A 4 minute read, written in November 2026
Playing against a left-hander in padel: what changes
A left-hander flips the two sides of the court: their forehand covers the middle from the left, and their smash travels to a corner your instincts are not tuned for. Here is what to adjust.
Their forehand is on the side you are not used to
A left-hander's forehand faces the opposite way to a right-hander's, so a left-hander on the court's left side, the side normally called the backhand or reves side, is actually playing their strongest shot from there. Assume it is their weak side, the habit against a right-handed pair, and you will feed balls straight into their best shot all match.
The first thing to establish, in the warm-up if you can, is which side their forehand actually covers. It sounds obvious once said out loud, and it is still the single most common mistake club players make against a left-hander, partly because the habit runs so deep it never gets questioned mid-match.
Do not trust which side of their own pair they are standing on either. Plenty of left-handers play the conventional left side out of habit, not because it suits their game, and a few minutes of watching which hand actually meets the ball tells you more than any assumption about where a left-hander is supposed to stand.
The middle ball becomes theirs, not yours
Against two right-handers, the player on the left takes most of the ball down the centre with their forehand. Put a left-hander on the left of their own pair and the same is true for them: their forehand also faces the middle, so a left-handed pair with the left-hander on the left has no backhand anywhere near the centre of the court at all.
This is even more pronounced in a mixed pairing, a left-hander and a right-hander, where the correct side for the left-hander is usually the right, not the left, so both forehands meet in the middle. If you see a left-hander stationed on the right of their pair, that pairing has almost certainly worked this out already, and the middle ball is going to be harder to win than it looks.
Where their smash and lob actually go
A right-hander's smash from the right side of the court naturally angles towards your left as you face them; a left-hander's smash from the same side of the court angles the other way, towards your right. If you have spent years reading right-handed smashes, your instinct will point you the wrong way the first few times, and it is worth consciously overriding it rather than trusting the reflex.
The same flip applies to their cross-court lob. Watch their body and swing path in the moment, not the side of the court they are standing on, because the side alone will mislead you against a left-hander in a way it never does against two right-handers.
Serving to find their backhand
To find a left-hander's backhand, aim at the side of the box furthest from where you would aim against a right-hander in the same position: if their forehand covers the left, serve wide to their right, and if they are playing the right side with their forehand there, serve into the middle, towards their body, rather than out wide to a forehand they can run around freely.
Your call
You serve from the right and every return, lob or drive, goes cross-court, over you or at your feet while you are still moving in. Your partner never touches a ball. What formation change addresses it?
Australian: partner starts on the server's half and takes the cross-court return in balance; the server crosses to cover the line.
The whole reasoning, at every level
Do this deliberately on the big points. A serve that would trouble a right-hander's backhand often lands straight on a left-hander's forehand instead, and club players serve on autopilot far more often than they realise, especially under pressure when there is no time to think the placement through fresh.
What to tell your partner before the point
Say out loud, before the point, which side of the left-hander's body their forehand is on. It takes one sentence and removes the biggest source of confusion in the rally that follows, especially on the middle ball and on any lob you are tracking under pressure.
Beyond that, nothing else about padel changes. The court is the same size, the rules are the same, and a left-hander under pressure makes the same errors anyone does. The adjustment is entirely about which side you expect things to come from, not about the shots themselves.
What to actually practise before you face one
If you know in advance you are facing a left-hander, spend ten minutes of the warm-up hitting to their forehand side deliberately, the side you would normally avoid against a right-hander. Getting your body used to aiming the wrong way, by old habit, is worth more than any amount of thinking about it during the match itself.
Ask a left-handed club member to hit you smashes and lobs from both sides if you can find one willing. The read only becomes automatic once your eyes have actually seen it happen a few dozen times, not once you have understood it in theory.
Left-handers are a minority on most club ladders, which is exactly why so few players get the repetition needed to make any of this instinctive. Treat the first few points against one as information gathering rather than a match you need to win immediately, and adjust properly once you have actually seen where the ball is coming from.