How to beat bangers and pushers
Every pickleball player eventually runs into two frustrating opponent types. The banger hits every ball as hard as humanly possible, refusing to dink or reset or play any form of soft game. The pusher does the opposite — every ball is a soft lob, a high defensive dink, or a slow push, and they never attack anything. Both are maddening in different ways, and both can be beaten if you understand what they’re doing and adjust. If you lose to either of them, you’re not adjusting.
The banger
What they do
The banger’s strategy is “hit it hard until somebody misses.” Serves come in flat and fast. Returns are drilled at the baseline. Third shots are drives, not drops. Every volley is a punch. They rarely dink, rarely reset, and rarely play a soft ball. Their entire game depends on their opponents failing to handle pace.
At lower levels (2.5–3.0), bangers win a lot, because most players can’t handle hard balls. At 3.5+, bangers hit a ceiling because any opponent who can reset pace neutralizes everything they do.
How to beat them
- Stay at the Kitchen line no matter what. Your instinct will be to back up away from the pace. Don’t. Backing up is exactly what the banger wants — it gives them more space to work with and takes you out of position. Hold the line.
- Soft hands on volleys. Don’t try to hit hard back. Absorb their pace with a loose grip and drop the ball softly into their Kitchen. This is the single most powerful anti-banger move: turning their power into your dink.
- Paddle up, always. You won’t have time to react to a drive if your paddle is at your waist. Chest-high, in front, every ball.
- Aim your soft resets at their feet. A dink into a banger’s feet while they’re at the baseline is nearly unreturnable — they either let it bounce twice or try to scoop it and pop it up.
- Don’t get emotional. Bangers win when opponents get frustrated and start hitting back hard (badly). Stay calm, reset the ball softly, and make them do it again.
The winning formula against a banger is: pace in, no pace out. Every drive they hit gets absorbed into a dink. After a few rallies, they run out of patience or they make a mistake hitting into your soft reset. Either way you win.
Common mistake
The worst thing you can do against a banger is try to out-bang them. If they hit harder than you, you’ll lose the pace war. If you hit harder than they do, you’ll make more errors because banging is inherently high-risk. Soft beats fast at the Kitchen line, every time.
The pusher
What they do
The pusher’s strategy is “return everything, attack nothing, wait for your mistake.” Every ball they hit is a soft dink, a defensive lob, or a slow, safe push into the middle of the court. They never take risks. They never attack. They’re essentially a wall — they just put the ball back, and they trust that you will eventually get impatient and make an error.
At lower levels, pushers win because beginners get bored and start swinging wildly. At higher levels, pushers can still be effective because their shot selection is so conservative they almost never give you a free point.
How to beat them
- Attack any ball above net height. Pushers give you medium-height balls constantly because they’re not trying to hit low, skimming shots — they’re just returning the ball safely. A medium ball at chest height is an attack, not a dink. Punch it.
- Don’t try to out-push them. You will lose a dinking stalemate to a pusher because they’re more patient and less prone to errors. Push them back into their Kitchen while staying at your Kitchen, and as soon as one of their dinks gets high, attack it.
- Hit angles, not depth. Against a pusher, deep balls come right back. Angled cross-court shots that pull them side to side are much more effective, because they expose the space the pusher has to cover.
- Use the lob — sparingly. Pushers often camp right at the Kitchen line expecting a dink battle. A well-timed lob catches them flat-footed and makes them run backwards, which they hate.
- Don’t get emotional. Pushers win when opponents get frustrated at “never getting a clean put-away” and start going for low-percentage shots. Play your game. Patience beats patience.
The key trap
The trap with pushers is that you think “I should just dink them forever until they make a mistake.” That works if you’re more patient than they are. You aren’t — pushing is their whole strategy, and they’ve been doing it all their life. You need to break the pattern by attacking the moment they give you a medium ball, not by trying to out-wait them.
The general lesson
Both bangers and pushers win by imposing their preferred tempo on the game. Bangers force a fast pace; pushers force a slow one. The counter to both is the same in spirit: play your own game, not theirs. Don’t be forced into a pace war with a banger. Don’t be forced into a patience war with a pusher. Hit the shot that’s correct for the situation, every time, and trust that the opponent’s strategy has a ceiling.
The day you stop losing to bangers and pushers is the day you’ve actually become a complete player. It’s worth getting there.