Watch a dink rally between two players who are still developing, and you will notice something. Almost every dink clears the net, and almost every dink is technically “in.” By the usual standard, both players are dinking well. And yet the balls keep floating just high enough that, sooner or later, one of them gets popped up and put away.
That is the gap this drill is built to close. Most players judge a dink by a single question: did it get over the net and land in the kitchen? That is a fine starting point, but it is a low bar. A dink can clear the net, land in the non-volley zone, and still be a bad dink if it bounces up high enough to attack. The non-volley zone, or kitchen, is the seven-foot area on each side of the net where you cannot hit the ball out of the air, which is exactly why a dink that bounces up gives your opponent a free chance to lift it and hit. The Dead Dink Challenge changes the standard you are playing to. Instead of scoring a dink for landing in, you only score it for staying low after the bounce, a dink your opponent genuinely cannot attack.
Why This Drill Matters
In a game, the difference between a dink that stays down and one that sits up decides who is on offense. When your dink dies low, your opponent has to lift it, and lifting it is what produces the pop-up you attack. When your dink bounces up, you have handed them the same gift. Everyone understands this in theory. The problem is that in normal practice, nobody keeps score of it, so players drift back toward the easier target of simply getting the ball over.
The Dead Dink Challenge fixes that by making the low bounce the only thing that counts. Once a dink has to stay under a certain height to earn a point, you stop being satisfied with balls that merely clear the net. You start paying attention to the whole shape of the dink, where it lands and how high it comes off the bounce, which is the exact quality that separates a dink that holds a rally from one that ends it in your opponent’s favor.
Setting Up the Drill
You need a partner and a net. That is the whole equipment list. A few markers help but are not essential.
- Both players start at the kitchen line, diagonally across from each other, dinking crosscourt. Crosscourt is the default because it gives you the most margin and the longest diagonal to work with.
- Decide on a maximum “attackable” height for the bounce. The simplest version is net height: a dink is dead if it would bounce up to roughly the top of the net or lower on your opponent’s side. If you have cones or a target, place them a few feet back from the net inside the kitchen to give yourself a landing zone to aim at, but the height of the bounce is what actually matters, not the exact landing spot.
- Agree that both players are honest referees of each other’s bounce height. This is a cooperative drill first; the scoring is there to sharpen attention, not to start an argument.
How the Drill Works
Start a cooperative crosscourt dink rally. Every dink that lands in the kitchen and stays at or below the agreed height after the bounce counts as a “dead dink” and earns a point for the player who hit it. A dink that lands in but bounces up above the line earns nothing. A dink that lands out or into the net earns nothing and ends the rally.
Play to a target number of dead dinks, ten is a good start, and count them out loud as you go so both players stay locked into the standard. Because you are only rewarding low dinks, you will quickly feel the pull to change how you hit. You cannot earn points by nudging every ball an inch over the net and hoping; those tend to bounce up. You have to contact the ball out in front, keep the paddle relaxed, and let the ball come off with a soft, downward shape that dies after it lands.
The rally itself does not have to end when someone hits a high one in the cooperative version. Keep the ball alive and keep dinking; you simply do not score the high ones. That way you get long stretches of continuous dinking while the scoreboard quietly tracks who is actually keeping the ball dead.
What to Focus On
The first thing to watch is your contact point. Dinks that pop up almost always come from contact that is late or too close to the body, which forces you to lift the paddle and adds height. Meeting the ball a little in front, with your paddle out where you can see it, is what lets you keep the ball flat and low.
The second thing is your grip pressure and swing length. A tight grip and a long swing send the ball out with too much life, and it carries up off the bounce. A soft grip and a short, controlled push let the ball land and stay down. You are trying to place the ball, not stroke it.
The third thing is where the ball is in its flight when it crosses the net. A dead dink has usually peaked before it reaches the net and is already on its way down as it crosses, so it lands and stays low. A dink that is still climbing as it crosses the net is the one that sits up on the other side.
The Hidden Lesson
The real value of this drill is that it retrains your definition of a good dink. Before you play it, “good” means “in.” After you play it, “good” means “unattackable,” and those are not the same thing. Once that standard lives in your head, it changes how you see dink rallies in real games. You stop feeling safe just because your dinks are landing in the kitchen, and you start noticing the ones that bounce up and invite trouble, both yours and your opponent’s.
That shift matters because dink rallies are patience contests, and the player who keeps the ball dead longest usually forces the other to lift first. When you know the difference between a dink that lands in and a dink that stays down, you stop losing kitchen exchanges to balls you thought were fine.
Common Mistakes
The most common mistake is chasing the low bounce by skimming the net so closely that you start dumping balls into the tape. Low and dead does not mean dangerously low. The goal is a ball that clears the net with a small margin and still dies after the bounce, not a ball that risks the net on every attempt. If you are hitting the net repeatedly, you have overcorrected.
Another mistake is speeding up to force the ball down. Some players decide the way to keep a dink low is to hit it harder and flatter, which turns the drill into a firefight and defeats the point. A dead dink is soft. The lowness comes from touch and contact point, not pace.
A third mistake is only judging your own dinks. Because you are scoring each other, it is easy to focus on your points and stop reading your partner’s bounce height honestly. The drill only works if both of you hold the standard, so keep your eyes on the bounce on both sides of the net.
Beginner Variation
Make the target height more forgiving and keep it purely cooperative. Set the “dead” line a little above net height and simply count how many dinks in a row both players can keep at or below it, with no rally-ending pressure. The goal is to feel the difference between a floating dink and a low one, and to build the soft contact that produces the low one. Aim for stretches of ten controlled dinks before worrying about scoring.
Intermediate Variation
Use the standard net-height line and play the full scoring version to ten dead dinks, still crosscourt. Add one requirement: if you pop a dink up above the line, you say nothing and simply lose the chance to score that ball, but you keep the rally going. This keeps you dinking through your mistakes rather than resetting, which is closer to how a real rally feels when you send up one bad ball and have to recover.
Advanced Variation
Now make it competitive and live. Play a real crosscourt dink rally where a dink that bounces up above the line is not just unscored, it is attackable: your partner is allowed to speed it up and try to win the point. This turns the drill into a genuine consequence game. Every dink you float now risks getting driven at you, exactly as it would in a match. To raise it further, allow both players to move the target around the kitchen, mixing crosscourt and straight-ahead dinks, so you have to keep the ball dead while also changing its direction. The purpose stays the same throughout: keep the ball unattackable. The stakes are just closer to a real point.
A Simple Drill Session
Spend the first five minutes dinking cooperatively at the beginner setting, just feeling for the low, dead bounce and finding your contact point out in front. Then move to the intermediate scoring version and play two races to ten dead dinks, switching which diagonal you dink on between them so both your forehand and backhand dink sides get worked.
Finish with five to eight minutes of the advanced live version, where a floated dink can actually be attacked. Keep track of how often you got popped, and notice what your bad dinks had in common. If they were all late off your backhand, that is your homework. If they crept up whenever you tried to change direction, that tells you where your touch still needs work.
Final Thought
A dink that lands in the kitchen is not automatically a good dink. The one that matters is the one that stays down, the dead dink your opponent cannot lift and cannot attack. Play to that standard often enough and it stops being something you think about and becomes the only kind of dink you are willing to accept. The scoreboard in this drill is really just a way of teaching your hands to feel the difference, so that in a real rally you keep the ball low without having to count at all.
