Nederlands
You are a beginner padel player with some experience playing tennis. You probably know that top spin is a key spinning. But should you use it in padel?
Twenty years ago, if you went to learn to play padel, during your first padel lesson you would hear: “… at padel, we never use top spin because the ball bounces higher after hitting the back wall…”. And you still hear some old school master padel trainers preaching the old mantra: “… no top spin please…”
During the years, as players progressed, technology progressed and the techniques progressed. The sport has changed and thus, for modern players and padel trainers the old true about top spin is not valid anymore: Top spin is recommended for specific situations.
Below you can read the situations when top spin is recommended:
- Service return: As you return your opponent’s service, you want the ball to travel fast and head towards the feet of the serving player as soon as it crosses the net.
- Aggressive volley: Imagine you play a long rally and your opponents are very close to their own back-wall. If you get into a comfortable situation, where the ball is somewhat high, you volley the ball with top spin, and thus the ball will fly high away of reach of your opponents after bouncing on the wall.
- Aggressive smash: if you want the ball to fly high after bouncing on the wall, hit it with top spin. As such, the ball will likely get out of reach of your opponents.
And yet, use top spin with moderation, because used under the wrong circumstances you will put your opponent on a comfortable situation to start a counter attack.
