These mistakes are keeping you stuck!

Tanner lists three amateur patterns that stall improvement: swapping grips during a hands battle (then being wrong for the next dink), taking the third-shot drop while the bounce is still rising (hardest to control), and a fully backhand-biased ready position that telegraphs a speed-up hole.

Keep your dink grip in the hands fight, wait until the bounce declines before the drop, and point the paddle tip more toward the middle so you aren’t advertising a weak side.

• Hold one grip through hands battles (same as your dink grip)
• On third-shot drops, wait for the ball to start falling
• Ready position: tip toward middle, not fully BH