Today was a fine day of pickleball. We only had 4 so there was a lot of play. I really struggled in a lot of different areas today. My 2 hand backhand was about maybe a 10% success rate. It was ugly and my serves weren’t anything special at all. Even though I was at the bubble and they were against the wall I knew to try to serve them deep and serve them hard I couldn’t really pull that off. My drops were horrible, they were all high. I did land a few forehand drives but for the most part, the majority of my shots were off.
I had a successful ATP (it was blocked out, not sure it would have landed in bounds) and the one guy had 2 or 3 Ernes. He is just a machine with those shots. I got some overhead practice today which was good, but it’s tough to do. Knowing you are going to have to backpedal every third or fourth shot just to hit a wimpy overhead that may or may not go over the net; the risk is way higher than the reward. In a perfect world I would leave every overhead for my partner, especially if it is a guy. Since I was the only female I sort of could do that. But the flip side of that is, I need to practice them.
I knew one guy was potentially going to keep lobbing – he is very good at them – so I had to change my game. My only solution was to not hit him the ball because he can do lobs from just about anywhere on the court. That was risky because his partner is a strong disguiser with super challenging shots to defend. I really don’t like not hitting to someone to be the solution but I didn’t know what else to do. It didn’t win us the game but no one got hurt chasing down lobs so I’ll call that a win.
It was a good group of fun guys and we had a lot of solid games. I just wish my shots were better since I’m getting ready to go play with the bunch of new people in Michigan. I’m going to go drink a bunch of water and get ready for tomorrow.
