# Why Smart Padel Players Beat Stronger Opponents **Channel:** The Padel Dude **Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivMQJhY_384 **Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/ivMQJhY_384 ## Chapters - 0:00 — Why Power Fails in Paddle - 3:01 — Move Together or Lose Points - 5:07 — Lobs and Chiquitas That Work - 9:44 — Communication and Simple Match Plan ## Transcript **[0:00]:** You're two games down against a guy who's simply stronger than you. Your arm already hurts, his doesn't, and he hasn't moved more than three steps all match. But on a paddle court, his best shot isn't a winner. It's a rally ball. The back glass hands it straight back to you. Power ends points in tennis. Here, it just arrives twice. Five habits separate smart players from strong ones. Four of them are completely free. The fifth is the slowest ball on the court. Start with the one that costs nothing, where you stand. Your half of the court is 10 m by 10. Only about five of those meters decide anything. Three at the net, two in front of the back glass. The rest is where matches go to die. My verdict, and we'll come back to this all video. Club players lose from the middle, not from the baseline. **[0:45]:** And the strong guy lives in the middle. Number one, power has nowhere to go. Here's what his power is actually doing. He hits flat and hard from midcourt. The ball bounces, it hits the back glass, and it comes back out. And off a hard flat ball, the glass gives you more of it, not less. The harder he hits, the more of it comes back to you. In tennis, that shot is over. Here, it's a question with a follow-up question. Now, I'm not knocking power. Power is lovely. If you can hit hard and place it, you're a better player than me and probably always will be. But in my opinion, power in paddle is a volume knob, not a win condition. You can turn it all the way up and it's still the same song. Three zones, and you only need them roughly. The 2 m in front of the back glass, defensive. **[1:32]:** Your job there is to survive and lob, and nothing else. No winners, no heroics, no flat drives down the line because you felt something. The 3 m off the net, offensive. That's where points actually get won. And everything in between, around the service line, is officially called the transition zone. If you ask me, the honest name is the departure lounge. Nobody's meant to stay there. Everybody does, and nothing good happens while you wait. Here's the part people miss. Those zones aren't fixed. They move with the height of the ball. A high ball arriving at you in the middle of the court is an attacking ball. Go forward. A low ball arriving at you at the net is a defensive ball. You're in trouble even though you're standing in the good spot. The ball decides which zone you're in, not the paint under your shoes. And this is exactly where a stronger opponent lives. **[2:22]:** He stands midcourt because he can reach everything from there. He genuinely can. That's not a lie I'm telling you to make you feel better. He's just chosen to stand in the one part of the court where the ball arrives at his feet below net height every single time. People will tell you that losing to him is a skill issue. It's not a skill issue. It's a geometry issue. And yes, I'm aware that saying skill issue at my age is a bit much. Smart players don't out hit him. They let the court do it. But there's something you're doing right after every good shot you hit that drops you into exactly the same trap he's in. It's the most common mistake in club paddle, and I did it for two solid years. **[3:01]:** Number two. The invisible rope. You and your partner are tied together by about five or six meters of invisible rope. One moves, the other moves. Partner dragged wide to the side glass, you slide across and cover the middle. Partner pushed back by a deep lob, you go back too, even if you were having a lovely time at the net. Partner goes forward, you go forward. Both up or both back. Those are the two formations that work. Break the rope and you get one up, one back. Which looks fine. It feels fine. It is the formation that loses more club matches than any other because the diagonal ball through the middle is now a free point for anybody who can aim. So, here's the thing I promised you. You hit a good lob deep over their heads. They're scrambling backwards. And what do you do? You run to the net alone because it was your shot and you earned it and somebody should enjoy it. **[3:55]:** Your partner is still back there admiring the lob like it's hanging in a gallery. Now, you're at the net by yourself with 10 m of empty court behind you, and a man who hits hard is about to hit hard. I'm not knocking the instinct. The instinct is correct. That ball absolutely deserved the net. Personally, I just think the net is a two-person job, like carrying a sofa. One person carrying a sofa is not a faster sofa. It's an ambulance. The fix is one word, agreed before the match. Together. Up. Go. Whatever you'll actually say out loud when your heart rate's at 160, then both of you move. If you're intermediate, somewhere around 3.5 to 4.0, this one habit is worth more points to you right now than a better bandeja, a new racket, or any of the things you've been browsing at 11:00 at night. **[4:45]:** Same rope applies going backwards, and this is the half nobody practices. When your partner gets lobbed and has to turn and chase, your instinct at the net is to stay because you're at the net, and the net is good. Don't. Drop back with them, take the middle, and rebuild as a pair. You lose the net for one rally instead of losing the point immediately. That's a trade, and it's a good one. **[5:07]:** And once you two actually hold the net together, your strong opponent has exactly one shot that rescues him. You've got the same shot. Yours is probably too short. Number three, your lob is too short. The lob is the cheapest weapon in paddle. No strength, no wrist, no highlight reel, no 6-month technical rebuild. It only has to be high enough and deep enough, which is precisely where everyone, me very much included, quietly fails. Here's the test, and it's measurable, so you can be properly annoyed with yourself afterwards. Question one, can the net player reach that ball at full stretch with the racket up? If yes, that wasn't a lob, that was a gift delivered at head height. Question two, where does it land? In the last 2 m before the glass or somewhere around the service line? Service line lobs are how strong players get paid. **[5:59]:** What a good lob does to a stronger opponent is the entire video in one shot. He has to turn, run backwards, and hit an overhead from deep off balance with the ball dropping behind him. That is the hardest shot in the sport, and because he's strong, he will try to smash it. Strength makes it more likely to take the bad option, not less. That's the whole trick, really. You're not removing his weapon. You're just making sure he keeps reaching for it at the exact moment it doesn't work. The shot he should be hitting there is the bandeja, the controlled sliced overhead that doesn't try to win the point, it just keeps him Spanish for tray because the idea is to carry the ball rather than clobber it. Most strong club players don't own one. In my opinion, that's the real gap between a 4.0 and a 4.5, far more than anything to do with smashing. **[6:47]:** And look, I'm not saying never smash. I'm saying the smash is dessert, and most of us are trying to order it as a starter, then as the main, then again as a starter. One more thing about lobbing, since we're being specific. Lob crosscourt when you're in trouble because it's the longest distance on the court and gives you the most margin. Lob down the line when you've got time, and you can see their feet are wrong. And if one of them clearly hates hitting overheads on the backhand side, lob there every single time until they do something about it. That's not rude. That's the sport. Then take the net together and keep it with sliced volleys at their feet. Low, deep enough, no pace required. The volley that keeps you at the net is boring by design, which brings me back to what I promised at the start. **[7:29]:** The shot that beats a stronger opponent isn't the hardest one you own. It's the slowest. Number four, the slowest ball on the court. It's called the chiquita, roughly little one. It's a soft low ball hit from the back of the court that lands at the feet of the player at the net below the height of the tape. That's the whole shot. No pace, no angle, no glory, no sound. Here's why it specifically ruins a stronger opponent. A player at the net wants the ball above the net because above the net he can hit down, and down is where strength does its work. At his feet, he has to hit up gently from a crouch with no time and no backswing. That is the one thing his strength is completely useless for. And half the time he won't even attempt it properly. He'll try to force it anyway, because he spent the entire match being rewarded for forcing things, and he'll pop it straight up into the middle of the court. **[8:22]:** Then the pattern completes itself. Chiquita, weak floater, you attack. That's the main offensive pattern from the back at intermediate level and above, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with how hard you can hit the ball. Level tag. This is 3.5 and up. Below that, stick with the lob, honestly. A bad chiquita is just a free volley, delivered into their strike zone with a little bow on it. The shot needs control before it needs ambition. Two details that make it work. First, hit it early, off the bounce if you can, before the ball drops into your shins. Late chiquitas float, and floating chiquitas get eaten. Second, aim at the feet of the player who's standing closest to the net, not the one who's hanging back. The deeper one has time. The close one has a decision, and honestly, if you ever want to be the most annoying person on a paddle court, this is the shot. **[9:16]:** You're not hurting anyone. You're just quietly removing their favorite thing over and over with a smile. In my opinion, the chiquita is the most underused shot in club paddle, and I think I know exactly why. It doesn't look like anything. Nobody has ever filmed a chiquita in slow motion with a drum sound underneath it. You hit the best one of your life, and your partner says nothing, because from behind it looks like you shanked it. That's the deal. You take the point, they take the applause, you go home with the win. **[9:44]:** There's one more thing that costs nothing, needs no technique at all, and beats stronger teams more often than any shot in this video. It's a word. Number five, make them talk. The word is mine. Hit the ball down the middle between the two of them. Not because the middle of the court is weak, because the middle of the partnership is. Two players, one ball, nobody's name on it. Somebody has to decide, and deciding costs time they don't have. Even when they get it back, they get it back late, soft, and from a position neither of them wanted. At club level, simply calling mine and yours on every middle ball is the biggest error reducer available to you, and it's free. The teams that talk on every single ball aren't better players. They're just never surprised. Mine. Yours. Out. Wait. I'm back. Four to five words total used constantly. **[10:36]:** The standard advice is to hit everything to the weaker of the two, and that's right most of the time. Deep balls to the weaker one, middle balls to confuse both. But, when one of them is hot, when he's hitting everything clean and early, feeding him more does not cool him down. Change what he's getting. Short, soft, awkward, off rhythm. Take him out of the pattern instead of trying to take him out of the point. Same thinking on serve and return, by the way. Serving? Your job isn't a big serve. It's getting to the net behind a normal one. Returning? Your job isn't a winner. It's stopping them from arriving at the net comfortably. A low block at their feet as they come forward, or a lob over the net man's head. Against a stronger pair, a deep lob return is frequently the best shot available, and nobody ever plays it because it feels like giving up. **[11:27]:** It isn't. It's taking the net back before they've even got there. And a rule for when to change anything at all, lose the same way twice, then adjust. Once is a mistake. Twice is a pattern. Three times is a lifestyle. Honest opinion, most of us change tactics after one single lost point and never give anything two rallies to prove itself. I'm including me in that. I have personally abandoned a perfectly good plan because of one net cord. I wish I had a better transition here, but I don't. So, what do you actually do on Monday? On number six, the Monday list four shots in this order, and I genuinely ignore everything else until these feel boring. One, the lob. High, deep, last 2 m. It's how you get the net, and it's the shot that turns a stronger opponent into a man running backwards. Two, the bandeja. **[12:20]:** Controlled, sliced, unspectacular. It's how you keep the net once you're there, instead of handing it back with an ambitious smash. Three, the sliced volley at their feet. It's how you keep them pinned at the back, where the glass quietly does your work for you. Four, wall defense. The least glamorous thing in paddle. It's how you stop losing points you were never actually in danger of losing. The ones where you took a ball out of the air that the back glass would have handed you on a plate. And two habits that cost nothing at all. Move as a unit, and call every middle ball out loud. That's the list. Four shots and two words. Notice what isn't on it. Nowhere does it say, get stronger. Not because strength doesn't help, it does. And a strong player who also does all six of these is going to beat you. **[13:07]:** And in my opinion, that's completely fair. He earned it. But the guy at your club who hits everything hard and stands in the middle, he isn't beating you with power. He's beating you with the 20 seconds a point lasts, and you've been handing him every single one of them. Take the net together, lob him backwards, put the ball at his feet, make the two of them talk to each other. You're not going to outhit him. You're going to make the court do it for you, and then take the credit anyway. Which is, if you ask me, the most enjoyable way there is to win a paddle match.