When Everyone Dinks (And no one lobs...)

 Last week on the Thursday, I wound up in four or five games where the play was almost all dinks.  (We excluded the lobbers, of course.)

So it was serve, return, third -- sometimes a drive, usually a drop, but then the points became dinking battles.  And the point usually stayed that way until a ball was netted or a sideline missed.  Did I say there were no lobs?  Yeah, well that was true.

There were the occasional speedup, but they didn't work well and were soon discarded for increased consistency with the dinking.  The blocking abilities of speed ups were being flagrantly displayed!  What speedups there were, were reset and dinking resumed.

These were very different games from the usual at the Livermore parks.  Usually there is some dinking, but it's quite common that there is none and it's all about hitting the ball hard and frequently out.

The rallies were quite long, I would estimate some over twenty shots.  Careful play and lots of shuffling back and forth as the ball moved around the kitchen area.

I really enjoyed the points.  However I realized that my usual backhand speed ups were not consistent enough, I was being too aggressive in hitting them.  Once I realized that, I put effort into relaxed dinking and never hit another speed up.  This worked and what little tension I had during the rallies dropped to nothing.  I highly recommend it!

What was really amusing was that after a twenty point rally, no one on the court could remember who had served or even which side had served.  This occurred a couple of times.  It was amusing when this happened.  We kind of worked out the score, maybe, and then just decided who was going to serve next and kept going.  But lots of stunned looks while we were trying to remember.  You might think, ok, you are old folks, this is normal.  Well, there was at least one of us under 50, so I think it's the game and not the minds.  

---- Bonus!

We had the last beginner class today.  I wanted to suggest what folks ought to do after they take the class.  If you are pretty good hitting the ball, then just go and play and build your skills -- note that the class didn't teach you everything!  But there is the occasional student, has trouble getting the paddle on the ball.  I think the best way forward for them is to find a friend and just hit the ball back and forth until you learn the needed eye hand coordination.  Don't worry about being perfect, but you want to be able to hit most of them back across the net.  Then get out and play!