If you've had an opportunity to watch a tournament and saw stacking in action, you may have wondered why the players were moving around the court, standing together, or standing outside the court completely. If you're curious about stacking and how and when to incorporate it into your game, read on.

Stacking is used during tournament play to exploit a team's strength and minimize its weakness. The technique increases the number of times a person plays on the right (even) or left (odd) side of the court.

According to the rules, the non-serving partner or the receiver's partner may stand in any position (even off the court), as long as they stay on their side of the net. Therefore, both team members may stand inside their service court, and partner of the person receiving the serve may stand outside the court at the time of the serve. 

Some examples may help explain how and why stacking works, and why you might want to try it.

3) When receiving. The players in example 1 above are receiving the serve. Judy is the receiver, and John would normally be up at the non-volley-zone line in the left court. However, since John would rather be on the right, he stands outside the sideline, just behind the non-volley zone line on the right. ​After Judy returns the service, John moves in, and Judy rushes to the non-volley-zone line on the left.

Stacking isn't something you must do, but it can help your team play better and more consistently. You can choose to stack during only a portion of the game. Stacking can confuse your opponents and is sometimes good as a way to change things up. 

If you understand what stacking is and how your team (and your opponents) can use it, you'll have an advantage over those who don't.

​Happy stacking!

If you've played much pickleball, you know it's important to move up to the non-volley zone (NVZ) line as soon as it's safe to do so--that is, when you believe you'll have enough time to get to the NVZ line and not be caught in midcourt with a ball aimed at your feet or a drive headed to the backcourt that you won't be able to reach. 

In the example above, John served to Mary, who returned a deep shot down the middle. John is about to return the ball. As shown by the lines with arrowheads, if John hits a hard drive to Mary at the baseline, she must guard all 10 feet on her side of the court. If John tries to send a long drive past Sue at the  NVZ line, she must only guard 7-1/2 feet on the inside of her court. Why? Because John can't aim any wider on a drive shot and keep the ball in bounds. (We'll talk about what happens if John hits a soft shot later on.)

What this means is that you shouldn't necessarily stand in the center of your court at the non-volley zone line. Let's concentrate on Sue in the picture above. She's standing where she can reach the drive shots most easily: smack in the center of that 7-1/2 feet. (If Sue were right-handed instead of left and her backhand was weaker, she might move a little to the left.)

Now, what happens if John hits a drop shot — a softer shot that lands just over the net — to Sue and it lands way over on the right inside the NVZ?  It's not a problem, because the shot is much slower and Sue will have plenty of time to get to it from her position.

When you're playing a soft game — dinking back and forth across the net — the best position is shown by Sue, above. Because she's left-handed, she's standing slightly to the right of center. This allows her to move left to cover the center and also reach more easily with her backhand a diagonal dink toward the outside.