Style Notes Part 1, Bryan and Lori

 I was watching Bryan and Lori perform their magic on the challenge court yesterday.

There were a couple of style points that I found interesting in their game and I thought that passing them along on a rainy day might inspire others to try new things for their pickleball arsenal.

When you watch these two you will notice a couple of things.  The first is that Bryan has pogo sticks for legs and can hop all over the place.  The second point is not about anyone else's legs, but the lack of a third shot drive by either of them.

They drop all third shots, and try to initiate a dinking point.  You don't get this much at Downs.  It is easier to whack a ball than to caress it into a small target area.  If you are playing against them, you will not have to worry about a high speed block,  but you want to be able to hit a good shot off of a drop shot.  Think about volleys versus stepping back and hitting off of a bounce.  I'm not saying which is better, but some pre-thought will be useful against all opponents.

They dink quite well.  Lori likes cross court and Bryan likes to push right back at you, usually to your sideline hand.

They rarely will speed up unless it's a glaring pop up.  So you don't need to hit the perfect dink, and it need not be a net skimmer, depth is usually the overriding issue on the quality of a dink in any case (shorter being safer than deeper!).  But your dink is going to come back, so make sure you stop and are ready to move for the next one.

What they both do very well is drop thirds and return serves.  They take backswings that usually do not place the paddle behind their body.  The paddle will be held at the side and then there is a short hit to engage the ball.  They typically don't hit the ball very hard, nor are the hits very low.  There are large margins over the net and inside the sidelines for miss hits and such.  This very good as it eliminates a lot of in the net errors.

The shot is close to being a push and is certainly not a tennis type swing.  The stroke is short, and leaves the paddle close to the ready position for the next shot -- very tidy.   I don't know what their sports backgrounds are, but if it's tennis, they've converted over to short strokes very nicely.  And most of these short shots have a touch of slice spin on them, for depth and bounce control -- well done!

The only shots I saw that were struck with force were put aways due to getting pop ups at the kitchen line.

I really like their game.  There are others at Downs that have that "hit it softly for the most part" game.  This style keeps you in the points for a long time.  They score by out dinking opponents and taking advantage of errors, rather than trying to hit it through or past opponents.  What they rarely will do is hit the ball out and provide an easy point.

Now add all of that to first class friendliness and B & L are some of my favorite opponents.  I've played with both of them and that's quite the treat too.

Take some time and watch them play.  There is much to learn there.