The lob is the most important shot in padel that casual players play worst.

You know the feeling. You’re pinned at the back glass, your opponents are closing in at the net, and you need to get the ball over their heads and into the back corner. You swing upward, hoping for the best. The ball either dies in the net or floats embarrassingly at head height – straight into a smash.

Here’s why it keeps happening, and one change that will fix it.

Why most club players lob badly

The instinct is wrong. When you’re under pressure and need the ball to go high, your brain says: swing up. So you drop the racket head below the ball and swipe skyward. The result is a shot with almost no control – you’re relying on a scooping motion to get the ball up, and it’s very hard to judge pace and direction off that.

The other common mistake is hitting too hard. Casual players think a lob needs pace. It doesn’t. A lob needs trajectory and placement. Trying to muscle it gives you the same result: too much pace, not enough arc, lands short or floats flat.

The fix: hit through the ball

Good lobbing technique feels counterintuitive. Instead of scooping under the ball, you make contact on the back of the ball – the side facing you – and follow through upward and forward. Think of it less like lifting the ball and more like guiding it along a high arc.

Here’s the drill:

  1. Stand roughly three metres from the back glass.
  2. Drop-feed yourself a ball at waist height.
  3. Contact the ball at waist height with your racket face open (angled back, not perpendicular to the floor).
  4. Follow through toward the opposite net post – not straight up.

If you do this correctly, the ball should rise naturally and land around the service line. You’re not muscling it; you’re angling it. The height comes from the open face and the follow-through direction, not from trying to swing upward.

Practice this, not a match

The reason this fix doesn’t stick is that players try it once in a point, it goes wrong under pressure, and they revert. Put ten minutes of deliberate lob practice at the start of your next session. No pressure, no opponents, just you, a wall, and a bucket of balls.

Once the contact point is in your muscle memory, the shot will be there when you need it.

The lob isn’t glamorous. But getting it right means your opponents never fully control the net against you – and in club padel, that changes everything. Once your lob is reliable, the next step is building the attacking shots that punish your opponents when they can’t handle it: the bandeja guide covers the main offensive overhead used to finish those situations. For the full picture on when and why to use the lob tactically (rather than just technically), the guide to the lob covers the three situations where it’s the percentage play.