This is for the club player who already owns the shots. You can hit a bandeja, get a serve into the box, and lift a lob back over your head under real pressure. What is missing is not technique, it is the half-second before the shot: which one to choose, and where to send it. That half-second decides more matches than an extra ten kilometres an hour on the smash ever will, and it is the one part of the game a normal coaching session rarely has time to stop and examine, because a rally goes past too fast to freeze it and talk.

Each of the ten chapters that follow takes one recurring situation, from the first ball of the point to the last one of the set, and lays out the decision inside it: the rules you can carry onto court, the tree you can run through while the ball is still in the air, and the positions from the Lab's own puzzle bank that put you through it for real. Work through a chapter, then open the positions it lists and play them cold, then read the notes and see what you missed. Come back to the same chapter in a month; the answers do not change, but you will notice you are seeing the situation half a shot earlier each time.

Read the ten chapters in order once, because the order matters: the serve sets up the first volley, the first volley sets up the net, and everything from the back glass exists because someone lost the net in the first place. After that, use it as a reference. Lost the last three points from the back? Open the chapter on the back glass. Getting lobbed every time you hold the net? Open the net chapter and the overheads chapter together.

One idea runs through the whole book. Padel is not a power sport, it is a positioning sport played by two pairs who are constantly trying to put the other pair in a spot with no good answer. Every rule, every branch of every tree, every drill, is really the same question asked from a different angle: given where the four of you are standing and where the ball is going, what does the point need from you right now, not what shot do you feel like playing. Decide well on that question often enough and the score takes care of itself.

Chapter 1

The serve and the first volley

8 rules5 decisions10 positionsa drill

Your serves keep landing long. What is the fix?

The call: Contact too high and the face too flat

At a glance

Serve deep and wide toward the side glass; the low skid, not the pace, is what makes it hard.
Move on your own toss: two or three steps before they even swing.
Split step the instant they make contact, wherever you have got to.

The long read

The serve in padel is not a weapon, it is an invitation. You cannot ace anyone: the box is close, the ball must be struck at or below the waist, and a good returner will get a racket on almost everything you send them. So the serve has one real job, to produce a return you can attack and to buy you the two or three seconds you need to get from the service line to the net. Club players treat it as the shot that should win the point outright, swing hard and flat at the back corner, then stand at the baseline admiring it instead of moving. The return comes back low and awkward, and now they are volleying from six metres back with nowhere to put the ball.

What works is slower and less dramatic. A sliced serve, deep and wide toward the side glass, skids low off the surface and drags the returner off their spot or into the wall. It rarely produces a winner and it is not meant to. It produces a returner who is stretching, or one who has to lob because they cannot drive from where they are standing. The moment you toss the ball you are already moving: two or three steps toward the net, a split step exactly as they make contact, then the first volley. That sequence, serve, move, split, volley, is the most repeated pattern in the sport and the one club players skip the middle of. They serve, then watch, then sprint. By the time they arrive the ball has already gone past them, or they are still travelling when they have to hit it.

The first volley itself is a decision, not a swing. A low return, below the height of the net, cannot be hit down; try, and it goes into the net or flies long. It goes deep instead, to the feet or the back corner, a holding shot that keeps the returner pinned while you finish arriving. A high return, above the net, is the one you attack, down and to a target, because you will not get many balls sitting up like that. Mixing these up, punching a low ball down or floating a high one long, is where a promising point dies in the first three shots.

In the professional game, the serving pair keeps the net after the serve in about 66% of rallies for men and about 51% for women (Escudero-Tena et al. 2023). This whole chapter is really about protecting that number rather than chasing a winner off the serve itself: get the depth and the movement right, and the net stays yours far more often than not.

The decision tree, drawn

When: the return sits above the net
Play: volley it down, to the feet of the deeper opponent or the open gap

a rising ball is the one chance to attack, and lifting it away is the most common error at the net.

When: the return arrives below the net, low and skidding
Play: volley it deep to a back corner and keep coming forward

you cannot generate pace or angle from below the tape, so use the ball to hold them, not to finish them.

When: the returner is still stretching for a wide serve
Play: serve the next one into the body, at the hip

a returner beaten wide once will cheat wide again, and the body serve takes the swing away altogether.

When: you are still moving forward when they strike the return
Play: shorten the run to two firm steps, then plant and split

a first volley hit while still travelling is hit off balance and goes long far more often than it should.

When: the first serve misses
Play: repeat the same motion and spin on the second, at a safer target

a second serve that goes flat and slow instead of short and sliced is the easiest ball a returner sees all match.

The positions

✓the calliwhy✕the wrong calls

Your serves keep landing long. What is the fix?

The call: Contact too high and the face too flat
Why: A high contact with a flat face drives the ball deep. Lower contact, more slice, and the ball skids into the box instead of past it.
Not: You are hitting too softly and the ball floats
Not: You are standing too far back

Long serves nearly always come from contact that is too high with too flat a face; this position isolates that one fix before anything else about the serve.

Where should a padel serve land?

The call: Deep and wide, into the glass
Why: Deep and wide is the serve that produces weak returns. It drags the returner out or into the glass and gives you time to reach the net.
Not: Down the middle, as hard as the rules allow
Not: Short, just over the net

The starting rule for the chapter: deep and wide into the glass, not power down the middle.

You have served. Where do you go now?

The call: Follow the serve to the net, straight away
Why: Serve and go. Your partner is already there; you join them and the pair starts the point in the attacking position.
Not: Go to the net only if the serve was good
Not: Stay back and see what the return is

Confirms the habit club players skip, serve and go, rather than serve and watch.

Your partner is serving. Where do you stand?

The call: At the net on the other half, two to three metres back
Why: The partner is already at the net position on the other side, ready for the return, before the serve is even hit.
Not: Next to the server, at the back
Not: Against the net, to cut off the return

Shows the shape before the ball is even struck: the partner is already at the net, waiting for you to arrive.

You have served and the return comes back low. Where does the first volley go?

The call: Deep, to the feet or the back corner
Why: A low first volley cannot be hit down, so it goes deep to keep them back while you finish coming in.
Not: A short angle to end the point early
Not: Hard through the middle

Works the low-return case from the decision tree through on a real scene.

A volley arrives above the net. A volley arrives below it. Same shot?

The call: High: down and finish. Low: deep and wait
Why: Above the net, attack. Below the net, neutralise. The height of the ball chooses the shot.
Not: High: block softly. Low: hit hard
Not: Same shot: a volley is a volley at any height

States the rule that splits the chapter in two: attack above the net, hold below it.

First serve missed. What does the second serve look like?

The call: Same swing, safer target, still with slice
Why: Keep the motion and the spin, give yourself margin. A slower, flatter second serve is easier to attack than a shorter first serve.
Not: Exactly the same as the first
Not: Much slower and higher, to make sure it lands

Corrects the instinct to bail out on the second serve; the fix is a safer target, not a safer swing.

Flat serve or sliced serve?

The call: Sliced. It stays low and skids
Why: Slice keeps the bounce low and awkward, and the curve takes the ball toward the side glass. Flat serves bounce up into a comfortable hitting zone.
Not: It makes no difference
Not: Flat: more pace gives them less time

Explains why slice beats a flat serve for a club player: a low, skidding bounce is awkward regardless of the pace behind it.

The returner is handling your wide serve. What is the alternative?

The call: The body serve: into the hip, where they cannot swing
Why: A returner who steps wide early leaves the body open. The serve into the hip cramps the return and produces a mishit or a short ball.
Not: Serve harder, so they cannot step wide in time
Not: Serve short, to catch them stepping wide

The follow-up once the wide serve stops working, aimed at the hip instead of the wide corner.

Serve, move, split, volley. Where does it go wrong most often?

The call: Still running when the return is hit
Why: Running through the return means the first volley is hit off balance. Two or three steps, then land and split as they make contact.
Not: Serving too hard and losing the rhythm
Not: Not going to the net at all

Names the exact moment the pattern breaks, arriving still on the move, and the fix of two or three steps then a split step.

The drill

Two players, one serving box. The server hits ten serves, slice only, alternating deep-wide and body targets, and must reach the net (about two to three metres back) inside four steps every time. The returner's only job is to get the ball back low, no winners attempted, so the server has to make the first-volley decision for real: down on anything above the net, deep on anything below it. Swap after ten serves. Score it simply: a point for a serve that pulls the returner off balance, a point for a first volley that lands past the service line, and a point lost for any volley hit while the server is still moving forward. Run it to twenty points each. With four players, add a partner at the net from the start on each side so the server's partner has to react to the return too, not just watch; that is closer to the real shape of the point and it punishes a server who forgets to move.

Every rule

Serve deep and wide toward the side glass; the low skid, not the pace, is what makes it hard.
Move on your own toss: two or three steps before they even swing.
Split step the instant they make contact, wherever you have got to.
A return below net height goes deep, never down.
A return above net height goes down, to a gap or a foot.
Keep the same swing on the second serve; only the target gets safer.
If they are handling the wide serve, go to the body next, the hip they cannot swing from.
The server's partner starts at the net already; the server is the one catching up.

You can hit every shot. So why do you lose the easy points?

Pick your problem

The 10-fix card

The Level-Up Pack

Chapter one, free

The serve and the first volley

The decision tree, drawn

The positions

The drill

Every rule