hi welcome to primetime pickleball my name is jordan briones and in today's video we're going to answer the age-old question should the forehand always take the middle let's jump right in missing one of our videos is like missing an easy put away don't let that be you subscribe now alright so i got to play a couple of fun rec games the other day and this happened has this ever happened to you maybe you and your partner are right up at the non-volley zone and before you know it the ball whizzes by right between you and
your partner i'll be the first to admit that this has happened to me on several occasions now to answer the question should the forehand always take the middle i'll start off by asking an even more important question and that is who's in the best position to cover the middle ball you or your partner so why is this question more important let's go back and watch this and break it down here's my dad and i playing against two good friends of ours drew and jim here we see drew hit a nice deep slice return down the
middle and here you see me drive this third shot because i know drew's forehand slice stays very low and that it could be pretty difficult to hit a precise drop off of a well-hit slice i choose to hit my drive to drew because he is still on his way up to the net and his partner jim is already set in a good balance ready position at the non-volley zone line now my drive here is good enough to force drew to hit a short volley that lands a bit past the non-volley zone line and here you
see me split step and get ready to hit my fifth shot into the non-volley zone here you'll see me really squeeze over to that center line to put more pressure on jim and drew since this was a competitive game jim and drew were typically trying to keep the ball away from me and by me squeezing and shifting over more towards that center line it can do several things number one it allows me to take all the middle dinks and or to create winning or put away shots through the middle number two it creates a very
small target for them to hit to if they are trying to get it over to my partner and number three it leaves a window open near my sideline to bait them to hitting it there in which case is exactly what i want as i am trying to get more involved in the game after a series of unattackable dinks watch here as my dad tries to hit the ball through the middle here we see jim cover this ball with ease as it struck right towards his paddle even though this drive was hit right to jim it
was low enough to prevent him from counter-attacking this ball next we see another series of unattackable dinks and here we see jim's backhand dink pull my dad towards his sideline let's look at where my dad is contacting this ball from this angle it looks like he's hitting the ball right above his sideline so in this scenario who's in the best position to cover the middle ball jim or drew before we answer that let's talk about shading what is shading you ask shading is moving or shifting your position as a team according to where the ball
is in your opponent's court to put yourself in the best position to defend your side of the court you will constantly see high-level players shade as the ball moves around the court let's watch a few clips together of different player's shading as we just watched in order to best defend your side of the court you must shade it all comes down to the possible shots available to your opponent and the trajectory that those shots will take from your opponent's paddle to the bounce on your side of the court you'll also want to factor in what
their highest percentage shots are let's see what can happen when you don't properly shade let's check out this point here here you see me hit a really deep serve which forces a very short return just beyond the non-volley zone this allows me to really step in and attack this ball as this return is headed towards me i know that i'm in the driver's seat of this rally and because of this i want to make sure that i keep my foot on the gas so to speak and attack the short ball with a third shot drive
let's take a look at a few good options that i have as i strike this ball the first option that i have is to catch the returner in transition due to his short return you can see that he's only made it up about halfway through the transition area so driving the ball somewhere at his feet is my first option another option that i have is to drive it right at my opponent at the non-volley zone this player is the player that is closest to me which therefore has the least amount of reaction time the third
option i have is to hit the drive through here down the line before we proceed which option do you think is best in this scenario now let's take a look at which option i chose as we see here i chose to go down the line and thankfully my drive lands right on the line for a clean winner why did i choose to go down the line here well let's take a look as i get into position to hit this third shot drive notice my opponent here at the non-volley zone he is positioned slightly to the
left of his side now let's quickly draw the possible trajectories that my driving shot could take the possible trajectory for a hard hit drive range from about here to here the ends of these arrows signifies where the ball could bounce and hit the playing surface so knowing this is the player at the non-volley zone in the best position to cover his part of the court he has left a small window open near his sideline as i saw the small window open i took full advantage of it now just to be clear i really wasn't meaning
to hit the sideline every time i hit any shot in pickleball i try to give myself an extra foot or two to give myself margin for error as you can see in the slow-mo footage here even if my shot would have landed a foot or two inside the court it still would have been a pretty tough shot for this net player as he should have been shifted and shaded over towards the sideline to about here to cover this down the line shot now let's watch this next point which is almost identical to the first here
my partner and i are stacking and as this return comes back our way let's look at the range of the possible trajectories that my partner shot could take my partner's hard hit drive can be hit from about here to here so as my partner gets ready to hit this shot are both players in the best position to cover the court let's watch and see what happens here the net player gets pass on his sideline again why is this as we go back and freeze the frame at contact notice how he is slightly shifted and shaded
over towards the center line as we look at where my partner is striking the ball you can see that he has a small window open down the line just like the previous point he sees this opportunity and takes advantage of it we want to be clear that although the examples seen here show the selected shot as a down the line passing shot that this option of the three mention has the lowest margin for error and you have to consider carefully whether it is a smart shot for you we often see this shot being overused when
it's not really in a player's wheelhouse to attempt hitting such a small target if you don't have the skill to make this down the line passing shot 8 or more out of 10 times then the higher percentage options and best options most of the time and in order are number one at the feet of the transitioning player and number two attempting to overpower the net player if you feel your power will defeat their reaction time a general rule of thumb when it comes to shading is to follow the ball this means that as the ball
moves closer to a particular sideline on your opponent's side of the court you should shift over towards that sideline to put you and your partner in the best position to cover your side of the court just as we see here this net player is shifted away from the sideline that the ball is near and as this return comes cross court he doesn't properly shade over towards the sideline and as a result leaves a small window open and loses the point now let's go back and check out the point that we saw in the beginning of
this video here you see my dad and i make our way through the transition zone getting to a 2 up 2 up neutral formation after that we see a series of dinks an attack and a reset and then another series of some good unattackable dings now we get to the point ending shot so now that we know about shading whose responsibility is it to cover this ball through the middle well from where my dad is contacting the ball which looks to be right on top of his sideline let's draw the range of possible trajectories that
his driving shot could take from this position he can reasonably hit a hard topspin drive anywhere from the end of this arrow here to the end of this arrow here knowing this are our opponents in the best position possible to cover their side of the court are they correctly shading you guessed it no they're not drew the player in the blue should be shifted a bit over to his left here to cover the possible down the line shot as for jim the player in black he should be shifted more over towards the center line about
here so if you've already guessed that this should have been jim's ball you're correct if you didn't already notice jim and drew both have their forehands in the middle as jim is a lefty so to prove the point that the forehand shouldn't always take the middle ball let's watch the end of this next point which is nearly identical here we see all four players have already made it up to the non-volley zone and you can see me here straddling the center line trying to apply pressure on my opponents and trying to get more involved in
play the player in the white hits a deep dink towards the middle of the non-volley zone which pushes me a bit back off the line now as i'm still very close to the center line i know that i have left this cross-court dink shot open here for one i know that i'm quick enough to cover this dink if it's hit there and secondly it's actually the shot that i'm looking for as i'm always trying to find ways to create winning shots from my forehand side next we see the player in white hit this cross court
date towards my sideline just as i was expecting as i quickly get to this ball let's look at the positioning of my opponents and let's see how they shade from this angle it looks like this dink forced me to contact the ball a bit outside my sideline notice how both my opponents shift over to their left as the ball moves towards my sideline just like the previous scenario i can either take this ball and attack it down the line or i can take it more through the middle of the court let's quickly take a look
at the player directly in front of me his shoulders and paddle are turned toward my contact point and it looks like his weight is leaning towards his sideline also you can see that his paddle position is set in a backhand position for all these reasons it looks to me that he has the down the line shot well covered and that he's expecting it now let's look at the player in the white even though he has shifted over a bit his dink has pulled me very wide as i'm contacting the ball beyond the sideline so in
this case for him to be in the best position to cover his part of the court he should really be closer to the center line around here you can see here that the ball barely clips the end of his paddle and goes out of bounds if he had just shaded a step or two closer to that center line he would have been in a much better position to hit and counter attack this ball so hopefully you see the importance of shading and how deciding on who should take the middle ball really depends on who's in
the best position to take it sometimes players just make great shots and you aren't going to be able to cover every single ball but you can definitely put you and your partner in the best position possible by correctly shading now let's show you a fun drill that you can do with a partner to practice on covering the middle ball especially in a neutral formation when all four players are up at the non-volley zone line hi if you're really liking this content please give this video a like we really appreciate it it really helps us out
and now let's get right back to the video alright so now that we know how to correctly shade i'm going to show you a great drill that you can do with a partner just like we said you should constantly be shifting over and following the ball as the ball moves around the court all right so for this drill i have my wife katrina over there and we're both cross court from each other and we're both on the eve inside okay this is how we're gonna set up i'm going to start and feed the ball and
we're going to be dinking cross court all right and what you can see behind me is i have a target of four cones there and we're going to start off here like i said by digging cross court and then when katrina gets pulled off wide i have to be shaded over towards the middle to cover this middle ball okay because if she's contacting the ball right there from this camera you can see or from a dink below when she's contacting a ball right here my partner should should be covering the down the line okay so
that leaves the middle vulnerable okay so it's my responsibility to shade over and slide over and cover this middle ball so we're gonna start dinking here and then when she gets a wide ball she's gonna go for that target right there right in the middle of the court that shot that we just uh saw and then i am going to do my best to cover that ball and try to volley that ball down okay down at the feet all right so this is just a really good drill that you can do and let's see it
here all right so hopefully this drill just really helps you out remember you can also set this drill up on the odd side as well i didn't show you that today but you could dig outside the outside and move those cones to the other side of the court hopefully this drill will really help you start anticipating those middle shots especially when your opponent gets pulled off the court and is contacting the ball close to the sidelines we really want to make sure that we slide over if we're cross-court from that player and cover that middle
ball so i hope this was really helpful to you and we'll see you in the next video if you enjoyed this video please give it a like thanks so much for watching for more free video lessons please visit primetimepickleball.com but before you head on over there make sure you subscribe to our youtube channel so that you don't miss out on any future videos also for primetime pickleball shirts like this and other great apparel please visit ptpgear.com
