Common pickleball mistakes beginners make

Nearly every pickleball beginner makes the same small set of mistakes, and almost none of them are about ability. They are about positioning, pace and a few instincts imported from other sports. Fix these ten and you will beat players who hit the ball better than you do.

They are ordered roughly by how much they cost. The first three are worth more than the other seven combined.

1. Staying at the baseline

The single most expensive habit. Pickleball is won at the kitchen line, because from there you can hit the ball down and your opponents cannot hit through you. Standing at the back leaves a huge amount of court in front of you and turns every ball into a defensive one.

The fix: after the two-bounce rule is satisfied, move forward. Get your toes to the kitchen line and stay there. It will feel dangerously close for about a week, and then it will feel obvious.

2. Hitting everything hard

Power is the instinct everyone brings from tennis, racquetball or simply from being competitive, and at the kitchen line it is a losing strategy. A hard ball to a player seven feet away arrives at a comfortable height with pace they can redirect. A soft ball at their feet does not.

The fix: learn the dink. Our guide to dinking covers the technique, and the fastest single change is grip pressure — a loose hand cannot hit hard even if you want to.

3. Wearing running shoes

The mistake that ends seasons rather than points. Running shoes are built for forward motion on a tall, soft midsole. Pickleball is constant short lateral pushes on a hard surface, and a soft tall shoe rolls under that load.

The fix: proper court shoes. It is the highest-value purchase in the sport, above the paddle.

4. Squeezing the paddle

A tight grip does three bad things at once: it transmits pace to soft shots, it slows your hand at the net, and it is a major contributor to pickleball elbow. Most beginners hold the paddle far tighter than they realize.

The fix: aim for the pressure you would use to hold a bird. Check it mid-rally — the moment you notice you are squeezing, relax. See how to hold a pickleball paddle.

5. Taking a big backswing

A pickleball court is 44 feet long and the ball is slow. A backswing that works on a tennis court is far too big here — you will be late, and you will over-hit.

The fix: keep the paddle in front of your body. If you can see it in your peripheral vision, it is roughly right. If it disappears behind you, it is too far back.

6. Volleying before the two bounces

The serve must bounce, and the return must bounce, before anyone hits out of the air. Newcomers from other racquet sports break this constantly because moving in to volley is the correct instinct in those sports.

The fix: treat the first two shots of every rally as bounce-only, without exception. The full list is in pickleball faults.

7. Standing back from the kitchen line, not in it

A subtler positioning error than number one. Many players get forward but stop two or three feet behind the line, which puts them in the worst place on the court — too far forward to let balls bounce, too far back to take them early. Balls land at their feet all day.

The fix: toes right behind the line. You are allowed to stand in the kitchen; you just cannot volley from it. See the kitchen rule.

8. Not moving with your partner

Doubles partners should move as a unit, roughly side by side, keeping the gap between them small. New teams end up with one player at the net and one at the baseline, which opens a diagonal corridor that good opponents will find every single time.

The fix: imagine a rope about ten feet long joining you. When your partner goes forward, you go forward. When they get pulled wide, you slide across.

9. Serving too cautiously

Many beginners tap the serve in, terrified of a fault. The serve is a free shot: you cannot lose a point on it, only the serve itself, and a soft short serve invites your opponent to step in and attack the return.

The fix: aim deep, toward the back third of the service box. Depth pushes the returner back and buys your team time to get forward. The rules are in serving rules.

10. Buying too much paddle

A common early purchase is a thin-core power paddle because it feels lively in the hand. It amplifies mis-hits, makes the soft game harder, and is exactly the wrong tool while you are learning where the ball goes.

The fix: buy control while you are learning. Our control vs power guide explains the trade, and the beginner roundup has the safe defaults.

The two-week version

If you only change two things this month: get to the kitchen line and loosen your grip. Between them they fix positioning, pace, hand speed and half the elbow strain, and neither costs anything. Everything else on this list is refinement.

For structured practice on any of these, our beginner drills page has the exercises, and skill levels gives you an honest sense of where you currently sit.