The Best Pickleball Grip

What’s the best pickleball grip? Like most things pickleball, the answer is it depends. If you come from another racket or paddle sport, chances are you’re going to bring that grip with you. But what if you don’t come from another sport and you need the pickleball basics, or what if that grip isn’t working in your pickleball game? What then? What’s the best pickleball grip?

In addition to coaching pickleball, I coach skiing and golf. You can tell a lot about a person’s aptitude for the sport by how well they do the basics, and pickleball is no exception. If you want to get better and get better quickly, focus on the basics—things like footwork and grip.

Some of you might be thinking, Hey CJ, what’s all the fuss about a grip? I mean, hold the darn paddle. How you hold the paddle is going to influence the trajectory and the speed of the ball.

I’m curious, which grip do you use? If you know the name for it, put it in the comments below or if you brought it from another racket or paddle sport, share that in the comments below.

When I’m teaching new players the pickleball basics or somebody who’s struggling with their grip, I prefer to teach the continental grip. I think it’s a universal grip for moving the paddle from your forehand side to your backhand side.

In tennis, most players use one grip on the forehand and a different grip on the backhand. Unlike tennis, the court’s much shorter, and there’s not a lot of time to change from one grip to the other.

When my hand is in the correct position, it feels like I’m using my fingers to control the paddle.

I often see players start with the continental grip, and then they allow it to slide into the palm of their hand.

When it’s not in your fingers, and it’s more in the palm of your hand, it becomes more difficult to control the paddle’s face, which in turn impacts the trajectory of the ball. You might just be experiencing more popups if you’ve got that paddle in the palm of your hand.

What about fingers on the paddle face?

You’ll often see a player grip the paddle with one or more than one finger on the paddle, and typically it’s the index finger or the second finger on the back of the paddle. I’m not a big advocate of that unless you bring that grip with you from ping pong, and that’s something that you’re used to. Now the advantage to it is it helps to stabilize the paddle movement by having the finger there.

The big disadvantage is when I turn, and I put this on the backhand side, those fingers take up a lot of room on the paddle face. The other thing that tends to happen is when I do that, I move the paddle into the palm of the hand, and as I said before, often when the paddle is in the palm of your hand, it’s challenging to control the trajectory of the ball.

As long as we’re focusing on grip. Let’s discuss another one of the pickleball basics, grip pressure.

When you have tension in your grip, it travels from your grip into your forearm all the way up into your arm and shoulder. It impacts your natural ability to swing the pickleball paddle. It is tough to hit soft shots with a lot of grip tension. Here’s something that may help. Let’s use a scale of one to 10.

One will be your lightest grip pressure, so hold the paddle with a grip that’s so light that if I walked by and pulled on your pickleball paddle, it would come right out of your hand.

Now let’s go to the other extreme 10. Hold that pickleball paddle so tight it almost makes your arm hurt. If I tried to pull it out of your hand, it wouldn’t budge.

Now that you know the two extremes hold the pickleball paddle one more time. This time find number five, something that’s right in between your number one lightest and your number 10 the hardest.

Most pickleball shots should be played with a grip pressure of somewhere between three and five.

Another strategy that I use to alleviate tension while I’m playing is to take the pickleball paddle out of my playing hand between points.

That allows my hand to loosen up, and when I retake my grip, I’m aware of my grip pressure and keeping it light.

One last consideration is the grip size of your paddle.

A general rule of thumb is there should be enough space to fit your index finger between your Palm and your fingertips. This grip is just about right.

This grip is too small. See how my thumb overlaps my fingers?

If you’re purchasing a new pickleball paddle and you’re not sure what size to get, use a ruler.

Your palm has three creases. Measure the distance from the tip of your ring finger down to the middle crease in your Palm, as shown in this photo. If you’re in between sizes, make sure you choose the smaller size. It’s much easier to build up a grip than it is to make a big grip smaller.

A couple of caveats about the pickleball grip.

If you decide to make a grip change, I run command applying the two PP’s, precision, and patience.

Improving your pickleball basics is going to help you become a better pickleball player.