Pickleball instruction: How to predict where your opponent's next shot is going

Alex Lantz

Director of Content

Last Edited

May 09 2025

Step 1: Identify your opponent's 'tell'

A lot of pickleball instructors and content creators will tell players to hold their paddle head still and "pause" before pulling the trigger on a speed up. It's not bad advice because that tends to "freeze" the player across the net and throw their timing off. But better advice would be to pause before EVERY shot, so that dinks look like speed ups and speed ups look like dinks.

A lot of amateur players can execute the pause before a speed up, but they don't hold their paddle still for a split second before their dinks -- the dinks are just one fluid motion. If you notice your opponent doing this, now you have identified their tell -- they might slip one past you the first time, but they're tipping their hand that a speed up is coming and you can be ready for it next time.

Different players will have different types of tells. Lower-level players might take a bigger backswing before a speed up or do something out of the norm with their footwork, but almost all amateurs will give some kind of clue that they're looking to be aggressive with their next shot. It's up to you to identify their tell -- so pay attention to not just their shots, but their body language before their shots.

Step 2: Use prior speed ups to predict future location

Now that we're pretty sure a speed up is coming, the question is where. The better the player on the other side of the net, the harder this will be to determine, but this is where we can use common pickleball strategy against our opponents.

A good player (let's say 4.5+ and even some 4.0+ players) have probably done some reading or watched videos on how and where to speed up off the bounce. They've been told they should vary the location of their speed ups and they've probably been drilling speed ups down the line and through the middle and trying to make them look the same.

Credit to them for doing that work, but here's the thing: You know that they've been told to mix up their location, and they don't know that you know what they've been told. Got that?

Here's how it works: Let's say you're playing the left and the player directly in front of you (a righty) gets a dead dink to their forehand side and they hit a good speed up down the middle for a winner. Tip your cap and say good shot. Now, turn to your partner. Have a 5-second conversation that says something like, "Hey, next time we put the ball there I'm going to cover line and you're going to cover middle."

Step 3: Bait them into another speed up

Now you have the upper hand from a strategy standpoint because A) you've seen what their speed up looks like, and B) you and your partner have discussed how you're going to defend it.

Here's the best part: Because they have been told over and over by popular pickleball theory that they need to vary the location of their speed ups, there's a good chance that the next time they get a dead dink to their forehand, they will change their location and send a speed up down the line -- right into your deadly backhand counter. The no fly zone.

And now that you have emphatically shut down any idea that they should try to speed up down the line on you, guess where the next ball is going? That's right, down the middle again.

But you've already told your partner to be ready for that, so go ahead and throw another dink to their forehand and see if they try it. If they do, your partner will be there waiting to hit another big counter-attack, and now your opponent has sped up three times and you've won two of those exchanges. We'll take those percentages all day.

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