Foot Not Loose Part II

 In the last post I mentioned not moving your feet in various scenarios.  I've applied what I wrote and I want to explain when and how and why a bit more, as I found that not moving your feet is incredibly strong PB.

Let me sum up the last post quickly.  In various scenarios you want to be stopped with a side split step and prepared to hit balls that you can reach.  You might have to stretch and you will not be able to return a perfect shot hit out of your reach.  Finally, you want to have your paddle ready for the expected shot.

When is this useful?  This scenario arises most often when your side has served and you have returned the third shot.  At this moment in the play, you want to start working your way to the kitchenline.  And to do that, you want to start moving into the court.

There is a view that the transition area, or service area, or no man's land is a place to be avoided.  And the play there is difficult and good players don't play from there.  I disagree.  Even in pro level matches a lot of play happens there.  And as I was experimenting with this "stop and get ready" technique, I was surprised how often I used it.

The real key to this is to stop early enough to be in balance with a wide stance and your paddle ready.  The paddle ready part is important and it's not a single position.

The further from the kitchen you are, the lower you want your paddle.  Let me explain in detail about play near the baseline and that explanation is merely modified as you move towards the net.  

We have hit the third shot and the opponents return it from the kitchenline, as they should and as you should have expected.  You want to still be behind the baseline unless the third shot was outstanding.

If the third shot was good, then you should have followed it a bit into the court.  And stopped.  And have your paddle ready.  

Where should the paddle be?  Well, where is the worst case shot?  At your feet.  So hold your paddle very low and out in front of you a bit and be ready to hit a shot on the forehand or backhand.  Pro tip: if the ball is a lot higher than your paddle position, it's going out, so you want to be ready to duck.  Use your paddle position as a way to measure possible out balls.  Do not reward bangers who can't keep the ball in.  Punish them, it's fun and they deserve it.

If you stopped early and got ready, then shots will be surprisingly easy to return.  You might not be able to smack the ball back, but hitting a drop shot or low shot will be easily possible.  If you hit that shot well, you'll have the time to move closer to the kitchen.  But maybe not, so if you don't hit a good shot, stay stationary and ready to hit the next ball.

So you move towards kitchen when you can, and adjust your default paddle position higher as you advance.  Keep using the paddle height as a measuring device for out balls.

(Note that this is classical pickleball and the shots you are trying to hit, if successful, will allow your side to advance towards the kitchen, you are not trying to win a point from here.  Win points at the kitchen, not from mid court.)

When you reach the kitchen, your paddle should be above net height.  And you may be entering into a dinking point, where you will need to move your feet as the angles are sharper.  There is time for that as the ball is not moving as fast.  Pro tip: watch the face of the opponent's paddle as they hit a dink, as that will show you the direction of the ball before it's hit.

The stop and get ready technique is not difficult.  And hitting a ball when not moving is really easy.  But what is difficult is stopping early enough.  You can't worry about being in "no man's land."  And you can't worry about missing balls that paint the line.  You are happy to trade those shots for the ability to get all the others back. 

When do you start stopping?  I saw one pro in a video state, "Start stopping when your shots reaches the net."  So, as the opponents are reacting to your shot.  And I would suggest, stop earlier rather than later.  This is opponent dependent too.  The harder the shots come back, the earlier you want to stop.  

As I mentioned, this came up a lot as I played and it worked.  This is probably the most useful and powerful technique I've written about.   So give it a try!

Stop Moving Your Feet

 There are four distinct hitting forms in PB.

We have the serve, the return, stuff at the net, and then the shots in midcourt.

The serve can be as much foot movement as works for you.  But from zero to a lot, it's not critical to serving well.  

The return might require some foot movement, but usually the ball is hit from close to the setup position.  There are a couple of exceptions, one being a wide serve and the other the short serve.  Yes, you want to some running before and certainly after a service return (get to the net...).

Dink rallies require a lot of foot movement and you want to be very active and moving side to side as the ball shifts position.  This is the most active case for movement.

Let's talk net play.  If the opponents are not at the net, but you are, there is little foot movement required as long as you setup properly for the expected return.  Setting up properly means, middle coverage for sure, and if the ball is close to a sideline, then both net players should shift a bit towards that sideline.

We are down to one case and I wanted to talk about this, as it's common and not obvious.  This is the scenario where you are not at the net, and the opponents are.  This could be a third/fifth/etc., shot situation, or one where you get pushed off the kitchenline or where you are going to defend a popup or bad lob.

There are a couple of things that true of this case.  The ball is likely to be hit close to your feet -- if it's above your waist, it's probably going out.  

Secondly, this shot is not likely to be hit with a sharp angle, as it's unlikely to be hit softly -- wide hard shots go out.  Most of the action is going to be middle court, but usually with a touch of angle.  And the angle comes into it as the defenders are blocking a large portion of court and usually one defender is deeper than the other.  The ball will usually go to the deeper player.

The new thought I want to share is that the pros usually will not have to move their feet to return these shots.  They setup in the middle of the "open" area where they expect the shot, they use a wide stance for balance and to lower their bodies, and they will also lower their paddles.  

Almost all the shots will be reachable with some stretching to the side. 

The difficult shots are the ones that come straight at you.  To handle these you want to be relaxed and you need the paddle extended in front of you.  The ball is usually coming at a good pace and there is not need to try and hit it back hard.  Think blocking and just solid paddle ball contact.  You are not trying to win the point, but to eventually, hit a shot that will be low enough or soft enough to allow you to return to the kitchenline.

What you really don't want to be doing, is standing up tall, have a raised paddle, have panic in your eyes.  Get low, be ready, and don't try for miracles.

One more scenario.  You and partner are at the net and you are in the middle of a dinking rally.  Your partner hits a bad lob and the next shot will be hit hard and at your feet.  You have time to take a step back, split step and get your paddle down.  Don't try to retreat much more than that as it's better to be ready and low than moving to get to a better position.

If you watch pros, particularly the ladies' doubles, you will see a lot of these defensive shots.  Some are from the baseline and many from the transition area.  

You are not going to get a lot of these back, but setting up properly and being ready gives you a fighting chance.  

When Everyone Dinks (And no one lobs...)

 Last week on the Thursday, I wound up in four or five games where the play was almost all dinks.  (We excluded the lobbers, of course.)

So it was serve, return, third -- sometimes a drive, usually a drop, but then the points became dinking battles.  And the point usually stayed that way until a ball was netted or a sideline missed.  Did I say there were no lobs?  Yeah, well that was true.

There were the occasional speedup, but they didn't work well and were soon discarded for increased consistency with the dinking.  The blocking abilities of speed ups were being flagrantly displayed!  What speedups there were, were reset and dinking resumed.

These were very different games from the usual at the Livermore parks.  Usually there is some dinking, but it's quite common that there is none and it's all about hitting the ball hard and frequently out.

The rallies were quite long, I would estimate some over twenty shots.  Careful play and lots of shuffling back and forth as the ball moved around the kitchen area.

I really enjoyed the points.  However I realized that my usual backhand speed ups were not consistent enough, I was being too aggressive in hitting them.  Once I realized that, I put effort into relaxed dinking and never hit another speed up.  This worked and what little tension I had during the rallies dropped to nothing.  I highly recommend it!

What was really amusing was that after a twenty point rally, no one on the court could remember who had served or even which side had served.  This occurred a couple of times.  It was amusing when this happened.  We kind of worked out the score, maybe, and then just decided who was going to serve next and kept going.  But lots of stunned looks while we were trying to remember.  You might think, ok, you are old folks, this is normal.  Well, there was at least one of us under 50, so I think it's the game and not the minds.  

---- Bonus!

We had the last beginner class today.  I wanted to suggest what folks ought to do after they take the class.  If you are pretty good hitting the ball, then just go and play and build your skills -- note that the class didn't teach you everything!  But there is the occasional student, has trouble getting the paddle on the ball.  I think the best way forward for them is to find a friend and just hit the ball back and forth until you learn the needed eye hand coordination.  Don't worry about being perfect, but you want to be able to hit most of them back across the net.  Then get out and play!

A Down's Downer?

 There was an article in Road and Track magazine many years ago about being good at something, but realizing that you were never the best or even really, really good in an absolute sense.  The "cold shower" of life, one might call it?

The article described a boxer who came up against a world champion and whatever he tried to do, it was not going to work.  But that was boxing and let's return to our mutual sport of pickleball.

One Thursday last, it was late in the morning and I was pretty much done playing.  But Ron, a good friend, came out late and wanted to play a couple of games.  I signed on and he and I played a couple of guys I've never met before.  When the smoke cleared we had lost 11-0, a well deserved pickle.  

I was even more done at this point, but Ron wanted a rematch and once again we were back in the breach.  

This game went 11-2 in their favor.  

I wanted to talk about what their game was like and why the score was as lopsided as it was.

If I have the reputation for not hitting the ball very hard, these guys made me look like an absolute banger in comparison.  They hit the softly unless they were putting away a pop up.  They also had extremely good ball control.  I hit a couple of very nice dropping drives and they effortless volleyed from knee height at the kitchenline, dropping the ball about a foot into my kitchen, two inches inside the sideline with some clever spin so the ball bounced outside the court.  

And they did it more than once.  That's a tough shot to get right...  Hmm.

The other shot of which I was the victim, was a soft shot landing about a foot out of reach, two inches inside the sidelines and the perfect depth, i.e., at my feet.  

Needless to say, though I will say it anyways, none of these shots came back.  And they were all hit with minimum speed.  They didn't hit any shots out?  Maybe.

There was no shot I could hit that gave these guys much trouble.  Oh, the games had a few side outs and such, so they didn't play perfectly, but the results were never in question.

I've said in the past that the best scenario as to ability and the game you are in, is to be the second best player on the court.  You'll hopefully learn something from the better guy, but have a pretty good chance to win the game.

Playing in the game last Thursday frustrating, not in the sense that I would lose the games, but that I lacked any tools or skills that were competitive at the level these guys played at.  I was the worst player on the court, and I had ball control that was poor.  

There are two directions to go from this point.  One being to not play at that level again.  The other, embark on acquiring skills to move up a level or two.  

Obviously the first option is the easiest and more practical.  Whatever level you are at, there are probably games you shouldn't play in.  Lower level will bore you, and too high a level will scare you.

The second option is to get better.  Now, no one is as young as they used to be and athleticism doesn't run real deep in my family's gene pool, so that really is not an option either.  And there is a down side to being an extremely good player, with whom do you play?  Yah, at every level of ability there a certain window of skill that makes it a good experience.

I decided a year ago or so that my skills were just fine for the people I usually play with.  I'm happy to pick up the odd refinement here and there, but drilling for hours and never playing is not interesting to me, nor would it lead to more playing options with my peeps.

I'm happy I played in the two games at Downs with excellent players, but I would have a more enjoyable experience playing at a lower level.  You have to learn to say, "No!" on occasion and stick to it.

Protecting Partner - Play of the Third Point

There is a link to a John Cincola video below.  He talks about the play of the third shot.

He characterizes the play as "being a way to protect your partner" and "being a good partner."  Those are accurate descriptions, but I like to think of it as "blocking the shot your opponents want to hit."

I'm going to talk about how act when your partner is going to hit the third shot.  I've written about this before and my thinking has been in flux, but I've come to a conclusion and it matches what Cincola says.  I think I'm on solid ground here.  :-)

But John has a method and I think it's a great starting point with much flexibility.  OK, enough introduction, let's set the scene and run through the three cases.

General Setting: you are on the left of the court and the ball is coming to your partner to hit the third shot.  We will talk about what you should be doing.

John's rule of thumb: 

    Step ahead of partner by two or three steps forward and also one step closer to the center line and then stop.

    Rotate your feet a bit so that you can easily watch partner hit the ball.

    Case 1: best case, partner hits a good drop cross court in front of you.  You continue to advance to the kitchen line and be prepared to block a shot that will go through the middle of the court and at partner's feet.

    Case 2: Partner hits a bad drop shot, i.e., one that's too deep.  You take a step backwards and get ready to defend a shot at your feet.

    Case 3: Partner drives the third.  You want to face the player hitting the fourth shot, but you don't want to advance nor retreat.  But split step and be ready to defend or pounce depending on what the opponents do.

And that's about it.  You assume a moderately aggressive position, favor the middle a bit and then depending on partner's shot quality, you will stay, advance, or retreat.

What you don't do, is to advance all the way up to the kitchen before you assess the quality of your partner's shot.  This is a very common play of aggressive intermediate players.  It works well in most games, but it won't work as the skill levels get better.

And, worst of all, you don't sit back on the baseline and see what's going to happen.  PB is about moving to the kitchen and the third shot and how you play it is vital to the serving team.

I mentioned that I thought/think of this as blocking opponents' best shot.  And that usually means getting in as far as possible and blocking the direction of the shot that the opponents would like to hit.  This is usually at the feet of the player further back in the court.  Doing this makes the opponents do things they would prefer not to, for example trying to hit a sideline instead of a high percentage middle shot.  

Here is the link to John Cincola's video.  He has a lot of videos on YouTube and the content and delivery is very good, highly recommended.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swTf6jMACgQ

The Eight Actions of Good Players

 I don't think that PB is an incredibly complex sport that requires years of base knowledge to play well.  Its charm is that it's fairly simple.  But there are things that you must do as you play in better games.  Allow me to regal you with eight simple tasks -- know them and improve!

One: When you or your partner are serving, you stay behind the baseline and look for clues as to the quality/depth of the second shot.  You will not automatically advance into the court, unless your opponents are weak armed beginners, or there is a very strong wind at your back.

Two: when your partner is receiving the serve, you will be on station, fairly close to the center line, but faced a bit towards the active service court, to call out shots for your partner.  See item six, too.

Three: when returning a serve, you will proceed to the kitchenline every time -- maybe you'll not be able to get there, but you will advance as far as you should.  You want to be stopped and split stepped before the opponents return the third shot.  So if you are slow, then stop earlier; if you can sprint, then do that.  It's more important to be ready than all the way up.  It is, however, very bad not to advance into the court.  (My pet peeve.)

Four: Always get your serves in.  Aim for the middle of the service court.

Five: If you hit a short or drop shot or any shot that will bounce, always advance into the court.  You've hit a good shot, and you must advance to take advantage of that.  If you stay back the opponents will have the advantage.

Six: The closer you get to the kitchenline, the higher you must hold your paddle.  Having it near your feet is good when you are near the baseline.  At the kitchen, it must be held above the net height.

Seven: When your partner returns the serve, always move to cover the middle of the court.  This is a main responsibility of the player who starts at the kitchenline.  Note that there is only one player who starts there, though in a good game everyone will end up there.

Eight: Hitting a shot in the court softly is much more effective than hitting one into the back fence.  Though in a high level game, trying to body bag your opponent is often necessary.

I would add a couple more to this list, but in my opinion, I would expect a good partner to do all of the above, every point.  This is not 5.0 stuff, it's 3.8 stuff and at that level expected by all the players.

Note that none of the above is hard to do, it's almost all about moving to field the next shot.  Or, as in item one, it's about not moving to the wrong spot.

Once you do all of the above automatically, then we can talk about watching the opponents' paddles and swings for clues as to the next shot.  With that information, some of the above rules can be refined.  

Playing in the Wind

 It was windy on Monday and today at May Nissan, and I had a couple of thoughts on that.  Allow me to share...

Firstly, don't judge your play level on a windy day.  One of the delightful aspects of pickleball is that lack of weight of the ball.  When the wind blows, the ball gets blown around easily.  This mostly affects soft shots, touch shots, dinks, and drops. 

So if touch shots are harder and they are not easy to start with, a windy day might be a good time to work on third shot drives.  

Pro tip, pay attention to the wind direction when returning serves.  If the wind is at your back, you want to setup a step or two closer to the base line as deeper shots will be rarer and soft shots will die shorter.

And conversely if the wind is blowing into your face, move back further from the base line to receive a serve.  You'll also have to hit the ball harder to get the normal depth on your service return.  Now, there is a bonus to having the wind in your face, your opponents' shots are more likely to go out, so watch for hard shots and prepare to duck.

Strangely, I don't think that wind matters too much when serving.  I'm a big proponent of serving to the middle of the serving court, so with a tail wind or otherwise, my normal serve is usually fine.  

And then finally, dinking can be very difficult with a lot of wind, so dink carefully.  Should you bang on a windy day?  I'd suggest not, since if you are a better dinker you'll do better on a windy day then a lesser skilled opponent.  

While windy days are not as much fun, think of it as a training session and try to make solid shots that work and get comfortable with wind.  One more skill on the training path of pickleball!

Ready Position of Your Paddle

 There are a number of YouTube videos out there that discuss how to get from a low level to a 5.0 in a matter on months.  I haven't watched many of these, but I ran across one that had some content that I wasn't aware of.  

The guy's name is Albert Wan and I'll link to the video below.  In the video he had five tips that he found vital in getting to 5.0, the one I want to talk about is paddle position to get faster hands.

He discusses where your paddle should be in the normal three scenarios of court coverage, that being the ball is in front of you, or coming from center court, or coming from cross court.

In video he uses the example of when he is on the left side of the court and he is right handed.  Note that his partner is covering the middle of the court, but you all figured that out already, yes?  Let's run through the scenarios...

In the first scenario, the ball is directly in front of you, your responsibility is down the line and your body,  Anything that is going right of your body, i.e., towards the middle of the court, is your partner's ball.  So don't stretch in front of her!  Since we want to cover our body and the down the line shot, the paddle is held in a backhand position.  Not in a neutral position, backhand only.    Note that this makes it easy to hit shots towards the middle of the court and straight ahead, we are not interested in hitting anything to our left.

Second scenario, we are again on the left, but expecting a ball from center court.  Now we set up fully forehand.  We are ignoring any shots that would be to our backhand side as they are not likely to land in the court.  Again, we are somewhat left of center.  No team can cover the full court, so we allow opponents a miracle shot if they want to try for it and we trade off better overage on the rest of the shots.

Finally we are again left, but are the ball is coming cross court.  Now there is more room to our left and so we have to cover a backhand as well as a forehand shot.  It's more likely that a backhand shot will cause us trouble as our partner should be covering the middle.  So now we set up for a backhand shot.

That covers the case if you are on the left side and let's try and generalize the expected shots and how we want to ready our paddles.

I'm either right, left, or center and the ball that the opponents will hit is in front, a bit to the side, or full cross court.  You want to know before it happens which ball would go out, go to partner, or to you.  If it comes to you, is it more likely to be a forehand or backhand shot?  And knowing that, get your paddle ready to hit the expected shot.   

Sure you will be surprised and beaten on occasion but mostly you're very ready to return to return the usual shot.  You will not have to move your paddle much.  You will be known as the player with the fast hands!  And an added bonus is not causing partner any complicated shots if you try to cover a shot that is hers.  

Let me drop in a thought about where you are going to hit the next shot.  Albert doesn't mention it, but if you are readying your paddle as he suggests, then you can most easily hit a ball back to the center of the court.  This is a good if not great thing.  Middle shots are never a bad shot.  I've expounded about them at length in other posts, and another way to think about readying your paddle is, "How do I setup to hit a shot to the middle."  

Here is the video link, he describes the fast hands stuff towards the end of the video.  The video is short, about 5:30 minutes.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg6xa2caG-I

A Tasty Tidbit

 I played this morning and I beat an opponent up the sideline about three times in row.  This was the third shot for my side, we were serving.  Normally I will drop this shot, but this opponent was hitting the ball directly at me and not cross court and she was not moving properly after hitting the shot.

She would advance, as is correct, and then I hit the ball down the line and it was out of her reach.  This happened enough to really bother her and she and I talked about it after the game.

This is the second/third shot situation.  She hits a ball and I have to let it bounce, and she must take advantage of the two bounce rule to move up.  

The harder she hits the serve, the less time she will have to move up.  So she needs to move faster with that pace of service return.  

Her other problem was that when she moved up, she veered just little bit towards the center of the court, which exposed the small path on the sideline.  When it came time to hit the ball she could only do it at full stretch and it just didn't work.

What's the solution?  In perfect play she should have been at the NVZL and stopped and split stepped before I returned her shot,  So she needs more time or speed to do that.  I caught her still moving probably every time.  If she can't get to the NVZ, then she needs to stop earlier and get ready to return.

The next problem is that she is not protecting that sideline enough.  A reasonable rule of thumb when moving to the NVZ is to run towards the ball, not just forward and not just to the middle.  

Her main responsibility is to block the down the side line shot and anything hit directly back at her.  Her partner should have shifted and angled to cover all of the middle shots, all of them.

That is the answer to that scenario, run early, fast, and protect the sideline.

Let's talk about the two other cases.  Assume that she had hit cross court.  I think this is a good play, as it puts the ball in front of her partner, so it's the full team against the opponents for the next shot.  In this case, she has duties too...  She still needs to get up to the NVZL and she needs to cover all middle shots.  Her partner has shifted to cover the sideline, the rest is hers.  Note that the ball is going to travel further cross court, so there is more time to do all this.  But she must move to the middle of the court, probably moving over the center line a bit.  

Third case is a service return that goes up the middle of the court.  This is the traditional target for a service return.  If you look up, "Where do I return a serve?"  The answer is up the middle.  

What must happen now is that both players will cover the middle, their paddles at stretch should overlap.  They should not worry too much about the sidelines.  A shot from center baseline towards a sideline is difficult as the outer boundary comes into play.  So if the opponent can hit that shot, good for them.  You should be happy to trade those shots for good center coverage.

In all cases as you move up with a service return, always move toward the origin of the next shot.  Think of it as cutting down the angle and the closer you get to the NVZ, the bigger/better your coverage of the shot.  

Note that the middle is covered in all cases.  You can't leave the center open ever.  If I am the guy hitting the third shot, I love to hit into the middle.  If I do that, I can't go wide of the court, my opponents frequently will both expect the other to hit it, and a ball in the middle does not present an angle shot to the opponents for the next ball.  I will follow my shot in, if possible, and be in a good position for the rest of the rally.  

The second shot is the most important shot for the receivers, the third shot is the most important for the servers.  Moving correctly in these scenarios is the essence of pickleball.

Two Things That Seem to Work Well

This post is dedicated to John, who said today that the Jill Braverman tips below he figured out by himself after only three and a half years of play.  Well done, John, and let's look forward to the next three and a half years!

 

A couple of the recent posts have talked about Jill Braverman's style of playing.  I find these to be accurate and useful.  I've been trying a couple of the techniques that she advocates.

First one is to have broad stance at the kitchen line.  Feet wider than my shoulders.  This does the following:  My head is closer to the net top and it's easier to return shots that skim the net; while it didn't come up today, that wide stance is good if you want to duck a shot.

Secondly, the stance provides very good balance if I need to rotate my torso to one side.  The problem I imagined with this stance is that I would not be able to move sideways for a cross court dink.  But what it made me do is to shuffle my feet since it was impossible to cross them to move to the side.  I've been told this is a good thing.

The other habit that I'm trying to ingrain, and this was in the last post, is to run through the service return to get to the kitchen line.  While it might have caused me to hit a couple returns long, the advantage to be at the net and ready was a great tradeoff.  

So there are a couple of very simple techniques that anyone can adopt without any effort.

A Quick Tip, But it Requires New Thinking!

 I've written about the YouTube content of Jill Braverman and I like what she has to say and how she says it.  

She had a short video the other day that suggested a new way of thinking in re the service return.

She makes a couple of points, in that a service return error is a real killer as it provides an easy point for the opponents.  No easy points, as she says, is a good mantra to follow.

But the interesting point she make is that the entire goal/use of the service return is to allow you to get to the kitchen line.  It doesn't matter if you hit a great return or a horrible one, use the shot to get up to the kitchen.

She likes to think of the shot itself, as a "flowing event" where she will run through the stroke as she moves all the way up.  

Let me add a couple of thoughts on how to make this easier for us rec players.  One is to start several paces behind the service line - if you are up against the fence, that's fine.  Better too far back than too close to the base line.  

Two, watch the server's swing and paddle like a hawk, they will frequently telegraph what serve they are going to hit and where.  If you start very deep, you are going to have to run up for a short serve.  If you watch for that, then it will not be a problem.  

We've all been told not to run through a shot.  I would agree with that mostly.  Obviously some times you have to, but if you are blocking or not trying to hit a killer shot, and most service returns can be hit with minimal energy, as keeping it in and having time to move forward is more important than winning the point.  So if the shot is not complex, then run or glide through it, hit it in the middle and get up to the kitchen.  

And when you get to the kitchen, get your paddle up and your arms extended away from your body.  Face the ball and get ready for the third shot.

Here is the link to Jill's video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/mfZeFD_6PAo

Thoughts from The Harvest Crush Tournament

I wanted to pass along an observation I had at the Harvest Crush 2025 tournament.

I was a volunteer runner on Saturday morning and that put me on the courts, looking for things to run.  It gave me a close up look at the action on the 4+ DUPR level courts.

There were some really interesting points.  And while there was not much dinking, there was a lot of fire fights and some points where one team had the kitchen line and the other was defending overheads from the baseline and transition areas.

I was impressed how well the defenders were able to get shots back without over hitting the ball.  I'm thinking about a recent post where I talked about a push shot and how that was inherently consistent and accurate because the paddle stayed on a path for the ball strike for a long period of time.  And that made the timing of the shot much easier.

The situation as the tournament was different in that the defenders were not trying to hit winners or be aggressive, but just wanted to keep the ball in play until they could get back to the kitchen line.

And they used a variation of a push shot.  The paddle was placed to hit the ball and not swung or pushed much.  Since the overheads carried a lot of speed, there was no need to add much speed to the ball with any kind of swing or push.  You could see this as a bunt in baseball, where there is no attempt to add energy to the incoming shot.

This shot was universal at the upper skill levels.  In the women's game at least!  I didn't see any of the men play and I would have been curious if highly skilled guys would be willing to block a ball back without trying to smack a winner.  Maybe I'll be able to report back next year.

Let me talk about the full scenario for a moment, as this is not just an overhead defense kind of point.  It also applies to a lot of other scenarios as points develop.  There are three states that each team is in any moment in a point.  You are either in trouble, in control, or you're tied with the other team.  

If you are in control, then hit an aggressive shot that...  goes in.  Don't throw a point away when you were ahead.  Use your advantage to make the next shot harder for the opponents.  Winning points is often a cumulation of errors until a winner can be hit (this is very rare in a pro game), or the opponents miss a shot because they were attempting difficult shots.

Second case, you are in trouble. Now you want to hit shots that give you a chance to get back to even.  It's my opinion that trying to win a point from a disadvantaged position is largely unsuccessful.  I'd rather see a dink or lob to get more time for your team to get into position.

Third case, which is usually when everyone is at the kitchen and the ball is low.  This is no time for heroics.  You want to wait for a good opportunity to strike, usually some kind of pop up, and then use a combination of shots to win the point.  Moving the opponents side to side, or back off the kitchen line are good tactics.  Be careful of speed ups in a good game, as they are frequently returned faster than the speedup.

If you side is serving, you are going to be in a defensive mode as soon as the serve is returned because the other side will be at the kitchen.  "They won't be there in my games," I hear you say...  Well, one day they will and I'd suggest that you should play as if you are in a good game.  In this case, you have to be careful and your goal is to get to the kitchen line where you can achieve parity in the point.  Yes, you can win a point from the baseline, but one day that won't work.

If your side is returning the serve, you have the opportunity to gain a significant advantage by hitting the return and then, always, always, join your partner at the net.  The servers have to let the ball bounce and you have to use that rule to get to the net.  If you don't do it, your side is split, your side will soon be on the defensive as the servers will be at the net before you are there.  And worst of all, you are not playing pickleball.  There is no game beyond the beginners where getting up the net is not expected.  You have to do it.  Yah, I know at first it's scary and you might get hit or look clumsy, but gird your loins and whatever else and get up there.  Get your paddle up and watch the ball closely.  Shots from the kitchen are usually easier than the baseline, you have to get used to it and learn to love it!

When does parity occur?  Well, it kind of depends on the third shot.  If it's a drop and the servers advance successfully, then that is the first time in a point that it happens.  When there is a dinking battle, then advantages, and trouble, and neutrality will occur frequently.  A good play needs to be aware what state their side is in and choose their shot appropriately.  "Why didn't you smack that last shot?"  "I hit a dink because you, my dear partner, were not in position yet and if a speed up were returned, we would lose the point."  "Oh."

That's it, that's classical pickleball.  Get out there and enjoy it!

Wrist Rotation and Why it Might be a Good Thing

 Hi all.  I spend a lot of time working on my golf swing.  The golf swing has a lot of similarities to a pickleball swing, particularly when serves and baseline shots are considered.

One of the fundamentals of the golf swing is that the right forearm will rotate clockwise for the right handed player.  And this might be true in some fashion for the pickleball player.

In golf you want to maintain this rotation position as you start the swing towards the ball.  

How about pickleball?  Well, if you were to do that, you would be bringing the paddle edge on towards the impact area of the ball.  What happens at impact is the big question.

If you maintain a lot of this rotation with a serve for example, you will get a low shot with a lot of clockwise spin.  The ball will skim the net, curve left to right, and skip to the right as it bounces.  You might very well want this.

Also in swinging the paddle edge on, there is less wind resistance, though how that will increase swing speed, I have no idea, but it has to be something.  

So if you do this edge on swing, you'll get more speed, some curve, more spin, and a lower shot.  Some of you might want that in a bad way and if you are interested, then try it out.

I think though, that the general case is that we all have some rotation taking the paddle back and then maybe rotate back automatically as we hit the ball.  

(Though a lot of beginner players have no rotation.  I'm not going to call that "bad' or inefficient, I'd be more concerned if the elbow is not extended, as that would shorten the arm and you'd get less paddle speed for the effort you're putting into the swing.  Actually, the elbow position is critical to a good swing.  The elbow should stay close to the torso and not move away from the body to move the paddle towards the body.  The arm needs to lag behind the elbow position to swing efficiently for longer shots.  Watch a video of a major league baseball pitcher and you'll see a lot of elbow lead.  Maybe more in a future post.)

If we alter the paddle parameters, we are going to get some interesting effects.  Let's consider a baseline shot where we are hitting the ball about waist high.  Now if we come in edge on and don't fully rotate the paddle to "square," then we may create a ball trajectory that is a bit high, but it will have cut spin on the ball.  Again, you might well want this effect.

There are a couple of caveats.  One is that the paddle is going to present to the ball a smaller shape and if you have problems with miss hits, and that would be all of us, you might get more of them.  Also, although you ought to get more paddle speed out of this swing, you might get less ball speed as the ball paddle impact is at an angle and some of the energy is going be used to create spin and a higher trajectory than a flat hit.  In certain circumstances you might want all of this or some of it.  You could think of it as a different tool

The edge on swing is also compatible to a backhand shot.  I remember watching a match where Lauren Stratman hit three consecutive backhand shots with an edge on paddle position.  Lauren comes from tennis and the stroke might be from that sport.  Again, play around with it if it might help your game.

In prior posts I talked about extending or breaking the wrist for almost all shots.  I don't think this edge on stuff is incompatible with that, I still like it for power and efficiency.  

I was a runner at the Harvest Crush tournament this morning and I've got some observations about paddle technique that I'll pass on in another post.

The Warmup Game

 Let me lead off with a couple of anecdotes.  I spent some time in Cambria and the pro there, Gregg Whitfield, was kind enough to play a bit with me.  (He has some videos on YouTube, worth looking at.)  There were four of us warming up and one of the players took a popup and put it away.  Gregg politely suggested that was out of place in a warm up game.

Data point 2, There was a reddit post in a pickleball section.  A guy was watching some 6.0s rally a bit and was amazed that when the popup came that the ball was not put away, but just returned to continue the rally.

You and I show up at the local park and we are about to start our first game.  What a "warmup" is is some gentle dinking, maybe some longer shots, a serve or two, if that's a problem child for someone, and then it's game time.  There is usually a real push to get to the play.  I don't know why, the hurry to play and the game length and the waiting time for the next can be long and so why shorten the time you have on the court?  Particularly for the first game.  

Let's apply the anecdotes to the first game scenario.  I would suggest that playing full bore on that first game is probably a source of injury as the usual warmup really doesn't warm up anything.  I think you have to play, maybe at a slower speed, to actually get the legs going and the back comfortable.

So how about that first game you work to create some longer rallies and when the chance comes to easily end it, just put the ball back in play for a few more hits?  Now, this requires the cooperation of all involved, but it is probably worth artificially creating a longer game to fully warmup.  If the need to win conquers the need for fun, then go full out on the next game, control yourself!

When I'm playing with lesser skilled opponents I frequently will not put the ball away and just play it back and give the opponent a chance to hit a better ball.  I will lose the occasional point this way, but I think everyone enjoys a longer rally.  Also, I'm more likely to get balls hit to me if I don't put them away every time.  I'm there to play and make good shots and I'm not there just to beat up on beginners.

I think this makes a lot of sense for the first game and anytime you're playing down to a lower level of skill.  And playing a soft shot regardless of what was hit to you is a good skill to have and to practice.  

Hitting the Shot You Wanted, but Doing it Well

 In almost all rallies that last more than a few shots, someone will get to hit the shot they want.  Or get a chance to hit the shot they want.

Almost all of the "sitter" shots are at the kitchen line and are fairly high above the net.  

So what happens?  About 40% of those "easy" shots end up going into the net.  I have a theory but before I get to that let's set the scene a bit. The sitter is the culmination of all the play of the point.  You've made shots that were not easily attackable and now you have one you should be able to put away.  This is the shot you've been waiting for.

Technically what I think happens is that most people increase their swing speed by about 50%, which changes the timing of the strike.  You end up hitting the ball with the paddle pointing into the net.  If you had hit it with your normal swing speed, the paddle face aligns with the open court.  

As I mentioned in a prior post about the push shot, the paddle face alignment to the proper target during a shot, if the shot is a swing, is a small window of opportunity.  Swing early and a right hand forehand shot goes left, a late swing goes right.  Most of the slams are forehand shots but on a vertical plane, so early goes into the net and late goes into the back fence.

My solution to this error, and it's my solution to many, many errors, is don't swing harder than your usual shot.  We think that a hard, speedy shot will be successful and it frequently is, but it's prone to producing errors.  People who make few errors are very difficult to beat.  Fortunately they are very rare at the rec level.  If you want to be unbeatable, just get your shots in, don't try to put them away.  I'm frequently called "nonchalant" on the court, and it's usually when I hit a shot by not hitting it very hard.  There is a lot of time to hit a ball.  More than you think and it takes experience to use this time to hit the ball properly without over hitting it.  

Having said all of this.  I struggle with hitting these shots too hard as well.  We get keyed up in the moment and the speed and can't manage to hit a hard drive softly, or a sitter gently.   But I work at this.  

I was talking to one of the regulars at the park today and he had coached tennis a lot.  He is signed up for the Harvest Crush  tournament and we had discussed how frequent errors are a problem.  He and his partner spent a couple of games just counting the number of out shots they hit.  He found that keeping track of how many they made them less likely to create them.  I think that works.  I keep track of service errors per week and also I'm very aware of service return errors.  If I'm playing well, those two statistics are small numbers.  I want to get better at the push shot from a prior post, and then those pesky sitters that frequently go awry.  

There are a number of books written about sports called "The Inner Game of X."  for skiing, golf, and tennis written by Tim Gallwey.  These books are worth reading.  What he suggests is that your mind can figure out very complex things if you just let it.  Give your mind a task, provide some feed back and then iterate.  I'm familiar with the golf book, and as an example, you might want to change your wrist at impact.  He would tell you to just hit balls and for every shot give a number to how successful you were in getting your wrist to do what you wanted.  He found that it didn't take long for your mind to solve the problem with little analytical effort on your part.  

That's enough for this post, I feel I'm on the way to another book, so I'll close.   If anyone tries these feedback ideas I would be interested in knowing how well it works.

Moving While Your Partner is Hitting the Ball

 I've written about time occasionally in the blog posts.  You increase time by dinking and you shorten it by hitting hard.  So if you need time to get into position or for your partner to get into position, look for a soft/slow shot to help.  The extreme example is the lob, of course social pressure and possible ostracism comes with that, but if you are strong mentally and willing to travel to a new park, hey, go for it.  :-)

What I haven't talked about and it's a frequent thing, is moving while your partner is busy hitting a ball.  If it's a good time to go forward, then do that.  If your partner likes to pop it up, then maybe retreating is a good idea (just kidding, find a new partner!  (Just kidding, practice more!))

Any time you are not making the shot for your turn, you want to be thinking about your side's next shot.  And movement is a big part of that.  If partner is dropping or even dinking, then get ready for it.   If you guys are driving, then maybe you can move into the court, but maybe not.  Depends on your opponents, the wind, and the quality of your partner's shot.  But in all cases, you want to move if it's appropriate.

The usual mistake is just standing and watching.  The game is quite dynamic and you should be moving all the time as the ball goes back and forth.  Watch the pros play and watch all four players and ignore the ball.  They only stop moving when they are actually hitting a ball.  Of course, sometimes they are hitting on the run, but it's not something you want to do.  Get to the proper location, get ready, hit a shot, and then start moving for the next one.

If you get good at using your time to move, it gives you more time to actually hit the ball.  Which makes ball striking easier, and that makes your more consistent and more dangerous as an opponent.