Why I Lose at Pickleball

This post was originally called, "Why you lose at PB," but I lost a couple of games on Monday in a row to the same team and I'll try not to be a hypocrite and talk about the problems with my game too.  But at the end as I still want to talk about problems with intermediate level games...

Why You Lose at PB

I played the other day at May Nissen with one of my regular partners.  She is very good and we play well together -- warning foreshadowing....

We played a three games against the same pair and they scored, 4, 5, and one points in the games.  

So what was their problem?  They hit the ball harder than we did and they hit some winners up the sideline, which we did not attempt.

They lacked a couple of skills.  Firstly, they were not as consistent and we scored almost all of our points on their errors.  They hit a lot of shots long, i.e., too hard, and they missed on the sidelines while trying to "win" the point.  And in trying to be aggressive, they hit many shots into the net even service returns and serves, which are the two shots where being well over the net is a really good idea.  Note that if you hit the ball too hard, sending it high above the net is not a successful strategy!

They were also not very good at covering the middle of the court.  Most of advanced play and pro level rallies, the middle area is the busy area.  Covering the middle requires that the defenders are not symmetrically placed on the court.  There must always be a bias towards the middle.  This is true of all shots from dinks, to the baseline.  If you and partner "split" the court, there will always be a seam between you.  This particularly true of the middle.  Having both paddles capable of servicing the middle seam is a great idea.  

Next, they were not very good at advancing to the kitchen line.  The KL is the most important characteristic of pickleball -- the two bounce rule was designed to make this happen.  You absolutely have to embrace a keen desire to be there.   The big error is not automatically following a service return with a run up to the kitchen line.  I see that hesitancy from a lot of players at May Nissen, even those who play at a reasonable level.  This is not optional.  I suspect that it feels scary and they feel much more confident that they can return a shot from deeper in the court.  The fallacy in this approach is that the shot they are comfortable hitting will be more difficult than the volley they would have had from the KL.

And that was about it.  Partner and I got all our serves in.  We didn't hit many shots out, we played a lot of balls to the middle.  Our shot selection was conservative, we kept the ball in play and were willing to rally and be patient. 

Teams that don't make many mistakes are incredibly hard to beat.  The opportunities for put away and winning shots are pretty rare, so relying on them as a means to score points, just doesn't work.  Consistency might be boring, but it's effective.

In the prior post about playing against better teams, I mentioned that thinking about why you lost is where the lesson and areas of improvement are found.  I still maintain that this is not a very difficult game and the number of areas that you have to have is small.  We have serves, volleys, dinks, and movement.  I'd add on to that short list, figuring out what your opponents like to do and then play for that -- for example some folks will only hit a cross court dink.

Why I lost at PB

So with a reasonable partner, I took on a good player whom I know from my days at Downs Park and a fairly new player.  It looked like he was mentoring her.  Initially I was in my play gently mode as I didn't want to beat up on the beginner.  As it turned out, the beginner could hit the ball very well.  She also hit everything flat and hard.  These are tough to defend as there is not a lot of extra room above the net for return shots.  

She hit it hard and flat and with that style, she hit a lot of out balls.  We needed to duck and we should have let more go than we did.  The game was very bangy and almost no dinking.  And they beat us I think, 11-5 or so for each of the two games.  

What partner and I didn't get right was that we needed to duck more, and dink more.  Both players had good hitting skills, and if you can't out hit them, then draw them in to a soft game.  We were not successful in doing that.  

Also my side made too many errors.  In a lot of points we had the net advantage and got shots that were high enough to put away.  But when the incoming shots are hard, you want to hit them softer yourself, as the paddle will generate power from the incoming shot.  So we needed to think more control and not power with those shots.  We didn't do a good job with that either.  

So summation of problems was, as usual, too many mistakes, not much power, not enough keeping the ball in play.  Trying to hit winners is a very hazardous business and requires great precision as the difference between and winner and an out or net ball are small.  The higher speed the incoming shot has, the smaller the angles for good return shots.  And finally, recognize and execute the general problem, which was to force the bangers into a dinking game.