Finding Style

 As one wanders through life, one may find their style at some point.  Is it required that this be discovered?  Can you live, or love, without style?  I guess that is a deep subject and beyond the scope of this blog.  Perhaps commenters may speak up.

Back to pickleball.  I've found a style of play that suits me.  And by style I would define that as the types of serves, service returns and other elements of play that follow from those.  "The Elements of Style" has a familiar ring, does it not?

Let's begin with serve.  I favor a lobby type with some top spin.  It should land as close to the baseline as I dare.  The crime being being too long.  Note that I'm not too worried about a short ball, as my lobby trajectory with top spin provide a high, deep bounce that should be effective.

The serve is also not a fast shot, which allows me time to recover from the service stroke and get ready for the return.  This is valuable.  Finally, this serve is hard to miss.  I don't want more than one bad serve a day.  The lobby shot with some top or side spin is easy to hit and difficult to hit out.  I can hit it to either side or hit it with enough curve to cause the returner some minor problems.

Service return:  I also favor a soft, high return.  That provides me with more time to move to the kitchen, stop, and get ready to defend, and it removes the net as an obstacle.  The opps have to let it bounce and I want to use that rule to my advantage.  I'll usually hit this shot with some top spin so I get a high bounce which will push the opps backwards.  I'll use a cut spin on occasion as people like to hit that shot into the net.  Note that the cut shot is more dangerous to me as it brings the net into play.  Hitting a high cut shot is difficult and it seems to be attackable as well as the bounce will be more upright.

The next element of style is the third shot.  I'm much more comfortable to drop this shot than to drive it.  I really don't enjoy hitting the ball hard, I don't do it all that well, and drops allow me to express my gentle side.  

If my drop is not very good, then I'm happy to defend from near the baseline.  Defensive type points are fun as are the "drop and then advance" ones.  I'll follow all drop shots into the court.  The better the drop, the further I go.  I want to volley the next shot if I can.  I should be able to unless the drop is really had.  I'm happy to drop the fifth and seventh shots off of a volley.  If I can't volley, I'm happy to half volley and still work my way in a step or two.

Dinks and things...  Dinking is fine and I'm happy to do it.  The key to being a great dinker is to be ready to move to the location of the next dink.  I want to move, stop, dink, and move back to a neutral ready position.  If you are waiting for the next dink, make sure your feet are not glued to the ground.  Be ready to move in either direction.

Anti-style Tip: I usually won't lob from the kitchen line.  I think it's a useful shot, but I not interested in it or lob points in general.  I'll leave that to others.  :-)

Speed ups:  While dinking one has to look for opportunities for speed up the play.  My favorite time is when the dink is directed to partner, but the shot is too high over the middle.  I want to reach in and hit this up the middle gap.  I gain a time advantage and hopefully I'll hit this shot down, which makes it awkward to defend.  Otherwise, I'm happy to dink and I try not to give the opponent the same dink twice in a row.  Move them around and make them work...

Other speed ups are to hit the ball straight at an opponent.  I don't have a problem with this as the ball will not hurt.  My target is the waist to shoulder, usually on the dominate side.  This requires a fairly high ball, so wait for it.

If the dinking point gets sped up but not finished, the ball usually starts to get higher over the net and moves faster as the point is played.  I will look for a chance to reset if I can.  I'm happy to return to a dink point.

Finally, I'm more than happy to hit a backhand roll at almost any time.  I can hit this from marginal shots; its spin makes it difficult to defend.  

I think that's about it.  But now we come to the big, expensive question...  What is partner doing in the mean time?  

With my lobby type shots, I'm providing partner with a lot of time to be in a good position at the critical moments early in the points and should result in points that are fairly relaxing.  We have time to setup and execute shots.  We're not on the run and we've not allowed the opposition to hit hard shots off of our shots.  They can try to speed up the service return, but they will be doing so from deep in the court and I like my chances to defend those shots.  This is also true for drop thirds, which require the fourth shot to be fairly soft.  In all cases, I'm trading shot speed for time to move.  I'm happy with that trade.  I don't have to sprint to the kitchen, which would be required if I hit a hard service return, for example.

So, the issues revolve around how partner serves and what his third shot style is.  If partner is a banger, then I will remain in the back court until I have a good opportunity to move forward.  Note that soft shots allow you to move forward earlier than hard shots.  Hard serves require you to be further behind the back line than soft ones.  A hard return can skip if it's returned deep and flat.

Same with partner's third.  If he's a banger, I stay back.  If partner bangs the fifth and seventh, I'm just hanging out and wait for the point to ripen.  If the ball is hit to me, I want to drop so our side can get to the kitchen line.  If we are not there and the opponents are, then we are at a disadvantage.  My first goal when serving is to get to parity.  I don't try to win points with my serve, or third shot. 

I've stumbled into this approach by watching Melissa serve and playing around with it and extending it to other parts of the game (she tells me her service returns are soft too, but I'm not convinced. :-)).  I've used it quite successfully against some good teams who bang.  But mostly it's the type of pickleball I prefer to play.  I'm removing pressure during the point and the need for speed in my movements for the next shots.  It then becomes more like chess then dodgeball -- not that there is anything wrong with dodgeball!