’m facing the net) because I play the left. I’m going to try to make every ball bounce in the middle of the kitchenette, and my drill partner is going to hit balls anywhere along the kitchen line that is on my side of the court to cover, highlighted in yellow (figure 1).

(figure 1)

So, any dink—that would be my job to cover when I’m playing doubles—he can hit it to probably 60% of the court in that area. He’s going to be hitting aggressive, biting dinks that are going to be landing around the kitchen line, maybe even an inch deeper than the kitchen line.

And I’m just going to be moving side to side, short-hopping the ball, maybe taking some of them out of the air, trying to hit them as shallow as possible—just an inch over the net—as dead as possible, almost exaggerating how short and dead those dinks are.

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James Ignatowich is a top 10 professional pickleball player originally from Connecticut, now residing in Delray Beach, Florida. A former Division 1 tennis player at Vanderbilt University, James made a transition to pickleball, quickly rising to prominence in the sport and often playing doubles with Tyson McGuffin and Anna Bright. In addition to his athletic achievements, he runs his own podcast, where he shares insights into the game and interviews other professionals. jamesignatowichnewsletter | PPA | MLP | My paddle