I wasn’t able to do my normal Wednesday pickleball routine so I had to pivot and went super early to drill with my buddy for about an hour and a half. It was a great workout.
We spent a lot of time dinking. We like to dink straight on and try to work opportunities that way but realistically, we probably wouldn’t see much of that in a game. It’s super hard to produce opportunities when you’re drinking like that so I think for the challenge sake of it, it’s worth it. We also went cross court, each working on our backhands and forehands. When we drill with dinks if we earn an opportunity to put it away, we do.
I was able to, for the first time ever, get the timing down right on an Erne. But I hit it out. So, baby steps. I’ve never actually made contact any other time so just doing that was a positive.
We practiced feeding each other ATPs. I only did my backhand but he wanted both. I actually practiced switching to my right hand and hitting it that way instead of a backhand. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that because it isn’t like a right hand overhead, which is just instinct. I don’t even think about it and the paddle is already in my right hand. I made a conscious effort a long time ago to not switch hands unless it was absolutely desperation. When I’m dinking, I guess I don’t feel like I’m in a desperate situation so I had to actually think to put it in my right hand. When I did, the shots were fine. If I watched the ball they were even better. I had a tendency to watch the court instead of the ball. Once I made that little tweak, it seemed to make a difference.
We played a couple games of skinny singles which let us work on all our shots. He beat me both times pretty easily. We both missed returns more than either would have liked and I realized the importance of reading the room with pickleball. Playing in a bubble and being against the wall with a hard serve coming at me is a huge disadvantage. I do not want to be against a wall like that at the end of a tournament game. And I do want to serve hard and deep to my opponent if they are against it.
We finished up with some full singles points. I kept hitting to his backhand, which he likes, but as soon as I adjusted to his forehand he struggled, giving me a chance to win a few here and there.
I worked with the ladies of the drill clinic. The first group only had 3 people so I was able to participate. We did the normal routine of dinks, dinks with targets and cross court dinks. Then I had them do drops and cross court drops and drops with a target.
Because we only had 3 I fed them shots for their drops. Eventually I had them work from the transition zone and I fed them shots with pace so they could block them in the kitchen. If they blocked it right back to me I hit it back at them. Then they worked on working their way to the kitchen if that happened.
I was surprised how quickly they moved through the line with me feeding them so I did it with the next group as well.
I think everybody was okay with me feeding them and I like being able to watch what they’re doing and to kind of control what type of shots they’re getting. When they work with each other it’s sometimes hard to tell if they messed up or if they just got a bad feed. If I give them a bad feed, I know when I’ve done that.
We played the net zero game and again, they were driving the ball and instead of dropping so I offered a bonus point if they did a third shot drop. Right away they switched to drops and they were going in the kitchen. So I had to actually had to give out 3 bonus points once we switched to that, which is really interesting because that meant I had to do active math.
It seems like I should come up with other games to play at the end so they really focus on what we’ve worked on with the drills. The group really seems to enjoy doing drills and they really try to get better. I really like that. Really.
