- Forehand Dinking Strategy 4.5+
- Mindset should not be about looking for errors from your opponent. Instead you are looking to draw a poor decision, a slightly elevated ball, or set up your partner for an Erne.
- Attempt to dink the ball as deep as possible without your opponent hitting it out of the air. If you can get the ball behind them, you will have them off balance and on the defensive. Just beware of setting them up for an out of the air attack.
- Top target zone should be cross court near the sideline but relatively deep in the kitchen. Roughly a foot inside the kitchen line. This gives you maximum distance to hit to so you can give your dink as much stick as possible without leaving the ball high enough for your opponent to attack. It also pushes them wide and back in the court with a reduced risk of giving them an ATP opportunity.
- The highest level dinks are ones that are hit as low and hard as possible without being taken out of the air by your opponent. This causes the ball to skid and stay very low.
- Remember to measure how far of a distance and angle your cross court dink will travel after the bounce so you do not set your opponent up for an ATP.
- Other top target area is the inside of opponent’s left foot as a deep driving dink preferably hit with heavy backspin. This causes them to be unsure whether to volley it or not and creates an awkward backhand. Use caution that you do not leave this shot too far middle to allow their partner to reach over with their forehand.
- Hit your dinks as much on a straight trajectory as possible, rather than lifting them on an upward trajectory. This is accomplished by hitting the ball at the peak of its bounce and keeping it as low as possible over the net.
- Get your dink to skid or accelerate once it hits the ground by hitting with backspin or topspin.
- Aim for the kitchen line to get the ball to skid off the paint if your opponent tends to let the ball bounce.
- Reach forward and dink the ball out of the air as much as possible to cut off angles and reduce the amount of time your opponent has to react. This is most effective when reaching in and rolling your volley dink with topspin. This makes the ball accelerate off the bounce and also allows you to disguise your attacks.
- Experiment with the depth of your dinks to see how far your opponent is willing to reach forward to volley the ball. Then attempt to put your dink a fraction beyond the perimeter of their wingspan to bait them into overstretching themselves. This is especially effective when you hit your dink with backspin so the ball dies on their paddle on any mis-hit.
- Experiment with how comfortable your opponent is at hitting an around the post. Push your cross court dink slightly further beyond what is safe and observe whether your opponent capitalizes with a successful ATP. If they are not capable of hitting a good ATP, use the extra space to get them a step further off the court.
- Fake a big attack by taking a full windup for your dink and hit your dink deeper than normal to push the ball at your opponent’s feet as they fall onto their heels expecting the attack. Especially effective when coupled with a few full windup attacks from the same position.
- Build your incremental advantage in the point. Don’t let your opponents off the hook when they are tentative. Press your advantage by hitting an aggressive dink when you receive a passive dink. Alternatively, when your opponents hit an aggressive dink, counter with a more conservative dink to maintain consistency. (1+2=3)
