We extended our ladies pickleball play for a few more weeks and today we had a bunch of good games. I was working on trying to get my serves deep and trying to take smart shots. I don’t know that I was necessarily successful with that but I wasn’t disappointed with my decisions.
There’s not a lot positive or negative to say about today’s play. We all did things well, we all made mistakes. I used my power paddle in 1 game and mixing it up by doing that is always fun.
Lately (not today) there has been a situation come up that is really interesting. There are new rules in effect in 2023. A good example is no longer being allowed to do the snap serve. It is illegal. I recently played with someone who was imparting spin with the toss, making the serve illegal.
Someone said something about it and the response was ‘Well I don’t play tournaments so I can do it.’ Can you? Not following the rules in a recreational game would be like playing backyard baseball and running to second base after you get a hit. You don’t not follow the rules of baseball in a rec game, why would rules only apply in tournaments for pickleball?
Typically you can give friendly advice. Hey, you are going in the kitchen, your serve is illegal, or you are calling a lot of in balls out, etc. Telling people all those things will come back to haunt them in tournament play normally gets people to shape up because they realize that with a referee they probably won’t get away with the tactics they are doing to win rec games.
But a lot of people have realized tournaments aren’t worth the money. They won’t ever play an event with a referee. So how do you convince them to follow rules?
I digress. I’m glad I got to play today and happy the games were competitive and rule abiding.
