When to Speed Up (and When You Just Gave It Away)

A dink rally is a negotiation. Both teams are waiting for a ball they can attack. The player who attacks the right ball wins the point; the player who attacks the wrong one starts a firefight they're losing before it begins.

A speed-up is only offense if the ball and the moment both allow it. Otherwise you've just handed a slow, chest-high ball to someone standing seven feet away with their paddle up.

What a speed-up is

The key word is deliberately. Most bad speed-ups aren't decisions at all — they're impatience, or a reaction to a dink that felt slightly attackable. If you didn't decide to do it, you didn't speed up. You flinched.

The four green lights

Go when you have at least two of these. Go confidently when you have three.

1. The ball is above net height at your contact point. This is the non-negotiable one. Attacking from below the net means hitting up, and hitting up into someone at the kitchen line is how you lose points. If you only remember one, remember this.
2. You're balanced and set. Feet under you, paddle already in position. Attacking while stretching or leaning is a coin flip you don't need to take.
3. Their paddle is down or out of position. Watch it during the dink rally. A player whose paddle drops after each dink is telling you exactly when to go.
4. They're moving or recovering. Just stretched wide for a dink, still shuffling back to center, weight on the wrong foot. A moving target has slow hands.

Green light one is the gate. The other three tell you how good the opportunity is, but if the ball is below the net, it doesn't matter how open they look.

The three red lights

• The ball is below net height. Said twice on purpose. This is the mistake that costs the most points in intermediate pickleball.
• You're reaching or off-balance. If you have to stretch to reach it, that ball was a dink, not an attack. Take the dink.
• Both opponents are set with paddles up. Speeding up into two ready players means you've started a hands battle from a neutral position with no advantage. They're just as likely to win it as you are, and they didn't have to take the risk.

There's a fourth, quieter red light worth naming: impatience. If you're speeding up because the rally has gone eight dinks and you're bored, that's not a read. Long dink rallies are won by the player who's willing to have a ninth.

Where to aim

The shoulder is the target most players underuse. A ball at someone's dominant shoulder jams them — they can't easily get a forehand or a backhand face on it, and the reply is usually high.

What to do after you go

This is the part people skip, and it's where speed-ups fall apart even when the read was right.

1. Expect the ball back. Most speed-ups don't end the point. They start a fast exchange. Get your paddle back up immediately — the biggest cause of losing a hands battle you started is admiring your own shot.
2. Paddle in front, not at your side. In a fast exchange there's no time to swing. Everything is short punches from a paddle that's already up.
3. Be ready to reset. If the exchange goes against you, get out of it. Take pace off and reset into their kitchen rather than trying to out-hit someone who has the advantage.
4. Tell your partner. If you're speeding up on a pattern, say so between points. A partner who knows an attack is coming keeps their paddle up. A surprised partner is a liability.

One honest note to finish on. When players first start applying the green lights, they attack less — sometimes a lot less — and it feels passive. Stick with it. You're not attacking less overall; you're deleting the attacks that were losing you points. Within a few weeks you'll notice the speed-ups you do take are landing, and the rallies you used to lose in a scramble are ending with you in control.