Padel players coming from a tennis background often struggle when playing the lob in padel. They either hit their lob too long and it goes out or their lob is too short leaving a ball that can be punished by their opponents. Luckily there are a couple of simple hacks that will help you to play lobs that are consistently good.
The simple hacks that can improve your lob in padel:
- Try to lob when you have an easy ball
- Make sure that the holes on your racket contact the underside of the ball
Let’s study these in greater detail so that you can get more consistent accuracy with your lobs.
Try To Lob When You Have An Easy Ball
If you are making the transition to padel from tennis then this will be the first mental shift that you need to make regarding the lob. Here I am referring to your objective for playing the lob.
Back in my tennis playing days, the only time that I would attempt to use a lob would be when my opponent has completely played me out of position. My objective with the high lob was to gain me the extra seconds of time I needed to get myself back into a better position to continue the point.
These types of lobs seldom work in padel as the court is smaller and needs more accuracy in the shots you play. The best way to get that accuracy when playing a lob is to play your lob off an easy ball rather than trying something when you are at full stretch and have no control over the shot.
Make Sure That The Holes On Your Racket Contact The Underside Of The Ball
This is another aspect of the lob that is almost completely different from the tennis lob.
With the tennis lob, you create the height by hitting up, across the back of the ball. This puts the topspin on the ball to bring the ball down and kick away after the bounce. All these factors that make the tennis style lob effective in tennis make it a bad idea in padel.
That same topspin lob will either, carry too far and be out, or drop short and get punished by your opponents. The second problem with a topspin lob is that once it connects the back wall it will bounce back relatively far into the court, making it far easier to return with power.
What you will want to do, especially if you are new to padel, is to make sure that the holes of your racket-face contact the underside of the ball.
This will give you more control over how high and where your ball goes. It will also land softer and rebound less off the back wall.
As you gain confidence with your lob in padel you will be able to start adding slice spin and reduce the rebound off the back wall to nearly nothing.