In today’s blog we’re going to talk about offensive dinking, aggressive dinking, using a variety of spins on your dinks.
If you’ve had the luxury to watch the pros or the top players in the world, either live or on YouTube, what you’ll notice is that when they are dinking they’re not getting the ball over just by pushing.
They’re always using different kinds of spins. Either topspin or underspin, a slice or even some sidespin.
We’re going to discuss a drill that you can do to practice and utilize these spins as you’re dinking.
Why is hitting with spin so effective?
When the ball hits the ground, if you’re hitting topspin, that ball is going to ascend quickly and it’s also going to descend quickly compared to if you just hit a flat dink. When it hits the ground it’s actually going to accelerate.
Furthermore, with a slice dink or underspin dink, those are actually going to stay lower to the ground.
As they hit the ground they might skid a little bit and it’s going to keep that ball low which is really great for you because it’s going to be hard for your opponents to deal with.
In the drill you’re going to be on the even side hitting with your friend/opponent on the other even side of the court. You’ll be cross court from each other.
You’re going to be working on your topspin dinks and also your underspin dinks. You’ll be using them in different combinations so that you don’t give your friend/opponent the same ball each time.
What that will do, is that it can really make it hard for your friend/opponent to time those balls since the spins are reacting off the ground differently.
For a topspin, you’re going to be brushing up on the ball low to high and that’s going to accelerate a little bit when it hits the ground.
Then on your underspin or slice dinks it’s more from the side and a high to low swing path.
Your ball is going to spin backwards. That’s why it’s called under spin since you are kind of coming under the ball with your stroke.
That ball is going to stay a little bit lower.
These are two different spins that work well when you’re dinking cross-court.
This is a great drill that you can do with your partner. Mixing in these different kinds of spins is going to really make it hard on your partner to time the ball and get into a good position as they hit and deal with these different spins that you send them.
If you’re looking to improve as a player, this is something that you can work on to really make your dinks more aggressive.