Where to Aim Speed-Ups in Pickleball (Stop Feeding the Blocker)

You’re in a fast-hands battle at the net. You find a ball you can attack, you pull the trigger, and it comes right back at you. Every time. So you decide your hands are the problem, and you go home and drill fast hands.

Fine work. Wrong diagnosis.

Your hands aren’t failing. Your eyes never voted.

Watch where your speed-ups actually land. Not where you meant them to go: where they land. For most rec players the answer is chest high, dead center, right in the pocket where any 3.5 blocker keeps their paddle parked. The most defended six inches on the entire court, hit at pace, over and over.

That ball wasn’t mis-hit. It was un-aimed. A speed-up with no chosen target defaults to the middle of whatever your paddle was facing, which is the opponent’s ready position, because that’s where the rally pointed you. You didn’t miss the gap. You never picked one.

This post is the second half of a decision that starts with when . The attackable-ball checklist tells you which ball earns the green light. This is the other question, the one that decides whether the green light becomes a point: where is this ball going?

The three addresses

Against a set, balanced defender (the one who starts most firefights), there are three default addresses where a speed-up earns its pace, all chosen for the same reason: they can’t be defended by a paddle that’s simply waiting. A displaced defender adds a conditional fourth, covered below.

1. The paddle-side shoulder. The premium target. To block a ball at their paddle-side shoulder, the opponent has to fold the elbow and chicken-wing the paddle up, the slowest, weakest move in their inventory. Even seen coming, it’s awkward. Aim here when their paddle is carried low.

2. The paddle-side hip. The jam. The paddle has to flip down and around the body to cover it, and the block that comes back (when it comes back) tends to pop up soft for your second swing. Aim here when their paddle is carried high or they crowd the line.

3. The seam. The gap between two players, at whoever’s backhand lives there. The ball itself is easier to reach than a body pocket, but the first beat is spent on a committee meeting: yours or mine? Against teams that don’t communicate, the seam is free money. Against a stacked team that’s organized the middle , it’s their strength, so go back to the body.

Notice what’s not on the list: the open court, at least against defenders who are set. At kitchen distance a balanced blocker closes open space faster than the ball clears it, and now you’ve fed pace to a player in motion. Body pockets don’t move. The exception is a defender who is already displaced, leaning, or committed toward the middle: then the open court sits beyond their recovery path and becomes the safest ball on the menu. Read their base before you write off the space. Against the set defenders who start most firefights, though: a speed-up at nobody is a gift. A speed-up at a shoulder is a problem your opponent has to solve on the move.

Decide before contact, not during

The targets only work if they’re chosen early. Mid-swing is too late: pressure narrows attention, and a decision made during the stroke collapses to the default, the blocker’s chest.

So the discipline is the same one that runs through every shot in this sport: the decision comes first, the swing delivers it. Before you speed up, ideally while the attackable ball is still arriving, your eyes pick one address. The shoulder. The hip. The seam. One target, named early. Deception helps here, too: if your dink and your speed-up look identical until contact , the blocker can’t pre-commit toward the address you chose.

If you can’t name your target out loud after the point, you didn’t have one. That’s the audit, and it’s brutal the first time you run it.

Where to look when it comes back

The first speed-up rarely ends the point against decent blockers. The exchange does. Which raises the question nobody drills: in the firefight that follows, where are your eyes?

For most players: on their partner getting peppered. It feels like teamwork. It’s really just a spectator seat, because you can’t play the ball your partner is absorbing, and while you watch them survive, the next attack is loading somewhere across the net.

Stop watching your partner get attacked. Watch the paddle that’s about to hit the ball. The earliest read in a hands battle isn’t the ball; it’s the hitter’s paddle face and wrist, and “the hitter” moves: a crosscourt counter means the player diagonal from you is now the threat, so your eyes travel with the ball’s next sender, not with a fixed lane assignment. The face tilts toward its target before contact, the same pre-contact tells you use everywhere else on the court , just compressed into a quarter second. Your partner’s job while you read is the same as yours: hold the pair’s spacing so no seam opens. If the ball coming back is a full drive rather than a counter-flick, the answer stays boring: block first, paddle in front .

And keep your own paddle honest between swings: fire, then straight back to chest height, eyes on the next hitter’s paddle face. Fire-and-admire is how won exchanges get lost.

Reddit sources: A player whose speed-ups keep going straight at the opponent and a kitchen-strategy thread on where your eyes should be

Test it

Next session, two counts. First: for every speed-up, name the address before contact (shoulder, hip, or seam, or the open court when you catch them leaning) and score yourself only on whether the ball went where you called it, not whether you won the point. Second: in every hands battle, one check. Were my eyes on my partner or on the threat? Most players discover their “slow hands” were unaimed hands, and their “fast opponents” were just opponents they never looked at. The pace was never the hard part. Then take the free Pickleball IQ test . Targeting under pressure is a read, and it will show you exactly how much of your attack was decision and how much was hope.