Poaching The Third Shot Part II

 Let me finish up with describing a common scenario of the passing shot on your alley.

Let's assume that you took the last post to heart and you are now spending more time in the center of the court.  You are also providing a passing lane for your opponents.  

My solution to this is to play/hog/prioritize the center of the court until my opponent starts to hit passing shots.  When this starts to happen, the important question is how well can they do it?  It is not a large angle and they have to hit it with some pace or you can move back to the outside and defend it.

If they hit one in four attempts, I'm not going to move off the center.  I'm happy to take three points for every one I lose.  

But if the opponent is a tennis player and can hit that shot better than 50% of the time, then it's a bit more complex.

You can still move to the center and then move back when Op's head goes down - or at least be very expectant of the alley shot.

Most Ops will wind up when they are going to hit a hard third.  When you see this and you should be looking for it, you get into the ready position and get ready to... Duck!  Look for shots that will not stay in.  Unless the shot has top spin or hit close to the net, it's quite likely to go long.

The alley shot also requires some pace, so the wind up is your signal to cover the line a bit more.  About one less step the center is all that is required.  What is going to make you react quickly is that you are expecting a hard ball and it's likely it's coming down your alley.

The alley shots and the middle coverage thing can evolve into a cat and mouse type of battle.  You know, the Op knows, and the Op knows that you know, so there are some guesses and feinting going on as to who will do what.  These are fun points I think, and with the added middle coverage, make the game more interesting.

Thoughts on Poaching the Third Shot

Let's talk poaching of the third shot.  

A simple definition of a poach is a shot where you step in front of partner to intercept a ball.

Poaches are usually quite effective as they do three things.  They change the timing of a point.  A poacher will be taking time from the other team, though he is also taking time from his side too.

Secondly, a poach is usually done close to the kitchen line and if the ball is high enough, it's easy to sharply angle the shot.

Thirdly, if you poach, you provide your partner with some time to continue to the KL.  

The typical situations where poaches are expected are to hit the third shot, in dinking battles, any time the ball gets lofted and you and partner are separated in the net to baseline direction.

 I was going to go on at some length, but let me concentrate on the third shot poach.  This scenario is a frequent and important part of playing at any level.  I would make the case that Ernies and excessive poaching might not belong in rec games below 4+, but the third shot poach is fine, neh, required and expected at all levels.

So, assume you are at the net and partner is returning the serve.  If you look up "really good places to place the second shot" you will see that the "book" location is to the center side of the server.  If the server is right handed this will be his backhand.

There are good reasons to return to this area. it doesn't provide an easily angled third shot, it's usually to the server's backhand, and there is a good amount of court depth there to either hit the ball deep or low and soft.  Of course, the opponents may have trouble deciding who will return that shot, an added bonus.

The service ball is going back to the middle of the court and you, at the net, are looking something to do.  In my life philosophy, the guy at the net is responsible for middle shots.  It doesn't matter if they will have to hit it with a backhand, they are up there and don't have to move much to return any middle shot.  So they should be looking for it and they should be moving towards or onto the center line.

The key to hit this shot well, is to move your feet and be in a good stable position when the ball comes over the net.  The big problem I see is that the poacher will take one step and then stretch to hit the ball.  This leads to missed shots and bad hits.  It's important to understand that this shot is yours and you need to fully move to hit it.

I've had this conversation with a lot of partners and my line has been, "I have no problem with you taking that shot, but you need to fully step over and hit it."  I would probably change that to, "That's your shot, I'm expected you to hit it, move  all the way over and do it justice!"  

Where should the poach be hit?  I don't have any wisdom to pass on in re that topic.  I don't think it matters much.  Obviously if you can keep the opponents deep in the court while your side rules the net, that's the traditional strategy.  But angling the ball off or hitting a dink or angled shot is probably also effective.  But what you want to avoid is a middle ball getting to the service returner or, worse, hitting the third shot into the net.

This poach is most effective against a hard shot from the servers.  It is not as important if they drop the third shot.  

A lot of what happens at the third shot and what I'm describing here assumes that your partner was on the way to the kitchen line, as they should be regardless of the quality of their second shot.

There are other poaching scenarios, but for the sake of keeping this shortish, I'll forego that for time being.  I've been negligent in writing at all for a while and I'm trying to recover some enthusiasm!

Wrist Stiffness During a Shot

 I watched a YouTube video on dinking and how specifically to do the backhand dink.  I'm aways open to another view on technique and took a look.

The recipe was to lock the wrist joint and then move your arm in a horizontal motion with the paddle going toward the target.

If you want to produce top spin, then you move the arm more vertically.

They didn't mention back spin, we can assume that that motion will be more vertically, but starting from a high point and swinging downward.

I have no problem with the advise in this video and agree with all of it.  What I found useful was the idea of locking the wrist.  This is not news per se, but these things are always useful to think about because as recreational players, a bit of reminders of good practice are useful.  It's easy to fall into bad habits.  And things that work at one skill level may not work at another.

As some of you know, I fighting a lot of wrist and arm pain.  I thought that locking my wrist a bit more might help.  So today I warmed up dinking with a firm wrist and found it fundamentally useful with nice solid, controlled strikes.

Then as I was moving back from the kitchen line, I kept the stiff wrist as an experiment.  I found that worked pretty well too.  

Rackquet ballers like to flick the wrist for most shots.  There are times when this is perfect for PB, but other times when it's wrong or makes a short more difficult, for example dinks.

Where to Hit the Ball

Hi all,

Sorry for the long time period between posts.  I've not stumbled across any new thoughts and old thoughts, already written, are boring!  So here are a couple of things that popped up recently.  Maybe they will provide succor!

Rich

 While I've been trying to play with a very sore forearm, I've realized that there are a couple of swing changes that create no additional arm pain.

If I keep my right elbow close to my body and then use a torso motion to hit the ball I can take any strain off of my arm and hit the ball very solidly.

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When I noticed this, I realized that a lot of ground strokes and serves were solid and consistent if I got close to the ball and then did more arm than body.  The key being that the arm is not extended far from the torso.

Another note about serves...  I like to see a small step with the left leg, then a motion to hit the ball (assumes right handed serve).  When I teach the classes, I suggest this.  Now, where should the ball physically be when you are hitting it?  I would suggest that it is inside the left knee and fairly close to the body.  The error is to have it too much in front of you (towards your target).  You don't want to be reaching for it.  It also needs to be fairly low, as the service stroke is upward in motion, so if the ball is low, it's easy to hit it upwards.   It's basically in the way of the swing path.

I think a lot of service errors come from dropping the ball too far in front of your swing path, stretching to hit it and then hitting a serve higher than it needs to be.  Also it's difficult to get reasonable spin on the ball if it's too far in front of you, because spin is created by brushing against the ball with a bent wrist.  An arm reach with a bent wrist is shorter than a straight wrist...

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This works well with ground strokes and dinks too.  The problem is that it requires a lot of foot movement to get your body close to the ball.  When you can, there are a lot of advantages to it.  Emulate the pros, who always move their feet except when hitting a shot!

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Dinking...  I've been testing a dink where I don't move the paddle towards the net, but only vertically.  The face must be open.  I think this has been written in the blog before.  I was watching the mixed doubles match with Johns, Waters, Bright and Ignatawitz.  This stroke was in evidence there too.  It creates a soft shot with a modest amount of top spin.  It also keeps your arm close to your body.  That's useful for quickly getting back into the ready position.

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Played a few games last week with some new (to me) players from Pleasanton.  They were good players, but didn't dink.  If you dinked, they would hit.  This is not my favorite style of play and with a sore arm, I really do not enjoy backhand blocks.  What is a good answer to this?  Call the PB Police and have them escorted off the court, or don't play with them, or get ready to block after every dink.  I'm still thinking these choices over.

4.5 Games

It's national pickleball day and I thought a blog post would be appropriate.  Here are some thoughts that I've had lately.

 

A couple of days ago I was just minding my usual business and playing in the 3.5 to 4.0 arena at the Downs, basically where I belong.  But the day's play was winding down and I found myself part of the 4.5 crowd.

And basically got my hat handed to me every game.  I've thought about those three games for a couple of days.  There are some lessons to be learned here and hopefully I'll be a better player for it.

What are the differences between the 4.5 folk and us lower players? 

Their court coverage was very good.  It was hard to hit a ball that they couldn't hit back.

Consistency, firefights were fine and I can usually hold my own, but these typically went beyond my ability to get the ball back.  Why?  Good question.  Maybe I'm just not fast enough, or my strokes are too long and I'm not getting back to a good ready position every time.  If my limit was three shots, their limit was four or five and I didn't win a lot of mano a mano battles.  Resetting means getting back into a balanced position too.

Accuracy, a lot of shots were hitting lines for winners.  There was a lot of play on the edges of the court rather than the middle.  What to do about that?  I've considered the possibility that I'm getting caught moving and then they can hit the ball behind me.  That, if true, would suggest that I want to stop earlier and be ready for side and middle shots.  I'm not sure about this theory.  It might be better for me to cover the line fully and trust partner to watch the middle.  I'm leaning to this theory as a better one.  As per the last post about middle coverage, it requires a partner who does this.

An example of this last point.  It was a dinking battle and I hit what I thought was a good dink, in the middle and fairly low.  Noah easily puts it away through the middle.  I mentioned the quality of the dink and was surprised how easily it was exploited.  I was assured by the opposition that the dink was fine, but Vince suggested that Scott and I were setup too far apart and thus the middle coverage was insufficient.  

All of this leads to a different model for court coverage.  The two players stay close enough to overlap paddles in the middle.  And they will move in tandem for all points from side to side.  I've play some with Angel and noticed that he and I were very close together during the play.  This requires a good partner and very active movement.

I think they hit the ball harder, but I don't remember that it was a factor.  It might be that they are hitting balls at a comfortable pace and trading speed for accuracy.  Did I mention how many lines were hit?  

I think that's about it.  And as I look back on the prior text, this post ends up back where many posts dwell, that being movement and court coverage.  

Playing at these levels, you have to have a partner who is playing this same style.  And with that partner, you have to trust them to take middle shots and such, rather than stretching for a middle ball.  

I appreciate playing in these games, but not being particularly competitive makes more of a grind than a fun time.  I also feel I'm letting down my partner by not being up the task.

Things to work on: getting ready for shots earlier, making sure my paddle ready position is good, make sure my strokes are short in order to reset the paddle quickly, better court coverage of the lines, stay closer to partner, and moving more for all shots.

Middle Coverage - A New Take

 Middle coverage has been an ongoing topic in the blog.  I make most of my PB money by hitting the ball in the middle.  Someone on your team (making it more personal, ;-)) has to be prepared for the middle ball at all times.

However, there are times when you don't want to cover the middle.  As a partner of mine said during a point last week, "Sorry for that, I forgot who (sic) I was playing with."

We shall ignore case and word order for the moment and talk about the "that" portion of the quote.

The main idea is that there is responsibility for the middle and there is an important case that's not been mentioned in the blog and I've not seen it anywhere else.  If both partners are at the same depth in the court, then middle responsibility depends on from where the next ball will be coming.  For example, if the ball is on your right side of the court, both players should (must) shift towards the right and the middle of the court should be covered by the team mate on the left.  If the ball comes into the middle and is easily in reach of the right most person, then they should both feel free to take it on.  More on this later.

But the case where the team is split, one up and one back, is different.  Assume we still have a shot to the right.  let me talk about something else here.  If you as a team are split, then you want to play the ball towards the opponent who is in front of the forward team mate -- don't hit it cross court!  So if your side is staggered with the forward player on the right, then you really, really want to only play to the right.  Because if you play left, the broad alley between your side is exposed to a cross court shot -- point over.  This is important.

Assume you've done this correctly, so the ball will be returned from in front of the forward player (FP).  The FP should slide some to cover the down the line shot.  And the back player, BP, needs to cover the middle.  However, due to the angles involved, the BP usually doesn't need to move much to the middle, though may need to move more into the court.  Note that there is a coverage angle (or shadow) from the FP that is in play.

Now, we come to the important bit.  The FP should be very leery of stretching to hit a middle ball.  Let the back player handle it.  Because of the BP's location, they have more time to properly return that ball.  The rule is: do not stretch in front of your partner.

When you've reached a certain level of play, you will have the ability to stretch those arms, move the feet a bit and can reach shots that beginners will just watch fly by.  The next skill to develop, is when not to go for those marginal shots.  And that is when partner is/will be/should cover the ball.  And to be redundant a bit, it's usually when you've advanced ahead of partner.

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Bonus feature, super foods!  I've been avoiding carbs for a few years and snack foods can be a challenge.  One of the items I've tried and found to be pretty good is pork rinds.  They have the light airiness of Cheetos, but lack the needed ingredients to stain your fingers.  They come in various flavors.  Barbeque is a favorite flavor, though I'm partial to "Nashville Hot" and other spicier variants.  They don't have a lot of heft or calories and are quite crunchy.  Various brands have different textures and flavors.  They vary a bit in price too.  It seems are artisional brands with small batches, etc.  Also the bigger bags are cheaper per ounce, so if you find a brand you like, you can scale up your purchasing power.  Give them a try!

A Couple of Things from Today's Play

 Item One:

My partner served from the left court.  The service return came slightly to my side.  It was mishit and popped up and it was going to bounce about middle of the transition area and bounce high.  There was no confusion about who would take the shot and I moved to hit a forehand.

The opponent was a couple of steps into the court from the baseline.  He is a reasonable player and if his return were deeper he would have advanced all the way to the kitchen.  

I was able to hit the shot I wanted, not very hard, but it landing just outside of his backhand foot and he wasn't able to return it.  So, end of point.

He asked about what he could have done with the point.  It was a good question and I hadn't thought much about it.  My answer was that since his shot was pretty weak, he would be better placed to stay fully back, or to make sure he was in a very low crouch as that was the likely location of the shot.  Staying upright was wrong as the ball has to be hit quite low to stay in the court.  Whether he could play the shot well from a low position is another question, but he would have had a better chance.

Rather than retreating, how about coming in deeper and trying for a volley?  With his shot short and bouncing high, I think that would a more difficult shot to return.  He would have less time, though the shot might have been higher in the air and easier to hit.

Let's think about a different service return that might be short, but was not going to bounce very high.  This is actually an effective return as the ball has to be hit upwards to clear the net.  With that return, I like the play of moving in aggressively and looking for volley and perhaps a put away if the third shot is poor.

"If the ball will bounce high, stay back.  If it's going to be low, then come on in."

Item Two

I played with a couple that were new to the game.  There were some tennis skills there and there could some very nice shots.  The problem was they didn't know how to play pickleball.  Where to stand and where to move were unknown to them.  So, basic knowledge of the differences between PB and tennis were the missing element.  

On the good side, their ability to hit the ball will allow them to get pretty good quickly.  

Some of the commentators on the pro matches have mentioned the transition of pro tennis players to pro PB and have talked about this.  

There is enough material in positional play for a full class.  It not too complex, but there are some patterns and situations that are not obvious.  Good play also requires both players to be aware of the same things.   I'm reminded of Angel discussing these things for multiple hours with his partner.  The curious reader will find a lot of info on this in prior posts.  :-)

Net Purchase

 I just bought a net from PickleballCentral.  They had a sale and I also used the TriValley Pickleball Club discount!  

The price was just a couple of dollars short of $200, delivered.

This is the middle net in re cost of the nets that were available.  The Swift net, which I've used and liked, as about $360 or so.  Here is the link for the one I ordered: https://pickleballcentral.com/rally-deluxe-portable-net-system/

As you will note, the is the "deluxe" version of the rally nets.  They have a couple of them.  

What is interesting about this net is that the tubes are oval, not round and are very heavy in weight and construction.  This is not a light net.  That makes it more of a burden to schlepp it, but ought to stand up to play and wind better.  

The issue I have with all the nets is the top wire and lack of wire on the nets.  This allows a lot of balls to hit the net and come over, thus rewarding bad shots.  Since hitting the ball hard will exacerbate this tendency, that promotes an "improper" style of play.  The solution to this is to elevate the net level above the official 34 inches to reject some of the balls that would have been stopped by a better top net edge.

I took a close look at the net as I wanted to put my own cord through it and add a means to tighten it to the side posts.  This net is fully sewn shut and there is no way to thread a cord unless I want to do some cutting.  I'll let that slide for the moment and see how it plays as is.

The tubes are about twice the weight of the round ones.  The center structure has a small piece to support the middle of the frame.  It looks like this will clip to the frame and doesn't have to be threaded onto a tube.  The center stick is not a rod, but more like a yard stick.  I've seen this on other nets, but have no experience with them.  I do like that it's sturdier.

The final issue is how tight the net can be stretched.  The vertical side posts are also oval and are aligned so that the long axis of the oval tube is on the place of the net.  Which should provide a solid foundation to tighten the net.  I'll add some markings or tape to allow easy location of the top level of the net connections at the preferred height.  

That's all I know for now.  It's yet to be setup or played on.  If there is any new information about that, I'll either edit this or create a new post.

Shot Selections

 I played with one of the intermediate players the other day, with whom I've never played before.  His shot selection was very different than mine.  I'm not saying worse, but different.

This is a topic that worthy of discussion.  Some of it comes down to style and what shots you're comfortable hitting, which probably means the ones you expect to return some value and not go out. 

I've touched on this before.  I see a lot of shots that would win the point, but go wide, which is fine for me, but not good for the guy that hit them.  First principle is make sure the ball is going to go in.  (I will digress a bit for the sake of completeness -- there are a lot of situations where your opponent is not in a good position to judge whether a ball is going out and if you recognize those conditions you can deliberately hit a ball that is not going to stay in, but you expect your opponent will have to hit it.  A lot of hard shots at someone in the transition area come to mind and a player a step or two into the court will swing at everything that is close.  I not studied it much, but this seems to be a useful area of understanding.  Perhaps another post down the line.)

Second suggestion would be to hit a shot that is safe.  Dinks that are deep in the kitchen (close to the net) can't be attacked effectively.    Also on service returns, a low shot that lands mid-court is usually a good one especially between opponents who may fight over the ball.

Third shots...  I will drop almost all the time.  That is my style and the game I like to play.  Not everyone plays like this -- shocking, I know.  My partner for this occasion, liked the third shot lob and he hit few of them.  That shot would never occur to me.  It was reasonably effective, but since it was done from deep in the court, the opponents had no problems chasing them down.  They didn't hit winners off the lobs, but I don't know if they allowed us to get to the kitchen either.  The shot selection was more a surprise to me than anything else.  I clearly don't have enough imagination for this game.

Generally, one of the other situations that I find a dink to be "the proper shot," is from near the kitchen line but not at it.  Or even from the kitchen line when partner is not at the kitchen line.  I see the dink as a tool to get to parity and it seems if the team is not at kitchen line, and I mean both players, then you are still at a disadvantage and a good dink is an effective way to achieve parity.

One other situation comes up on every point and that is where to hit the second shot.  The traditional target is a touch left of center and deep.  I have nothing against this target and I use it almost always.  There is another thought here.  Suppose a team decides to try and split the opponents - a worthy goal -- and to do that, hit the second shot to a sideline.  

A sideline shot requires that your team shift towards the sideline in question.  The down the line shot has to be fully covered and the other player needs to cover the middle and that usually means straddling the T at the kitchen line.  Yes, this opens up a cross court shot to the far sideline, but there is not much depth there as the sideline is at an angle to the shot.  It would also be a longer shot; if it's hard, it goes out and difficult to execute, all of which means it is not something to worry about excessively.

So the second shot is to the sideline and where will the third shot go?  The idea here is that angles may be opened that you wouldn't get from a center shot.  There are many choices.  You can drive the next shots deep into the same corner, or start moving the opponents back and forth, which may create a middle space if the opponents don't shift back to cover it.  I would expect that good partnerships will have discussed this sequence and maybe on a game by game basis if they are seeking to pound a single player exclusively.

Note that as the shots change from sideline to sideline, both of the teams need to adjust coverage.  If you watch the pros, they are always moving and shifting positions.

Also a fourth or sixth shot that is mid court and low may often be popped up and can be swatted away at an angle.  This would be the optimum condition.

I watched a couple of games looking for this variation.  The sideline shot was quite effective by itself, I didn't a lot of shifting by the receivers to take advantage of angle.  It wasn't needed much actually.  It didn't come up much and I'd like to see more of these points to evaluate its effectiveness.

Playing with Injuries...

 I'm fighting some arm trouble with both wrist and elbow and everything between.  From some observations and a private message or two, it seems I'm not the only one having problems.

So, what to do?  I've been told by the resident informal pickleball medical staff that rest is the only cure!  Well, that can't be right!   The arm is not getting better in any discernable degree and I've had some periods where I've not played at all.  So I'm not holding out any hope that a short or reasonable rest will clear this aching arm.  Of course there is also the possibility that if the arm was to heal and then I started to recover my vaunted backhand roll that I would immediately be back in pain.

I've tried a couple of things.  I converted to left handed a bit, and while I could dink pretty well, any long or difficult shots were problematic.  

I can play right handed and basically not hit any backhands, but that's no way to play and I also do not remember to not use the backhand and I'll make some play that really hurts.

I've added some tape to make the grip thicker, which ought to promote a lighter grip pressure.  But I have a pretty light grip already and so there was not much of a difference there.  I may still add more girth to the grip for some added effect.

With all of the above, I've basically decided to just play.  I'm trying not to play three games straight without a rest.  And I'm only playing a couple of hours instead of three and I also look for games where there will be a lot of dinking instead of drives and power pickleball.  

But basically, it's a situation that might move me back to golf for a while and not pickle at all.  I really don't want to do that as the golf is about an hour and a half at most, while the PB is multiple hours and then followed by golf.  Then also, the golf is a bit solitary and I do enjoy the people and social aspects of PB.

I have no answer at this point.  I don't enjoy not being able to play well.  The losing doesn't bother me, but I feel I'm letting down partners and while "there is no sorry in pickleball," there kind of is...

Cambria Part III

 I volunteered to help with the beginners' class this morning.  They do it every Friday and dedicate one of the six courts to the class.

They don't get a lot of turnout, today there were 6.

The usual instructor is out with health issues for a while and the players volunteer to help out.  There was only one guy and so my help was useful.

I also talked to one of the founding members.  The courts were built in 2015 with money from the players and a couple of donors kicked in about 2/3rds of the cash.

The club is reponsible for maintenance and repair and landscaping, etc.  The club dues are currently $75 per year or $10 per month or $3 for a drop in fee.  But wait, there is more...  The courts are reserved from 8 to noon for the members and drop in guests who pay, and after noon, the courts are open to all with no cost.  I'm told it gets windy and hot in the afternoons here.  The sheds are locked up in the afternoon and you've got the bring your own stuff.

The club provides all the balls.  As I mentioned in a prior post, there are nice stainless ball holders for each court.

They have two sheds, one for maintenance stuff, blowers and squeegees, and the other for an "office" for paperwork and some spare paddles and a lost and found with hangers for jackets -- which I thought was a very useful touch.

Rich, the member, mentioned that the building of the courts was challenging as the guy who did it, didn't get the surface quite right.  Had to do that again, then didn't have enough for a new color coating.  The upshot is that the current top layer is a single coat and it probably ought to be thicker.  Any chips or wear will reveal incorrectly colors.

They also have a large insurance policy and pay for the portapotties in the parking lot.

Ok, now for some pictures.  First is the squeegee, about $200 came with extra blades.  Rich was very happy with them.  They have two.

Here is a commercial training board.  Looks pretty good and useful.  This is also their deck with shades that can be lowered to block morning sun.

This is the office shed with a desk and other administrative aids.

The club is pretty much on their own.  If they want to make changes, they just do it.  There are some boundaries, but not much.  They are in partnership with the local school district, who gave them the property to build on and share the parking lot. 

I didn't talk to a lot of members, though a number of them said hi and were friendly.  

The play I saw today was mostly banging.  I mentioned it to Rich and he agreed with my assessment.  He confessed that he was known to bang rather than dink.

The quality of the play was down a step from Sunday morning.  It seems that Sunday is the day for the heavy weights to come out.  

The class lasted from 9 to 11, I got my group playing pretty quckly, they had had some racquet experience and that helped.  By 11 four of the courts were in play, all doubles.  A couple of folks came by and practiced a bit.  Mostly hitting top spin drives from mid court.

It's a very nice facility and the folks are friendly.  If you get down this way, you might want to check it out.

Cambria II

 It seems liike we have been here for a week or so, though it's only been 4 days.  The day breaks with some fog and the house we are sitting is about 60 degrees in the morning.  The sun is starting to peak from over the hill and the upper windows are starting to catch the rays.

Yesterday we took off to a winery with a lot of scultures.  Had a bottle of wine on the grounds, there are three of us, so not too out of shape for the drive back.  The winery was in Paso Robles, about 40 minutes from here.

We are going to go back to Moon Stone beach today.  Lots of drift wood, small amounts of small stones and a boardwalk if you don't want to get down on the sand.

We talked to some locals the last time at the beach and we are going to join them at the art class on Thursday.  This is in the building in front of the PB courts, so I'll probably drop in on those again.  

I miss the exercise right now, there is too much sitting around.  I worry for my waistline.

Speaking of art, I wanted to do some pencil sketching on this trip.  I'm interested in shadow and perspective, as anyone would be.  And I wanted to take some time to look at the details involved and see what I could "see" for the first time.

Here is a view from the house:

There is a deck across this back of the house with 200 degrees of view or so.  All the houses are on hills looking over the lower houses and out to sea.

The arm is not getting much better, but it's not getting worse either.  I've got a hand weight that I'm using for exercize of the forearm muscles and connective parts.  I'm not the only player with some of these aches and pains.  There are a lot of advice on YouTube, some of it might even be of help.  It is not unusual, per those videos, that this kind of pain is lingering.  I may have to become a forehand specialist -- I guess I can live with that shame if I have to.  :-)

I think that's about it from here.  There are no cell phone services here, but I can see the Whatsapp, so I see that the normal things are happening at the various tri-valley parks.

Remember, when in doubt, dink!

Dinking Part 5

 I've discussed the way that pros dink and I've taught the beginners a couple of times and have noticed things recently that bear some discussion.

While watching the men's doubles at the recent Texas Open tournament, I finally noticed that all the good dinks land in the kitchen and usually well into the kitchen.  The idea of at the feet or at the NVZ line are usually the outer boundaries of what they do.

And why is that?  A dink that is close to the net is not easily sped up.  Also the opponent has to lift that dink to get it over the net.  If they lift too high, then a speed up occurs.  And a really short shot can't be vollied.

The games I played today had very few banging points, they were almost all dinking battles.  I like these kind of points from an aesthetics point of view and I find them more funner than fire fights at the net.  Some of the points were quite complex with resets and angled shots and some speed ups.  The points were longer and more thoughtful, if you would allow me that bit of anthropormising.

I saw a number of times where dinks and drops could not be returned when the more driven shots were returned.  There is nothing weak or soft about a good drop.

We are down in Cambria for a week and we stopped by the PB area here.  Six nice courts with fencing for every court.  $3 to play if you are not a member of the club.

The play was at a very high level.  Lots of banging and only a little dinking.  How sad...  There was a gal there who looked like Whitney, served with a bent elbow like Puneet and hit the ball harder than Jimmy.  They were playing mixed and won the two games we watched easily.  Third shot drops, you might ask.  Nope, they liked to hit the ball hard with lots of top spin.  Everyone.  Perhaps it's something in the water?  

I'm doing this on my phone and many years a go I tried to add pictures to a bog post on the phone and it just crashed the app.  I'll try it again.

Well that seemed to work!  Here are some shots of the play area.  In the last photo notice the sleeve for balls that is on every court.  I think the club  provides balls and a couple of balls stay with every court.

I'm taking some time off from playing, trying to settle down a forearm injury from a couple of weeks ago.  I found some hand weights and I've been doing exercises to strengthen the forearm.  We shall see.

PB Concepts

I was watching a podcast about PB.  Chris who runs pickleballstudio.com has a regular podcast with his buddy Will.  They both have YouTube channels and the content is pretty good, mostly doing paddle reviews.

Their latest cast was about an intense two day school with Jordan Briones.  I'm interested in lessons and classes and that drew me to listen to the podcast.

I've linked to the podcast below.  One of the interesting things that Jordan passes on to the students are various concepts of playing PB.  As the player level increases, the concepts change, or are added to the base concepts.  This take on instruction I found interesting.  I've taught a bunch of the PB 101 classes and I think about how to do that and what is effective for this instruction.  Let me discuss the concept of concepts.

Firstly, what concepts are appropriate for the beginners?  What I see as the main struggle for beginners is getting used to the ball and how it bounces.  So the first concept would be, that you have to be very mobile to get to the ball, it doesn't bounce, it slows down quickly.  

Secondly, you don't have to swing wildly or hit the ball hard to hit a good shot.

And maybe that's about it.  If you can move to the ball and hit it softly, you can play the game pretty well.

So how about next level and this would probably apply to the people who take the Skills and Drills class?  In the last class, I found some drills that basically were dinking drills.  What I saw of the class, this worked quite well.  What are the important concepts for this group?

The dinking drills were teaching control.  The important concept is to keep the ball low as players at this level have learned to whack the ball.  Get serves in -- more control.  More movement, follow service returns to the kitchen line.  I also mentioned to my students that the ball has to be hit close to the sweet spot to get any consistency.  The take away for these students is another layer of control.

After a player can rally pretty well and, let's say, hold their own at a Down's level of play, what is the next level?  Usually they are getting good at banging the ball, and haven't paid much coin to the soft game.  Ah, so sad...  Better to smash and lob, than to dink.  It would make a bumper sticker that you'd only have on your car until you got better -- just kidding.  Concepts: hitting it hard will not work as well as it did, drop shots can be as effective as a hard shot, getting to the net as the main goal for the serving side is a reasonable way to play.

It's been my experience that at a certain level the short game becomes very important.  You'll not progress much if you don't start playing a mixture of a soft and hard game.  Robo told me once that at the 4.0 and up groups, all the points were typically soft.   Of course errors are dispatched with hard shots.  

Just hitting the ball hard is one dimensional and it does work for certain points, but unless you can switch from hard to soft when you need to, you're making it a more difficult game.  So another concept is, what kind of point are you playing?  Can you be aggressive or do you need to reset to get back to a neutral standing in the point, or are you in the neutral zone and can start making the game more difficult for your opponents.  This is the basic definition of shot selection.

This was talked about in the video.  Being aggressive was defined as hitting to the side lines or wings as they called.  Resetting was dinking back to the center.  What was obvious to me as I played today, that middle resets are fine, but they need to bounce in the kitchen.  I got burned by a bunch until I softened the shot.

By definition the servers are trying to get to neutral.  The opponents should be at the kitchen line to defend your third shot.  If you bang it, they block and try to keep you back.  If you drop, you can advance.  If you drop poorly, you may be in trouble.  The third drop is a reset.  If it's good, you get to the net and we have a soft battle.  That is a worthy goal for the serving side in a good game.  At that point you would expect to win half the points.  Before you were at the net, your expectation would be 40% or so.  

When you're at the net, the three conditions are still at play.  Can you attack?  Or should you reset, or can you try to dink aggressively?   The concept is to judge what is happening and how you should play the next shot -- speed up, dink to the middle, dink to the edges.

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I'm starting to write another book.  Here is the link to the video, it is a bit long and somewhat short on detail, but there are nuggets in there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjWImUU8QLI

How to Play if You're Better

 I've been watching a lot of bridge lately and there was one pro lesson that came up.  The experienced pro talked to the young pro about a very important issue, that being how to play against non-experts.

The lesson was not to do miracle things.  Do normal things and use your expertise to win by grinding down the other players a little here and little there.  A silly mistake can create a situation where the pro's abilities can't save them.   Basically don't try for hero moments.

This is useful advice for us PB players too.  You will beat all the teams you are up against if you make very few errors.  Sounds simple, but let's look at some common "miracle" shots that are a disaster if you don't get them correct.  

First of all, don't serve out, ever.  You will rarely win a point with a "big" serve and a missed serve loses an opportunity to score points.  Sometimes those opportunities are hard to come by...  Get the ball in and expect to out rally the opponents.

Hitting for a sideline is fraught with terror.  If you miss, the point is over.  If you like a line shot, keep it well within the lines.  It is a good shot to keep a poacher honest, but you don't need to paint a line, nor hit it really hard.  Just making a player lean over to his backhand is often enough to either win the point or create a situation where their odds of success diminish.  "In two shots, my partner will end the point!  Thanks for the setup, partner!"

Hitting the ball too long.  Dumping the ball deepish into the court is great.  Trying for the baseline, is silly.  You want to let the opponents make the mistakes, so hit it in.  Pro tip: the middle is a great place to allow both opponents to fight over the ball.  If it's slow enough that they both can easily reach it, it's a bonus situation.  They may collide and they don't have a angle to hit back to you.  They also have too much time to think about it, rather than just hitting the ball.

The longer the rally, the better that is for the better team.  Cutting the point shot with a "winning" shot that is not 90% to make is a losing shot.  Keep the ball in play and expect to keep the ball lower and deeper than your opponents.  Grind them down and beat them slowly.

The definition of a good pickleball player is consistency and not a killer serve or a great smash.  It's moving efficiently around the court, it's being in the right place at the right time.  Use those skills to make the opponents work for every point and stretch for every ball.  Don't be generous!  Don't beat yourself!

Drills for Players

Hi all,

The following drills were used with the Skills and Drills class the TVPBC put on last Saturday.   These seemed to work quite well with the group we had.  They all seemed to have played some and could easily use the drills with little supervision.  I was in charge of two courts and I could start one, then leave them to start the other.  When it was time to go back to the first, I would introduce a variation or move on to the next drill.

I pass this information on, as it might be useful to improve your own game and maybe you will be bringing a friend up to speed.

Rich

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These came out of a video on YouTube, by High Five Pickleball, link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMTFnE-u1y8

1) Dink, dink, Play; dink twice being friendly, then play to win.  Speed ups allowed.  Try to hit unattackable dinks.  I had them dink straight back and forth for a bit, then cross court.  The goal was to hit the dinks into the kitchen.  After some drilling, this was morphed into a dink game with the kitchen boundaries being the outer bounds.  The idea to keep the ball bouncing in the kitchen was to provide a goal.  I wasn't thinking that it was very applicable to a game.  But later I watched the men's doubles of the recent Texas open and all of their dinks were in the kitchen.  Note that this was not true for the ladies, who play a more aggressive game.

2) Cooperative Volleys; at the kitchen line or closer, volley back and forth.  Try to make controlled volleys that can easily be volleyed back.  Useful for blocking and resets.  This caused balls to be flying everywhere.  A lot of the shots were hit from a very high location, e.g., over the head.  But the part about being "friendly" was useful as the need to soften a high shot was constant.

3) Dink, dink, speed up; somewhat like the first drill, but with an emphasis on a speed up when available.  Practice the speed up and the blocks and resets.  My groups basically skipped this one.  I had them do number 4 next.

4) Beat the Feet; one player at the kitchen line, other inside the baseline.  Starts with a friendly hit from the KL, then transition player wants to hit shots to get to the KL.  Helps with fielding the awkward shot heading for a foot.  This was harder to get started.  Lots of shots were missed as this is a much tougher skill.  Note that missed shots means more ball chasing and less drilling.  Having plenty of balls on hand is helpful.  I had them do two reps and then change roles.  The drills were conducted with a single person on each side of the net, so there was parallel action.  

5) Serve, return, drop, defend; A deep serve, a deep return, a drop shot and then play out the point as a skinny singles point.  We did a little of this, but I quickly just had them do some serves.  I wanted to emphasis getting them.  Some of the players needed some serving techniques.  I stressed some body and weight shifts when serving, which I think are important for consistency.

As soon as they had that down, then I had them play some full games.  It seemed that they had had enough new skills and any more would be over doing it.  So they played a couple of games, then we were out of time.  Almost everyone kept playing, which seems to be a good reflection on how the classes went.

A final thought -- as an instructor you want to be very flexible in what you teach and what pace.  A homogeneously skilled group is obviously easier to work with.

I imparted some technical stroke stuff, but not too much.  They were all very reasonable for beginner plus players.  I changed one person's grip, I noticed she was struggling a bit with the dinks.  Grip checks are important in my opinion as getting it wrong, makes some strokes much harder than they have to be.  It makes others easier, so I wouldn't rule then out.  An informed student is a happy student!  Besides if you change a grip, it will probably be back to what it was in a couple of minutes.  :-)