What Is an Erne in Pickleball? The Legal Kitchen Bypass

An erne is an advanced shot where you volley a ball right at the net while keeping your feet entirely outside the kitchen — either by jumping over the corner of the non-volley zone or by running around it — and landing in the narrow in-bounds strip beside the kitchen. Because you never touch the non-volley zone during the volley, it is perfectly legal, and it lets you attack a ball at the net that would otherwise be an untouchable dink. It is named after Erne Perry, the player who popularized it.

It looks like cheating the first time you see it — someone appears to leap into the forbidden zone and smack a volley. They do not. The whole trick is landing beside the kitchen, not in it.

Why the erne is legal

The non-volley zone rule says only one thing: you cannot volley while touching the kitchen or its line. It says nothing about volleying at the net from somewhere else.

There is a small patch of legal, in-bounds court right beside the kitchen, between the zone and the sideline. If you can get your feet there — outside the kitchen but still hard against the net — you can legally volley a ball out of the air from a spot most opponents assume is off-limits. The erne exploits exactly that gap in most players’ mental map of the court. Your feet stay out of the zone the entire time; the shot is clean.

How to hit an erne

There are two routes into the position:

1. Read the dink early. The erne works against a predictable dink aimed wide, toward your sideline. You have to see it coming.
2. Choose your path. Either jump — taking off from outside the kitchen, over the corner of the zone, and landing beside it near the sideline — or run around the back edge of the kitchen and plant beside it.
3. Land outside the kitchen, in bounds. Your feet must come down in that strip beside the zone, never touching the kitchen or its line, and inside the sideline.
4. Volley it down and away. From that net-height position you can hit sharply into the open court, usually cross-court into the space your movement just left open on the other side.
5. Recover fast. An erne commits you to one side of the net. If it does not win the point outright, you are exposed, so it has to count.

Timing is everything. Move too early and a smart opponent redirects the dink to the middle you just abandoned; move too late and you clip the kitchen for a fault.

The erne vs the ATP

The erne is often mentioned alongside the ATP, and they get confused because both are legal shots that seem to break a rule. They are different.

	Erne	ATP (around the post)
What it is	Volley at the net with feet outside the kitchen	Shot hit around the outside of the net post
Goes over or around	Over the net, from beside the kitchen	Around the post, can be below net height
Set up by	A wide dink you can attack at the net	A sharp, wide-angled ball pulling you off court
Legal?	Yes, if you never touch the kitchen	Yes, and there is no minimum height

The ATP has no height requirement at all — because it passes around the post rather than over the net, it can travel well below net level and still be good, which surprises people who assume every shot must clear the net.

Should you learn it?

Not yet, for most players. The erne is a high-risk, high-reward poach that rewards precise footwork and punishes a split-second mistake with either a kitchen fault or a wide-open court. It sits near the top of the skill ladder, above the shots that actually win most rec games.

Build the foundation first — a reliable dink and a consistent third-shot drop will raise your level far more than a flashy erne ever will. Learn to defend the erne (keep your dinks to the middle and at the feet) before you try to hit one, and add it once your kitchen-line game is genuinely solid.