Sunday, February 12, 2017 (Court Day #3)

I continued to watch videos and listen to podcasts about pickleball. I explored buying a book or two, but figured I’d exhaust free resources first and maybe use the money for my own paddle first.

Sunday, February 12 marked my third trip to a pickleball court. Being a church-goin’ lad, this particular day I couldn’t arrive to the courts until about 10:15. It wasn’t a warm day, low-60s, but sunny.

It was on this day that one of the opposing players exclaimed, “I thought you’d said you’d only been playing for three weeks!” I did come into this with a bit of an advantage, having played some tennis in college. While I didn’t play on the UCSC team, there was one quarter where I had won both lotteries to get into both the offered tennis classes so I was playing four days a week. Those were fun times! I haven’t played much tennis over the years since, maybe 20 times in 30 years, but some of the young brain settings are still in there, apparently. I’m told that it’s not uncommon for those with tennis experience to play pickleball.

Pickleball Player Ratings

The International Federation of Pickleball has a player rating system which ranks players from 1.0 to 5.0. National champion players are 5.0 players. Players who have never played racket sports would could be 1.0 players, but you’d have to be pretty darn bad to be a 1.0 player. Perhaps 1.0 is a designation commonly only applied to children. I’m only guessing. Anyone who can play and regularly get the ball over the net are going to be 3.0 players. I figure I’m a 3.5 player and might be approaching 4.0, though 4.0 states “can use spin shots with some success”—that’s not me yet. I had a pretty mean spin on tennis serves and could slice my forehands and backhands back in the day, but pickleball is a different animal and I need to develop a new set of skills.

The Lefty

This was the first time I went against a left-handed player. When serving right to left, I knew from videos that you want to ideally serve near the middle of the court to the receiver’s left foot to force a backhand return which is usually a weaker shot. Me, not being a dumb guy, served near the outer corner of the court to off the lefty’s right foot, forcing a backhand. I was pretty proud of myself for figuring this out all by myself. It worked pretty well too. Only later, I saw this idea in a video . . . so much for my invented strategy. Old news! Rats. Of course it had already been figured out! The game has been around for over 50 years!

Tough Crowd

Most of the players had left by 12:30/12:45. The players who were left were good. And I mean solid. The women dressed in tennis outfits. You can imagine. It was guys against girls. As you might expect, with me on the guys team, we lost. But not too badly. This was an excellent learning experience. I was the weakest-skills player on the court, but I did ok. I didn’t embarrass myself . . . well, except that one time that I missed landing my serve. There isn’t too much excuse for that in pickleball, but it happens. It usually occurs when servers are trying to force a tricky shot. Or, in my case, simply missing the service court by a few inches! That’s why a lot of pickleball pundits recommend hitting more toward the center of the box—it gives you the largest margin for error. But I’m not that bad. I can generally place my serves somewhat reliably.

My guy partner (Kevin) pointed out a key strategy at the net: tracking with the ball. If the ball is hit to the left opponent, shift left in along the kitchen line. Conversely, if the ball goes to the right opponent, shift right. By doing this,  you close down the near sideline and reduce the likelihood of a passing shot . . . which I allowed, unfortunately, by not tracking!

I wrapped up my day about a quarter after 1 p.m. As we broke down the net and stowed the gear as the last players, we left the courts to the grouchy tennis player. He made some snide remark about pickleball to which one of the women players told him, “You should try it before you knock it!”