A couple of weeks ago a miracle occurred. I was playing at May Nissen and all the players played a fully soft game. There were few drives, no speedups, but lots of dinking and third shot drops.
The skill levels were somewhat close, but with the shots all lacking "killer" pace, the rallies were long, everyone could get to all their shots. Then with the lack of speedups it was a game of chess and not dodgeball.
Oh, I forgot, no one lobbed...
I don't know how this game came into being or why everyone played the way they did, but it was the most enjoyable game I've ever played.
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Now for something a bit less syrupy. I've watched a bunch of YouTube videos by Jill Braverman, aka JillyB, and I like her stuff and her delivery.
In a recent video she pointed out that the closer you get your head to a shot, the better the shot will be. This pertains mostly to dinks and you get your head close to the shot by bending your body over the ball.
The bending is from the waist forward. Note that when you are hitting a dink or shot that is to your side, then you will have rotated your torso to the ball, so the posture change is the same.
The opposite of this controlled and consistent shot, is when we stretch to hit a shot. Now there is no way to hit the ball from a "head close" position.
When I come across some new technique I like to test it and I see if it can be extended to other shots. Firstly, it does work and rather well, though it's hard to find a dinking game, and secondly, if you apply this technique to ground strokes, you will find that it's very useful there too. I found myself waiting to hit a shot because I wanted to be closer to the ball and then found I could make a much more solid shot that usual.
I've wanted to write about how to avoid mishit shots but I don't have a good solution to that problem. But hitting the ball and keeping your head near the shot is part of the solution. This might be generalized as hitting in the zone of power, which is basically a zone about two feet in front of and around your body. You don't want to hit inside or outside of this zone.