This week in Five Dink Friday:

🐍 The Snake Shot — The sneaky new speed-up no one sees coming.
🎯 Flick It, Roll It, or Chill — The Height Hack You Need to Know.
😤 Sticks in the Mud — Reddit wisdom to save your rec play (and sanity).
🧘‍♀️ Junior Pro Mindset — Meet the 16-year-old mastering her mental game.
🧩 The Drop Shot Disguise — Cool fake smash I have to learn after this week’s matches.

Let’s get to it!

Okay, pickleball friends… I may have just found the next secret weapon.
It’s called the Snake Shot, and until this week, I’d never even seen it.

Picture this: you’re in a classic backhand cross-court dink rally—totally chill, rhythmic, predictable—when suddenly, BAM 💥 you surprise speed up straight ahead at your opponent’s chest.

What just happened?
You sold the dink, then at the very last millisecond, you dropped your paddle head and flicked it forward in one lightning-fast motion.

Deception. Speed. Chaos.
The Snake Shot lives somewhere between a magician’s sleight of hand and a sucker punch.

Here’s the Instagram tutorial I stumbled on (hardly any views—shh, let’s keep it that way):

Seriously, watch it. Slow it down. Then go practice it until your wrist hates you.
Because once you master this thing, you’ll start seeing every soft backhand exchange as a setup for ambush mode.

Pro tip: Body language is key.
You’ve got to sell the backhand slice dink with your paddle angle, shoulder orientation, and eyes; they’ll never see it coming—even if they read this newsletter.

I came across a reel from @thepickleballchiropractor this week that just made sense.
He breaks down how to decide whether to attack or reset a backhand ball out of the air—based entirely on the height of the ball.

🔹 Shins = TAP it.
Too low to attack. Trying to roll or flick from here just pops it up for your opponent. Tap it back and neutralize the point.

🔹 Knees = ROLL it.
This is your transition zone. You can be a bit more aggressive, lifting from underneath with topspin so the ball clears the net and dips fast.

🔹 Hips = FLICK it.
Green light. Snap your wrist, accelerate through, and attack with precision.

Three rules. Total clarity.
It’s such a simple way to clean up your attacking decisions—no more guessing, no more attacking the wrong ball.

I really need to drill this—because if I don’t, it just won’t stick. (Looking at you Magic Corner. Still hitting way too many balls flat this week because I didn’t put in the reps. If you missed that Magic Corner gold, click the image below—tons of readers said it was their big “ah-ha” moment!)

Now back to the “Tap it. Roll it. Flick it.” framework…

What I love about this system is that it eliminates the guesswork.
Instead of reacting mid-point, you respond intelligently.
Height tells you everything.

🎥 Watch the tutorial here by clicking the button below:

You ever show up to rec play ready for some fun, only to find out half the court’s acting like it’s Game 5 of the PPA Finals?

Yeah. You’re not alone.

This week, I fell down a glorious Reddit rabbit hole where one player asked why so many people in rec pickleball seem… uptight. Like, can we not have a little banter and a smile with our third-shot drops?

And then came the comments—equal parts hilarious and painfully accurate:

There’s some genuine life wisdom buried in that thread—not just about pickleball, but people.

Reading through it, I couldn’t help nodding. Pickleball’s this strange cocktail of accessibility and intensity—it’s relatively easy to level up quickly, start caring a little too much, and suddenly the vibe shifts from fun to finals.

These days, I try to keep perspective:
If someone’s getting salty on the court, I remind myself—that’s not them.
They’re probably just having their “morning asshole” moment.

A little grace goes a long way.

And if you want to dive into this brilliant, unfiltered Reddit thread yourself (I found some life gems in there), click here.
Just don’t blame me when you’re still scrolling 30 minutes later. 😅

🗳️ Poll Time:

It was fascinating connecting with Volly Johnson, a 16-year-old junior from Minneapolis who’s all in on her dream to go pro.

This girl lives pickleball—on court five to six days a week, agility training twice a week, and workouts in her family’s garage gym. She drills, she studies, she breathes pickleball. Literally. (More on that in a sec.)

What stood out most wasn’t just her dedication, but how much she focuses on the mental side of the game—something I know I could work on, too.

Volly told me she didn’t think mindset mattered much when she started.

Sound familiar? 😅

Instead of letting the pressure mess with her game, she learned to train her mind just like her strokes—with reps.

Here’s her mental toolkit:

I haven’t tried Zen breathing during matches. Maybe I should. So I asked her if it actually helps.

That’s gold. Because even though I don’t play many tournaments (I hate the pressure), I still have those moments on court where my mind wants to spiral. Like when I make one too many mistakes in a row (for me, that’s two 😅), suddenly it’s not just a mistake—it’s a pattern.

Anyone else do this?
Like, you’re fine messing up once, but mess up twice in a row and suddenly your inner critic’s in full meltdown mode?

This is now where I’m going to STOP, take one deep Zen breath, and—yep—shake it off! (💃 full Taylor Swift style).

Speaking of Taylor Swift… how many of you caught Life of a Showgirl last weekend at AMC? It was phenomenal! If you missed it, I wrote all about it on LinkedIn—go check it out here (if you’re a fellow Swiftie—or just like a smart marketing read). And if you’re not… what are you even doing with your life? 😉

So that’s my new goal:
When I mess up more than once in a row, breathe, reset, and shake it off.

Thanks, Volly, for the reminder that the mental game deserves as many reps as our dinks and drives. 💪

And if you want to keep up with Volly, you can follow her journey on Instagram here—

She’s one to watch.

This week I played with some of my favorite ladies—the kind of crew that refuses to let a ball die. We were digging everything. Every would-be put-away came right back.

And then there was Amy.

Amy’s a quiet assassin. Every time we scrambled to dig one more ball up, she’d fake the big overhead and just… drop it short. Soft. Sneaky. Right into the kitchen.

It was brilliant. We were so busy defending from deep that she flipped the script and beat us with touch instead of power.
And she got us every single time. 😅

I was like, “Man, that is such a powerful shot to have in your toolbelt.” I need to start drilling that—because my default is to keep firing put-away after put-away, and I don’t always have the best angles. (Add that to the training list.)

So when this video tutorial showed up in my feed, I was like, “Perfect timing.” It takes Amy’s trick shot one step further.

This guy sets up like he’s about to hammer an overhead, but at the last split second, he flattens his paddle face and lets the ball glide off it—no swing, no slice, just a gentle kiss into the kitchen. I’ve never seen anyone do it quite this way.

This is gonna be so fun to master—your opponents are bracing for a rocket, and instead they get… a marshmallow.

So yeah. I’ve decided: I need to learn this shot.
It’s basically a mic drop disguised as a dink. 🎯

🎥 Watch the tutorial here:

If you try the Snake or Amy’s drop-shot disguise, let me know which one earns you the most hate. 😏

And do me a solid—forward this to your favorite pickleball partner (or that friend who needs to see it) so we can keep growing the Five Dink Friday fam.

If this was forwarded to you, hit subscribe so you don’t miss the next drop. 🥒

Until next week—dink smarter, laugh louder, and for the love of the kitchen, make them earn every point. 💪

—Janelle

P.S. If you’re reading this between 8–10 a.m. MST, I’m probably mid-match, testing out that marshmallow drop shot. Wish me luck. 🥒