drill
The Dinking Game
Doubles with a dink serve from the kitchen: no point comes off the serve, and a speed-up on your serve that lands out costs you a point.
- Players
- 4
- Time
- 20 min
- Path
- Intermediate
- Topics
- Shots, Mental game, Strategy
A normal doubles game with two changes that make the rally start soft and punish the one shot everybody is itching to hit: the serve is a dink, and when you have the most to lose, an impatient speed-up costs you twice.
Setup
- A normal doubles game: four players, normal serving order, normal kitchen rules, the two-bounce rule. Lobs and everything else are allowed.
- The serve is a dink: hit from the kitchen line, it has to bounce diagonally in the opposite kitchen.
Scoring
- You only score on your serve, as in normal doubles, to 11, win by 2.
- No point comes off the serve directly. A serve into the net or out, or a return into the net or out, is a redo: serve again, nobody scores, nobody loses the serve.
- The penalty: if your team is serving and you speed a ball up and it lands out, not in the court at all, you lose the rally as usual and lose a point. A score never goes below zero.
What it looks like
A normal point, won by the serving team:
- P1 serves from the kitchen line. Only P1 and P2, the serving team, can score.
- The dink serve lands diagonally in the other kitchen. P4 slides out wide to cover it, and P1 and P2 shift with the ball.
- P4 returns it after the bounce, toward P1, and gets back toward the middle.
- P1 dinks it back through the middle. P3 and P4 slide over together to stay in front of it.
- P4 pulls P1 wide. P1 chases to the sideline, and P2 shades over to cover the middle.
- P1 resets it into the middle and recovers. Both teams square up again.
- P4's dink sits up, above the net. That is the ball worth attacking.
- P2 puts it away into the open court P4 left behind when stepping to the middle. Point to the serving team: 1–0.
The redo: no point comes off the serve.
- P1 serves from the kitchen line. Only P1 and P2, the serving team, can score.
- The dink serve lands diagonally in the other kitchen. P4 slides out wide to cover it, and P1 and P2 shift with the ball.
- P4's return goes into the net. In normal doubles that is a point. Here it is a redo: P1 serves again, and nobody scores.
The penalty: a speed-up on your serve that lands out.
- P1 and P2 are serving, at 4–2: the only time they can score.
- The dink serve lands diagonally in the other kitchen. P4 slides out wide to cover it, and P1 and P2 shift with the ball.
- P4 returns it after the bounce, toward P1, and gets back toward the middle.
- P1 dinks it back through the middle. P3 and P4 slide over together to stay in front of it.
- P4 pulls P1 wide. P1 chases to the sideline, and P2 shades over to cover the middle.
- From out wide, on a ball below the net, P1 speeds it up anyway. It sails past the baseline: out. P1 and P2 lose the rally and a point: 3–2.
Why it works
Serving is the only time you can score, so it is also when the speed-up is most tempting, and now it is when a bad one costs the most. The dink serve and the redo rule take away the free points at the start, so every point has to be won in the rally. You learn which ball is worth attacking by paying for the ones that are not.
Turn the dial
Easier — no penalty until one team reaches 5, so everyone settles into the dink rally first.
Harder — any speed-up by the serving team that does not win the rally costs the point, not only the ones that land out.
Harder still — the penalty applies to both teams: a receiving team that speeds up and hits out cannot lose what it does not have, so it gives the serving team a point instead.