Golf has an old adage about grip pressure: Hold the bird, but don’t kill it. This wisdom applies in pickleball as well. If you have a death grip on your paddle and appear ready to hammer a nail into a wall, your grip is too tight. The ball will zing wildly off your paddle, perhaps scaring a passing flock of geese that was just trying to get safely from Canada to Mexico. If you maintain a more relaxed grip pressure, you can absorb energy from the ball when needed, and also be able to hit harder because of the increased wrist flexibility that will naturally result. This idea may seem counterintuitive, but try it and you’ll see that when you relax your grip, you can add a little more juice (also known as zip) to your shots.

Holding your paddle too tightly is one of the primary causes of lateral epicondylitis, a.k.a. tennis elbow, which is a common injury among players. Try to get a "hold" on proper grip pressure early on in your pickleball career to avoid this painful — and very difficult to get over — condition.

Typically, as players move forward in the court toward the kitchen line, they get excited and tense and their grip pressure gets tighter and tighter. They are literally "white knuckling" the paddle. This is the time when you need to learn to relax the most. Your goal is to absorb power when blocking hard shots at the net, as well as to attack any high balls with accuracy and authority.

You can use a little trick to get a feel for a softer grip pressure. Hold your paddle as you normally do. Then release your pinky finger from the paddle as though you are enjoying a lovely cup of tea. Have your brain take note of how that grip pressure feels. It should feel kind of medium loose-ish (the technical term). Now, reapply your pinky so that it’s gently resting on the paddle. Try to remember what that level of pressure felt like, and keep it as best you can throughout the game. Do not play with your "having tea" grip; just make note of that level of pressure on the grip. Is anyone else craving scones now?

Excerpted from Pickleball For Dummies – available now wherever books are sold.