If you’re looking for the best pickleball drills and practice games to improve your skills, you don’t need to rely on boring repetition. Pickleball mini-games combine strategy, fitness, and fun while sharpening essential skills such as consistency, decision-making, and mental toughness.

These three mini-games are fast, easy to pick up, and guaranteed to make practice way more fun.

1. Dingles

If you are a tennis player, especially one who played at the high school or collegiate level, you most likely know this drill. Dingles is exactly what it sounds like: it’s a combination of singles and doubles.

How to Play Dingles

There are many variations of this game, but I like to play it with all four players at the kitchen. Each point starts with two balls. You enter a dink rally with your opponent, either cross-court or down the line, where the goal is to outlast and beat them in that exchange. At the same time, your teammate is locked in their own dink rally with the other opponent.

Once a rally is won, the person who won the singles rally screams out “Dingles,” and the remaining ball in play is now live and the point turns into a full-court doubles point. You and your partner only log a point on the scoreboard if you win both the singles and doubles rallies.

Why Dingles Improves Your Game

Dingles is a fantastic drill because it can be molded to practice any skill. The dink rallies can go down the line or cross-court, or you can pull one team back to the transition zone to practice resets.

It also forces all four players to pay attention to their court surroundings and stay focused, as the singles rally could end at any time and immediately switch to the full-court doubles point. Dingles is arguably my favorite drill disguised as a game, mostly because it is quick-moving and extremely fun.

2. Tug-of-War

This is as much a fitness drill as it is a pickleball drill. Players start at five points, with one side racing to 0 and the other to 10, meaning you can only win by stringing points together.

How to Play Tug-of-War

In Tug-of-War, both players (or teams) start at five points. One of you is playing towards 0, the other upward toward 10. Each point you win moves your score in your direction. The only way to win the game is to string multiple points together in a row.

Tug-of-War can be played as either singles or doubles, and the number one skill it works on is focus and locking in for every single point and shot. There is no room to take even one point off, as it could mean the difference in winning or losing the game.

If you are playing this game as singles, it immediately serves as a fitness drill, as the point system promotes long, grinding games. In doubles, it helps hone shot selection and decision-making. Tug-of-War makes you and your partner have to lock in and focus on each point, which should result in you making smarter decisions.

Why Tug-of-War Improves Your Game

I like to play Tug-of-War towards the end of my practice session when I am tired, as that is often when my decision-making starts to slip and I start to lose focus. It's a great game/drill to simulate late-game situations (like 9-9 in the deciding game), where mental toughness and focus are essential to victory.

3. The Endless Reset Game

I started playing this game with Brooke Buckner, Kate Fahey, and James Delgado in Charlotte about a year ago. It is the easiest game in the world to play but might be the most mentally challenging.

How to Play The Endless Reset Game

One player (or team) is at the kitchen, and the other player or team is in the transition zone and is unable to move forward. The whole point of the game is to try to win points by just resetting the ball back over and over and hope the team at the kitchen line misses a put away or volley.

Since it is so difficult to score by just resetting the ball, we usually play this game for a set amount of time, or we will play until the resetting team gets two or three points. If played correctly, this game is extremely mentally draining, as the team trying to put the ball away has to balance patience with power. The resetting team is forced to lock in and develop a brick wall mentality to score even a single point.

Amateurs do not practice their resets from the transition zone enough, and this drill is perfect to develop a reliable, unattackable reset. Also, on the other side, I often see amateurs miss put-aways by going for too much.

Why Endless Reset Improves Your Game

This game is also perfect for developing the patience and spin needed to win a point against a higher-level player who can reset from the transition zone. The Endless Reset Game is also most effectively played at the end of a practice or drilling session, since it is such a mental grind.