Crime and Punishment

 It's time once again to return to the most hated shot in pickleball.  No, we will do lobs another time.  Let's do some more banging on bangers.

One of the problems with PB is that a lot of stuff works at lower skill levels and it's easy to just do the one good thing and expect it to work forever.  I've been playing a lot at May Nissen and I'm impressed how the general skill level has increased in just a few months.  So even if you're playing well, constant improvement is needed to remain "skilled."  

So banging...  I get that it's fun and if you come from tennis, you probably find it easy to do.  So it's your super power and you win a lot of games because of it.  And why you win a lot of points is that the other players don't have the defensive skills to neutralize the hot shot.  But in a year or so they will have it.  And if you just hit everything hard, one day it just won't work.  This is also true of hard serves and strange spins; people figure it out and then it's less effective.

The other problem with hard shots is that it cuts into the time you have to approach the net.  Of course, if the drive is good enough, then getting to the net is not a priority and maybe never needed for most games.  And again, that lack of getting to the net is going to be crippling one day.  

So bang away and enjoy it while you can!

Punishment.

One more problem with the bang...  The current defensive play against a hard shot is to block it.  But I've recently seen a couple of pros in YouTube videos who advocate not blocking, but hammering the drives back to the driver.  They teach a pushing shot that keeps the paddle moving in a straight line towards the drive.  There is no paddle swing or chop.  You want to hit this ball with the paddle in front of you, arms fairly close to your torso, on either forehand or backhand side.  It's a simple push of the paddle, done with the intent to speed up the ball.  It's not a swing.

And per Jill Braverman, you want to try and whack it.  I've tried this and I really like it, I took it to the Downs park and it was effective.  

This pushing shot is not unknown.  There is one guy at May Nissen who transferred this shot from ping pong.  It's effective for him and he uses it on almost all backhand shots, which is his more consistent shot.  "A shot of high confidence," as my father might have said.  This player has a highly modified grip to make this shot easy.  That grip is not good for forehand shots, which then require some effort to get the paddle in a good forehand position.  I'd suggest learning the shot with a neutral grip so it can be used on both a forehand and backhand shot.  It's worth learning.

Here is a link to Jill's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQ1XvktXetc&t=346s