A Couple of Quick Tips

 I've taught a bunch of the PB-101 players over the last year and it's a bad teacher who can't learn something from his students.

Usually I've had the "no racquet sport players," but I got some of the tennis and whatever else players the last two times out.  It was better in that I had them playing games in about 15 minutes.  The stuff I had to impart were more oriented to scoring and some of the rules, rather than how to get the paddle on the ball.  It was nice change.

The players this last time, were quite good at stepping into their serves.  If you are right handed, then gather yourself to serve, step forward onto the left leg, then continue that forward motion to impart some momentum into the serve.  

Strangely, this step motion is not universal amongst all you more advanced players.  It is more common with the gals than the guys.  Maybe a strength thing or something.  But it's a very useful habit for a couple of reasons.  One is that you're using some body motion to add speed to the stroke, and secondly, there is a longer, smoother sequence of actions to produce the serve.  This will increase consistency.  Melissa does this quite well and there are others.  I've added this to my service motion for more power with no more effort.

New topic!  Angel came by the other day.  It's always a treat to watch him play.  He was dinking with Randy.  What Angel did was keep his paddle pointing almost fully skyward for the majority of his dinks.  His paddle was also well in front of his body.

Now, one would think that an open paddle face would tend to pop the ball up.  I think this is true, but if you hit the shot softly, you can drop the ball closely over the net.  A high, short, soft shot is a good thing as you don't net as many shots and a soft shot does not bounce much and it gets below the net quickly.  I see most people with a paddle closer to vertical, than pointing to the sky.  That tends to create a flat shot, which is more easily returned as it can't be close to the net and it will usually be higher when hit, thus easier to return.  

And the axiom that a pop up is automatically created with an open face does not seem to be true.  The paddle face and ball interaction is not trivial and with a gritty surface and various spins, the initial angle of the ball coming off the paddle is not simple.  Basically you can hit a ball with an open face and have the ball stay quite low.

Next time you are dinking notice how you use the paddle angle.  Angel's way is more like a shovel and that might help your dinks too.