The Ben Johns Serve and Backhand Slice (7.294 DUPR) | Full Analysis & Breakdown

I’ve always been fascinated by Ben Johns, world’s #1 player. He’s always so smooth, efficient, and consistent. His shots aren’t super flashy, but his shots are always VERY effective.

Today, I wanted to analyze and break down his famous Serves and Backhand slice drop.

Ben Johns is also a phenomenal teacher and has his own youtube channel. Please check him out! https://www.youtube.com/@BenJohns_pb

The backhand drill is a custom one I made on the Titan. Here is the QR code if you’d like to try it yourself: https://www.edjupickleball.com/eds-custom-titan-drills

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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:54 Ben’s Serve
5:00 Backhand Slice Drop
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[Music] so ever since I started getting into pickle ball I’ve always been really obsessed with Ben John’s and I know he’s like the number one player and he’s amazing and everything but there’s something about just how nonchalant and how casual he is like his shots aren’t like super flashy or they’re not like super spectacular looking but they’re always getting the results and they’re super efficient so this video I wanted to break down two things one analyze in slowmo and try to imitate how he serves and the other thing I wanted to try and break down is how he hits his backhand slice drop from the Baseline they’re always very spinny low and they always get him up to the kitchen like 95% of the time when he hits this slice drop he’s up at the kitchen so let’s start off with the serve first I’ve been practicing this a lot and I’ll put a little slow-mo overlay right here for you guys to see how he serves and I’m going to try to break it down so when he serves he’s pretty close to this kitchen line right here and I first noticed like the angle of his feet so in the videos that I watch him serve his feet are angled like this and he’s using a pretty close stance and he always does this I even try to copy copy his uh ritual he always does this his body weight is on his left left foot and he always bounces es the ball a few times and then he does like this kind of rock back where he kind of pulls his weight back his weight back on his back foot he goes like here and then his feet is actually pretty high it’s a little bit like borderline on leag legality but his feet is like right here he’s pulling back 5 [Applause] 10 he’s pulling back and he serves very linearly he doesn’t really do a lot of this like big kind of top spinning I’m sure he gets a lot of Top Spin but his serves right here feet is angled kind of like 45° this way back foot here close stance right here and then he goes back and he kind of just swipes forward not using a lot of like generation this way so on camera it doesn’t look like he’s doing a lot like it doesn’t look like he’s putting a lot into his serves but he’s always getting his serves deep so I’m going to try a few more here and so he just kind of pushes that forward with all his weight he does get some generation with his back foot there but it’s not like a it’s not a jerky movement or anything I think he really just prioritizes depth over anything else depth and pace is what he really goes for so here and his balls his serves aren’t super uh Ary like it’s not really loopy it’s very very straight fast and deep so let me try to get a few more here all right here we go so yeah it’s really nothing too flashy I almost want to try to I almost want to over complicate it and be like oh no he’s like doing some special technique but it really is just him taking a couple of bounces getting in the right mental state rocking back here and he’s he’s definitely using a lot of his body way behind it and he kind of swings it almost like a golf club and he just swings forward and gets it really really deep let’s try a few more so for the next part of the video I’m going to have the ball machine feed me some balls to my backhand side here and I wanted to kind of attempt no attempt I’m going to try to attempt to analyze and emulate Ben’s backhand slice drop I it’s just so pretty to watch and it’s so consistent I think his backhand slice drop is just unparalleled okay let’s start this up and see how we do here so one thing that I noticed that Ben does a lot is he does do crosscourt drops but he also does down the line drops and when he does it he definitely kind of like he like definitely gets pretty low and he’s almost like so confident that his drops are good that he comes all the way up I’ll try to emulate what he does he goes here and he kind of goes here and he’s already up here so it’s not like a super aggressive drop it’s a slice drop but he’s he’s just up here and he gets up here and then he’ll be ready for that next attack so let’s try to get a few more repetitions here and I set that camera angle over there and I’ll try to Overlay it to see how you can see how mine is different than Ben’s and we could kind of analyze together to see what I can work on to make it look more like Ben’s backhand slice drop that his movement just kind of gets to carry them into his the kitchen like that and the opponents feel a lot of pressure like him and Colin they just get up they just get up to the net very often but perhaps what I should do here is maybe instead of moving forward I should try to get a few more repetitions of this first before I incorporate some movement so here slice drop there I’m trying to get really I need to uh really think about opening up my paddle face and finding the right angle so not too open to the point where it just gets launched up like that like that’s not what we want but we also don’t want too closed where if I go for a slice it just goes into the net we don’t want that either so it’s somewhere in between here and here like a 45° angle so again not here and not here but somewhere in between like something like that and uh he’s not being very wristy with it like he’s very just like shoulderyoutube [Music] that was a pretty good one that felt pretty good but he really keeps his wrist locked in and very consistent that’s why I think he’s very consistent is because right here it’s all locked in for him and he just kind of follows through with his shoulders and body movement which is very very consistent but if we incorporate a lot of ristin to this things get very dicey so just like that see that one I think I would like for it to be a little bit lower so I need to close my paddle angle just to touch that one felt a little bit better so 40 40° angle perhaps and he’s usually not um he’s not in an open stance so he’s not like hitting straight on this way but he’s usually like a little bit diagonal to the ball like here and then he gets to just walk up and boom he gets to play his kitchen game and do some of his backand rolls which are so pretty as well H I wish I was Ben all right here we go so I’ll hit a few more here that was a nice one yeah as I’m hitting these it’s very important I’m noticing that my successful hits are definitely the ones where my wrist is not um not wavering like my successful hits are the ones where my wrist is fir and I found the correct paddle angle so this is something that I’ll probably uh be doing I’ll probably just come out here hit a couple 100 Balls and just memorize this angle cuz I think if I could memorize this angle of my paddle I won’t even have to think anymore and I’m not going to be like nervous anymore but I’m just like wait I’ve seen this ball 100 times I know this paddle angle so I’m just going to I’m just going to lock it in and perform and execute just like that just like that but I hope uh this video was uh helpful for you guys if you guys like this type of like analysis on uh some Pro shots uh I know I’m not a pro but um hopefully I can help just shed some light on what Pros are doing and how we can try to emulate what they’re doing really good at as always guys thanks so much for watching and I’ll catch you guys on the next one oh [Music]