If it's not a drop & not a drive, it's the DRIP shot!

#1014: Coach Leia Miller explains how when you are serving, sometimes the 3rd shot — or the 5th shot — may not call for a drop. But neither is a drive the right move! Those situations might need a hybrid of the two shots — quite naturally referred to as a Drip — that will be the solution to getting you up to the kitchen effectively. She describes the how/when/where of this clever amalgamation of two other shots.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Pickleball Obsession. Pickleball Obsession is the first podcast created just for recreational picklers because the more a rec player knows, the better they'll play. Do you watch pro pickleball on YouTube thinking it will help you, then wonder why your game doesn't look at all like Annalise or Ben John's? Everybody on a pickleball court is obsessed to some degree. So the Pickleball Obsession podcast is for you whether you're a social player, out there just to have fun, or a competitive one trying to sharpen your skills and win more. This show will bring you short, useful advice from a variety of certified pickleball coaches that amateur players at any skill level can put right to use. I'm your host, Tracy Hotschner. You might know me as the pet wellness expert on NPR, Sirius, and my own pet podcast network, but here I'm no expert, just another admittedly obsessed player picking the brains of top coaches for advice we can all use. This show is brought to you in partnership with the IPTPA, the International Pickleball Teachers Professional Association, and with the Association of Pickleball Players, the APP Tournaments. Sign up at pickleballobsession.net for the weekly episodes with show notes and embrace the obsession. Hi, Leah Miller. Welcome back to Pickleball Obsession. Thank God you share the obsession of we amateurs. I guess you coaches have to. Otherwise, how come how you have to love it like absurdly much to spend the number of hours you do on a court. So there's a shot that you were helping a friend of yours who's on the pro circuit who does traveling clinics or camps. A shot that we've not necessarily ever identified before. Um I used to be told by coaches, yeah, you can do for a third shot, you can do a drive drop. That's what they call it. A drive drop. A drive drop, yep. But you guys called it a drip. And the drip shot. And I'd love to talk about that, which I guess we have to talk briefly first about the third shot. I've served, you've returned it to me. Now I have to get up to the kitchen. So does my partner. To do that, I used to have kind of basically two choices. Drop it, which is considered the right one or the best one, or drive it, which you usually wind up doing, when your first three drops wind up in the net or on your side. That's that's a separate conversation. But the drip shot is a wonderful sort of combo of the two. Can you talk about and describe it and then talk about when would be the good time to use it?

SPEAKER_00 2:34

What could you do? Yes, definitely. It is actually um I played a little bit this morning and they were not hitting, so good luck for you tonight. No, I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

We've got a league match against each other later. If people want to know my level of masochism, yeah, I'm gonna play against two of our my premier coaches on this show. Yeah. Leah and Greg Dietrich, and they're gonna be playing me and my pal Jimmy, who's this divine, marvelous meteorologist. He's the weatherman for the local CBS station. He's very good, and I'm all right too, but we really are in over our heads, but we're fine with it.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

It's gonna be we have a good time, we have good etiquette.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Excellent point, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:15

So the drip shot is a shot that I personally started using probably about six to eight months ago. It is all about timing your paddle placement and your footwork and the follow-through. It is that in between of a drop and a drive and creating that top spin so it drips into the kitchen, so it's not attackable.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Now, a third shot drop in theory is supposed to do that too, but many times our third shot drops are not close to the net in the kitchen, they're deeper in the kitchen and they do bounce up, making them a hundred percent attackable, and then discouraging you from ever really perfecting your third shot drop. So the drip gives you more top spin, making it drop sooner and stay lower. Is that its value?

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Correct. And it's attacking their their feet more, you know, because it's dropping, it's dipping right into their feet and hitting their shoelaces or their paddles too low and they can't do anything. So it's either going into the net or they're popping it up. So me having a drip, I will most of the time, if I know I'm hitting a good shot, I will tell my partner to go because I know if they crash the net, then they have an awesome poach or put away shot.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Because you've dripped and that's caused uh an attackable ball to come back at you.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

So I'm cre I'm having offense to create offense again to come back at us rather than doing a drop shot where you're just creating offense so you can reset to have be defensive then at the line.

SPEAKER_01 4:55

Right. So if you do a third shot drop, the the old-fashioned one, or the one that's still obviously in use, yes, it gives you more time in theory to get into the kitchen, but it hasn't given you control of that point. It simply bought you some time in a kind of neutral way. They're already up at the net, and there's a good chance that they're gonna eat it up.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Correct. So the my thing is I like switching them up because a drop shot. So I had my knee replaced almost three years ago. Total knee replacement. We can talk about that another time, though, too. I had my so um, yeah, coming back from that injury, which was so much fun. Not, but I did all I did was drop shots because I want that height and that juicy meatball to land in the kitchen so they can't attack me. So then I have time to come to the net and neutralize it. So my partner and I can now be at a wall and a team at the line.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

So let's talk about those elements that make up the drip shot. So the first thing is you said paddle placement. If you're gonna have top spin, we want the paddle low. Correct.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

So my my top three things that I teach are feet first, patience, finesse. If your feet are in the right position, you have the patience for your shot, and you just lift and finesse that paddle to with the ball, your success rate of having a nice shot goes up tremendously. So with a drip shot, you want to be in a split step stance in a little bit of a lunge. You want to have your chest forward, dip the wrist. I can't really describe it as well as I could show it, right? And you want to use your body and a little flick of the wrist so you can create that top spin.

SPEAKER_01 6:39

So your knees and your body are what lift the ball along with your paddle.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Oh, yeah. So it's one fluid motion. So you want to plant, hit, do your shot, lift that ball. And as soon as you can hit here and feel that ball come off your paddle, you know if it's a good shot or not at a higher level. That's what I try to teach people. Right. I try to get people to get that point. So when you know you hit that, you're not admiring it, smoking your cigarette, drinking your coffee or tea, watching it. Right. You want to be um offensive and get up into that line and be able to have that put-away shot.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

So you've done this good drip, and what makes it a drip is that there's more power behind it than a third shot drop, which has that kind of soft, neutral feel to it and look to it. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 7:26

So it's it's like I call it my sneak attack shot sometimes because it looks like you're lining up for a drop, but that flick of the wrist and the paddle placement and using your chest forward to keep it flatter, so you're not popping it up for that meatball and that juicy yummy shot. Explain chest forward. So I say when I chase, when I say chest forward, I say just that slight lean forward. Because if I'm standing up with it, it's gonna pop up. But if I can have that slight chest forward and follow through with my shot, I have a better chance of keeping it flatter rather than giving them that pop-up to keep us back.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

So chest facing the ground. Yeah. Not upright.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

Correct. Because once you stand up with it, where's that ball in the paddle gonna go? It's gonna go up, right? If you can have it slightly forward and you're leaning into the shot, you don't need as much power, and then you can create that top spin by getting the back of the ball. So then the other opponent essentially you want them to pop it up.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Now, when you do the drip, does it is it easier or more effective if you do it straight ahead of you or on the diagonal? Are you trying to get my tricks for tonight, Tracy?

unknown 8:39

That would be me.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

I think I'm thinking if I was to do the drip and I was in that clinic you you did, and it I it wasn't clear to me, were you supposed to go straight ahead or were you supposed to go cross-court? Cross-court felt more natural to me, but usually and is that what we would do in a third show? We would we would drip it to the person coming in.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

So, yes, you always for me personally, if you're the serving team, you always want to hit it to that moving person or middle. Two reasons, okay? Yep. Middle causes confusion, less room for error. You're not gonna have to paint lines, you can just and it's two inches shorter in the middle, too. A lot of people don't know that it's 34 inches on the in the middle and 36 on the ends.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

And we we knew that in tennis. Back in the day in tennis, it was so obvious. In fact, I don't know, I can't remember if they still do it, but when when there would be singles matches, big fancy tennis tournaments, there was a stick propping up the the the net on the outsides. Oh do you remember that? No, you're too young.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

No, I yeah, no, I don't. And I wasn't a big tennis person, to be honest.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

You're lucky, you didn't have to unlearn as many things as the rest of us did. So, yes, the fact that the net is lower in the middle is something we do forget. So that if you are going to go down the line on whatever shot, you have to give it a little more air.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Exactly. And my biggest thing is everybody wants to hit the ball. Go to the middle, it causes confusion.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Right. I I've often when I when I when I've done that, uh and and depending on who you're playing against, usually it's strangers. I mean, if you're playing open play, you don't know everybody's habits, but they're both greedy for it. But greedy in a good way, they're hungry, greedy, right? I know.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

I always say what yeah, if I always I don't say always, but most of the time, if like I know it's my partner's ball, but I was like in the point I wanted it, I'm like, I'm sorry for being piggy, that was mine. I I wanted it so bad. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Yeah. So if you put it in the middle, you'll you'll get the other people to fight over it. Correct. So is the warm-up period in a match, even in open play, a good time to try to dial in that drip to get the feeling of a drive slash drop rather than just doing those third shot drops that people do in warm-up, which in a game look to me awfully attackable. If they were to do in a game what they do in warm-up, I feel as if they're almost preparing themselves to be slammed.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Exactly. And that's the biggest thing, too, is that's a whole other I like I always tell you this every time I feel like we get off a call, is there's so much I want to talk to you about because warm-ups is one of my biggest pet peeves as a coach watching people warm up. You don't dink in front of each other. You know what I mean? Like, do crop do a little cross court, do some transition shots, take some balls out of the air, work on some serves, work on some drives, work on some blocks. Like, I'm like, oh, what did you do last night? We're just dinking and dinking and dinking, and then you get into a game and everyone's like, oh, first game's a warm-up game. No, it's not.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

That we do have to do an episode on that because people do chit-chat in a very unorganized way of doing just dink, dink, dink, dink, dink, dink, dink. Well, that's good. All right, let's play. Yeah, exactly. So the drip shot, if you if you want to understand it, and anyone can create it, just think of a drive drop. So it's a combination. You're not driving it flat out, you want it to land in the kitchen, and you're doing that with footwork, the paddle low, brushing up on the ball to create topspin and your chest forward, leaning forward, not upright.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

Correct. Another big thing, too, that I see when people are doing is moving with the shot. It's so crucial to be planted and have control with it. Because if you think about it, that return most of the time is coming at you with some pace and power, right? Yes. If you're moving, yeah, if you're moving with the ball, you're creating more energy for that ball. Your legs are like shock absorbers. You want to be planted and be able to take back control of that ball and do a beautiful drip.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

That's a really, that's a really good point. The drip works if you are cemented to the floor. And after you finish the shot, as you said, Leah, if it felt good to you and it looks good to you and your partner, hustle up to that kitchen, but not until you finish the shot. Leah Miller, you're amazing. I'm so I'm gonna have to have to beat you later. So sorry.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Oh, talk about good. You know what, Tracy, as long as we have good points and a good match, I'm okay with that.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Yeah, well, I, you know, wishful thinking in my dreams. Thank you, Leah. Take care. Talk to you soon. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

I'll see you soon. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. I'm proud of our partnership with the APP, the Association of Pickleball Players, which provides world-class pickleball competitions for players of all ages and skill levels, professionals, amateurs, and recreational. I'm also grateful for our partnership with the IPTPA, which is the world leader in developing standards and certifying coaches across the world in dozens of countries and on every continent except Antarctica. I hope this show will get you up to the kitchen faster, dink with a purpose, and help you win paddle battles. Please subscribe on your favorite streaming platform and sign up at pickleballobsession.net to get the podcast and the show notes by email every week. Embrace the obsession.