Top of The Pyramid

 I was hitting golf balls the other day, my other problem in life beside pickleball, and it struck me how much getting the club head on the golf ball properly was a big part of the whole thing.

Then my mind wandered to PB and I recognized early the importance of a paddle with a large sweet spot.  I would say that my paddle quest has been looking for a larger sweet spot with spin production and touch second and third.  I'll toss sound in there somewhere too, I like the paddle to be quiet.

From the driving range to the pickleball court is a short drive, but the need to hit either ball correctly seems interwoven.

It is frightening how often I miss-hit a pickleball.  Edges, throat, top of the paddle are all in a day's work.  It is nice when they work out, but I think I'd be better served to hit the ball better.

I played a game with a new guy.   "I hope you don't mind a beginner," he said.  "How much of a beginner?" I asked.  "I've played 10 games," he said.  Well, hmm, that is a real specific number.  I don't know anyone outside of Randy, who tracks that kind of thing.

And a beginner he was.  After the game, it looked like he was going to have the first sit out and I suggested he take a ball and practice bouncing it up and down.  There is feel, wrist control, concentration, watching the ball, and paddle attitude to learn with this.  And he went off to do that.  He played in some other games later.  I hoped the practice helped.

It is probably a good exercise for all of us to do that on occasion.  

I was also thinking that I ought to judge all shots on just how well I hit them, rather than their point generation characteristics.  If I remember I'll spend a day and work just on that.  I have the TVPC dinking school tomorrow and I'm thinking that solid hits pays big dividends there too.  

The class was on drills and skills.  I thought about the sweet spot for a bit, but then got caught up in the drilling.  I did mention it to one of my drilling partners and he agreed with it.  

The question is how to hit the ball better.  The golf way is to make sure I accelerate through the hitting area.  This will stabilize the club head and you'll get better results.  I've seen video where they stressed hitting through a pickleball.  Another way to think about this, is to not manipulate the paddle as it contacts the ball.  Set the wrist angle and maybe the shoulder joint and rotate your body to bring the paddle to the ball.  You certainly don't stop as you make contact.    This implies that there is a momentum transfer towards the target and if that helps you move to the next place on the court, then this is a good thing.  

A final point, as I'm leading into the next post which is going to tie this stuff to dinking, you need to be the right place for all this to happen as you would like it to happen.  Doing at a full lunge is not what you want.  Movement and anticipation once more shows up.  

So more exploration needs to be done here, but I'm thinking this is important and useful.  I would think that racquet ball players would be very good at this as they don't worry about hitting a ball too hard - so no last minute "yipes" thoughts, which show up in golf and in PB.