posted on June 20, 2004 20:07
Do you like to kill the ball with an overhead from 38 feet while jumping? If yes, then unless you are Sudsy Monchik my bet is you’re the type of player that loses matches unnecessarily due to
skips. Case in point, at the US Open last week a Virginia top Open player hit 8 skips giving his opponent points in one game and he only lost 15-11. Without the skips, it’s an 11-7 lead!!
The next time you get on the court for a pickup or league game, count your total number of skips in a game whether it be for a point or side out. Then you need to set goals to continually reduce this number. Years ago I was in the range of 5-8 skips per game but after a few months I got it down to 1-2 per game. It makes all the difference between winning and losing, regardless of your level of play.
The most common reason for skips is going “bottom board”. Yeah, these shots look great, but your odds of hitting them are actually quite small. To prove this, do a drop and hit drill by yourself from 25 feet and see how many shots out of 10 you can get to take a second bounce before the short line. Even top Open players will typically get only 3-4. Another 3-4 will skip. The rest will land after the short line. And this is drop and hit! Your odds obviously go down while on the run in a the heat of a match.
The best way to lower your number of skips is to attempt more passes and less kills. A passing shot which lands low on the front wall is a kill. A kill shot which lands low is a skip. A passing shot should be hit between 1-3 feet high on the front wall (depending on how hard you hit) and take its second bounce in the last 5 feet of the court. Go buy some colored sticky “dots” from CVS and have a friend mark where the ball hits on the front wall. Mark good and bad passes with different colors. After about 20 hits you will know how high on the front wall to hit for a good passing shot. Then you will know where to aim to minimize your skips and maximize your wins!