One of the first things you learn in pickleball school is that you should return deep. But why is that? Most people will give one of the following reasons:

1) it gives you time to get to the net. 

2) it keeps your opponents back.

But guess what? Those are both wrong!

Listen to this episode of the show where Mark Renneson unpacks why a deep return really matters. 

Need help with Hydration & Recovery? Here’s the brand that we prefer to use: Jigsaw Health. Visit them at jigsawhealth.com. And when you use our code to make a purchase, you can save $10 (coupon code: PB3SS10), and support the work that we do here at Third Shot Sports!

Affiliate disclaimer: keep in mind that we may receive commissions when you click our links and make purchases. however, this does not impact our reviews. we try our best to keep things fair and balanced, in order to help you make the best choice for you.

Ep 41 Transcript

Intro [0:00]

It appears that the team that returns the serve in Pickleball tends to win the point about 55% of the time. That’s a 10% swing compared to the serving team. There might be some important reasons for that. Let’s talk about the return of serve for a minute. If we were doing a Pickleball lesson and I said to you, “Hey, tell me, what is it that you want from the return of serve? What counts as a good return?”

My hunch is that you’d say, “Mark, obviously I want it to be deep. Would have done Pickleball 101.”

And you might be right! It’s good to hit deep. But I bet you the reasons why it’s important are different than you think.

 

The Myth of The Return of Serve [0:52]

Alright, welcome back to the show! I’m your host, Mark Renneson, and this is Pickleball Problems. Here on Pickleball Problems, we talk about all sorts of Pickleball related things; technique and tactics, equipment, and etiquette.

And today, I want to talk about one very specific myth really. I spent a lot of time traveling and teaching Pickleball to people all over North America, and I very often will ask them about the return of serve – that same question that I asked you a minute ago. What do you want from the return of serve? And very often, I feel like the people I’m teaching, they look at me like, “Mark, what do you take us for, dummies? We learned in Pickleball 101 that you’re supposed to return serve deep.”

And I said, “Ah, yes, yes, you’re right.” A deep return of serve is great.

And then I say to them, “You know what? I bet you that your answer to why the deep return of serve is going to be a bit harder to articulate.”

And they look at me and say, “Oh, Mark, it’s not hard at all.”

And right away someone jumps up and says, “Oh, no, you obviously return serve deep because you want time to get to the net. If you hit a deep return of serve, you get up to the net quickly and then you dominate up at the net. 55% of the time, the return is a win.” That’s one answer they give.

I said, “Oh, okay. That’s interesting.”

Someone says, “There is another reason to return serve deep.”

I say, “Oh what’s that?”

They say, “Oh well, if you return deep, it keeps your opponents back.”

I say, “Ah, there it is. The second answer that we always here at these Pickleball clinics. Why do you want to return deep? You want to return deep because it gives you time to get to the net. And you want to return deep because it keeps your opponents back.

In just a minute, I’m going to argue why both of those are wrong.

Sponsor: Selkirk Sport

 

Argument #1 [3:12]

Alright, welcome back to Pickleball Problems. If you’re just joining us, today we are talking about the deep return serve and why the reasons for it being useful might be different than you think. So just before the break, we talked the two main arguments to return deep. One, is that it gives you time to get to the net. And two, it keeps your opponents back.

Let’s take them in reverse order and explain why those arguments are actually wrong. It’s really nice to keep your opponents back, isn’t it? You’re up at the net along with your partner, your opponents are back at the baseline, can’t do much damage from way back there. That’s a great position to be in. But I’ll tell you what, think about when you watch advanced players play, think about your favorite pro as you might see on YouTube or at big tournaments. They generally speaking are very good at returning serve deep. Most of the time, they hit the return of serve and the serving team is forced to play their third shot from on or often behind their own baseline. It’s a good deep return of serve, isn’t it?

Now if it was true that a good deep return of serve keeps your opponents back, and if it’s also true that the pros are good at returning deep, then isn’t true that when we watch the pros play, what we should see is one team; the returning team up at the net, and the other team; the serving team, back at the baseline fighting from the backcourt? Because of course, that return of serve was deep, and apparently it keeps them back, right?

But when you think about it, that’s not what you see when you watch the advanced players play. You don’t see one team back at the baseline and one team up at the net battling points like that – no!

Where do you see all four players usually? You see all four of them up at the net. 

Because what do they do? They hit some sort of third shot, often it’s a drop.

And what do they do after they play that drop? They advance, they go forward. And now, they’re up at the net as well.

So, so much for that first argument: You return deep because it keeps your opponents back – no, it doesn’t. Because they’re going to hurt their third shot and they have free will. They can start moving up to the net. So so much for that argument, the deep return keeps your opponents back – it does not necessarily keep them back.

In just a second, we’re going to talk about why the other argument, the one that buys you time to get to the net, why that is also wrong.

Sponsor: Jigsaw Health

 

Argument #2 [6:27]

Alright, welcome back to the show! Today, we’re talking about the deep return of serve and why or perhaps why it is not such a useful shot. We already talked about how deep return doesn’t necessarily keep the opponents back because that serving team, they can hit some sort of third shot drop perhaps and just come up to the net.

So the other argument here for the deep return of serve is that it gives you time as the returner to get up to the net. So here’s a hypothesis:

Let’s imagine that I’m returning serve. You’ve just served it to me and I return serve. And I want to return serve and I want to run, and I want to be up at the kitchen line with my partner who’s already there. I want to be up at the non-volley line by the time you and your teammate are hitting the third shot. Because if I’m up near that net, I’m nice and scary, I’m looking to pounce on a high block, apply pressure on you, so that’s why I return and come in. And I want to get to that kitchen line by the time you’re playing the third shot. And so you serve to me, that’s a decent serve, it’s not exceptional but I’m hitting it from the baseline, perhaps. And I hit that return of serve, and I just crush it, I hammer it. And because I hit nice and fast, it now lands right on the baseline as deep as possible.

Now, according to this argument, the deep return of serve gives you time to get to the net and my return was as deep as it could possibly be and still be in the court. So that should mean that I have lots of time to get to the net, right?

But NO! because even though that ball landed right on the baseline, you know how it got there? It got there fast because I hammered it. I hit that return hard. And of course, because I hit the ball hard, it gets to you quickly. And because it gets to you quickly, I don’t have much time to come up to the net.

Now, imagine the very next serve, you serve it to me in the same kind of serve. And this time, I hit that ball way high in the air, 15 feet over the net. And it’s on such a straight up and down trajectory that it actually doesn’t land very deep in the court. It lands just past the kitchen line. Now, with that kind of return of serve, it’s not deep at all, right? It just made it to the kitchen line. But I’m going to have ample time to get up to the net. I could even walk my way up to the line if I wanted to.

Now, isn’t that funny? The deep return in my little story here didn’t give me much time to get to the net, and the short return did. And that’s because how much time you have to get up to the net has absolutely nothing to do with how deep you hit the return. How much time you have to get up to the net has nothing to do with how deep you hit the return, and has everything to do with how high and how fast or slow you hit the return. It’s the height and the speed of the return that will determine how much time you have to move forward because it’s that height and speed that would determine how long it takes, or not, to get to the servers.

And so, that’s that second argument. The first argument, we already dispatched. The deep return doesn’t necessarily keep the opponents back because they can hit a third shot drop and come up to the net. And the deep return of serve doesn’t necessarily give you a lot of time. Because if it’s deep and fast, you won’t have that much time.

So, so much for these two popular arguments, these common-sense reasons for returning deep. Neither of them is necessarily true. If you want to find out why deep return actually matters, stay close.

Sponsor: Pickleball Coaching International

 

Why Deep Return Matters [10:47]

Alright, welcome back to Pickleball Problems. Today, we’re talking about the deep return of serve and we are exploding the myths about why it matters. Maybe talking to you about the real reason that deep return matters.

So just to recap, deep returns of serve, we know how important they can be. But it’s not because it keeps your opponents back. Even the deepest of all returns if your opponent plays a good third shot drop, for example, they can start sauntering their way up to the kitchen, so it doesn’t necessarily keep them back just because the return is deep.

The other argument we often hear is that the deep return of serve gives you time to get to the net, and we talked about how that is not necessarily true either. Because it’s not the depth of the return that buys you time to come forward, it is the eight and speed of the return that matters regardless of how deep the ball goes.

So now, we’re trying to address the question of, “Well, if those two reasons aren’t the real reasons for a deep return, why does it actually matter?”

It is about time. But it’s not about time to get to the net. Let me try to illustrate.

Let’s imagine you and I are playing Pickleball against one another. You’re the server, I’m the receiver. And you hit that serve and I hit that return. My return and kind of short and lands sort of middle of the court. And how about we say that when you hit your third shot, you are three feet inside the baseline. So I’m up at the kitchen line with my partner. You were hitting your third shot from three feet inside the baseline.

Now, we know that the distance from one baseline to the net is 22 feet. And from the net to the kitchen line on the other side of the net, is another 7 feet. So from baseline of one player to the kitchen line of the other team is 29 feet. So if you were standing right on the baseline when you hit that third shot, you’d be hitting the ball 29 feet to get it to me, let’s say.

Remember, I said the return of serve was short. You were 3 feet inside the baseline when you hit your third shot. So it was 29 feet that your ball was going to travel before it gets to me, but we take away 3 feet because you’re now inside the court. So now that ball only has 26 feet to travel before it gets to me and my partner at the net. So when you smack that ball, I got 26 feet worth of time, if that makes sense, to handle it.

Now, let’s imagine instead of me hitting a ball that’s short enough that you’re 3 feet inside the baseline. Let’s imagine it’s deep enough that you’re hitting your third shot from 3 feet behind the baseline – good deep return of serve.

Now remember, we said it was 29 feet to get from your baseline all the way across the net to me at the kitchen line. But now we have to add on 3 more feet because of how deep the return was and you’re 3 feet behind the baseline. So 29 feet plus 3 more, that’s 32 feet.

So when you hit that third shot, your ball has 32 feet it’s got to travel before it gets to me on the other side of the net. And recall a minute ago when we said it was a short return of serve, it was only 26 feet. So my deep return, as opposed to my short return, has now given me 6 extra feet of time we might say. You’re 6 feet further back than you would have been. And that’s 6 feet that your ball is going to travel gives me more time at the net, and my partner more time at the net, to see your ball and to handle your ball. And that is especially useful if you’re driving the ball, if you’re hitting it fast – those 6 feet can be really valuable.

So you see, the deep return is important for reasons of time. But it’s not about the time the returner’s get to get up to the kitchen line. It’s about how much time they have to handle the third short being hit from their opponents. That’s the primary value of the deep return of serve. It is about time. It’s about time to see the oncoming ball and to then to play the shot you want.

 

Conclusion [14:40]

And we’ll leave it there! Thanks a lot for joining me this week on Pickleball Problems. If you have a problem you’d like me to address, feel free to send me a note, mark@thirdshotsports.com. Be sure to find us on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. You can see us all over the place. We got some great, new YouTube videos out that you’re going to want to check out. And of course, we have our Award-Winning newsletter – it hasn’t really won an award but I think it’s pretty good – thirdshotsports.com/newsletter. You can see what I think is the best newsletter in Pickleball.

Alright! Thanks for joining us. See you next time here at Pickleball Problems.