The backhand: pickleball's most exposed weakness

How to Play Last reviewed April 8, 2026 6 min read

Walk onto any recreational pickleball court, watch three points, and you’ll see the same thing: one player on each team is getting targeted on their backhand. It’s the fastest way to win a rally, and everyone knows it. If your backhand is a liability, your opponents will find it within the first few balls of every game. The good news: backhands in pickleball are much simpler than in tennis, and the average rec player can get their backhand to “not a liability” in a couple of drilling sessions.

Why backhands are hard

Most people are right-handed, and the backhand side is the side of the body that doesn’t have a paddle on it at rest. To hit a backhand, your arm has to cross your body, which is less natural and less strong than the forehand. On top of that, the typical rec player never practices backhands — every warm-up is hitting forehand rallies — so the shot stays undertrained forever.

The fix is mostly practice. The technical tweaks in this article will help, but nothing replaces 200 intentional backhand reps.

The backhand drive

One-handed vs two-handed

Pickleball’s paddle is short enough that a one-handed backhand works fine for most players. But a two-handed backhand gives you more stability and power, especially on waist-high balls. If you’re over 65 or have any wrist or elbow issues, go two-handed — it takes load off your arm. If you’re comfortable one-handed, stay there.

Technique (one-handed)

Continental grip. Same as your forehand. No grip change.
Turn your shoulders so your paddle-side shoulder points at the net. This is a bigger turn than the forehand because you need the extra range.
Lead with the elbow. The swing starts with your elbow moving forward, and the paddle comes through after.
Contact out front. A backhand hit late — behind your body — is almost always a mis-hit. Meet the ball a foot in front of your lead foot.
Follow through up and across your body, finishing high.

Technique (two-handed)

Add your non-dominant hand to the handle, above your dominant hand.
The non-dominant hand does most of the work — you’re essentially hitting a left-handed forehand (if you’re a righty).
Shoulder turn is smaller because both hands give you more leverage.
Contact point slightly farther forward than a one-hander.

Two-handed is easier for most beginners. One-handed has more reach.

The backhand dink

This is where new players hurt themselves. The technique for a backhand dink is completely different from a backhand drive — and people who try to dink with their drive technique end up popping up every ball.

The backhand dink is a soft, wristy push with a loose grip:

Loose grip. 3 out of 10.
Paddle face open (pointing slightly skyward).
Almost no backswing. The paddle moves maybe six inches.
Push through the ball, don’t swing at it.
Keep the wrist quiet — you want a slight flick, not a full flip.
Knees bent. Get low to the ball instead of reaching.

If you try to hit a backhand dink with the same motion as a backhand drive, you’ll overhit every single one and float it into the opponent’s strike zone. The backhand dink is not a miniature backhand drive — it’s a different shot that happens to use the same grip and the same side of the body.

Common backhand mistakes

Reaching for the ball instead of moving your feet. A stretched-out backhand is always bad. Get your feet in position first.
Hitting late. Backhands hit behind your body produce weak, floaty shots. Meet the ball in front.
Wrist lag. Letting the wrist fall behind the paddle-head causes mis-hits. Keep the wrist firm on drives, soft on dinks, but always in front of the ball.
Avoiding the backhand by running around it. You can’t run around every backhand in pickleball — the court is too small and the ball is too fast. Running around means giving up positioning, and opponents will just hit behind you. Learn to hit it.

Drilling your backhand

Same drills as the forehand, but exclusively on the backhand side:

Backhand dink-to-dink. Two players at opposing Kitchen lines, dinking backhand-to-backhand diagonally. 50 reps.
Feed and drive. Partner feeds balls to your backhand side; you drive them down the line. 30 reps.
Return of serve backhand. Partner serves to your backhand corner; you return deep. 20 reps.

Twenty minutes of backhand drilling a week for a month will move your backhand from a liability to a neutral shot. It won’t be your favorite side. It doesn’t have to be. It just has to be good enough that opponents stop targeting it on purpose.