Today wasn’t my best performance on the pickleball court. I don’t know if I was tired from twice yesterday or if I just had one of those days and didn’t played poorly.
I got really frustrated that the people I was playing against were playing from the transition zone and not playing from the kitchen. My frustration was easy to understand, they kept beating me from there. I got burned so many times on shots that shouldn’t have been winners but because they are playing so far back they have time to read the court and hit where we aren’t. Even worse, I didn’t recognize it and make the proper adjustments. I kept teeing them up with easy shots to place where they wanted.
I feel like I have pretty good pickleball shots but I’ve got to learn when they are playing whatever it is they are playing and make the right adjustments. It does seem to be a more common theme, for people to linger back, but I have to learn faster and hit the right shots so I stop getting beat by it.
I also had a really rough day with my drops. So rough that I switched to a lighter paddle. All my drops were super high or I just flat out hit it in the net. I had a really poor performance day and will need to make better decisions, and shots, whether I’m tired or fresh, in order to be a solid player.
I went to my favorite local rec center for some Friday night pickleball. One of my buddies wasn’t there, but another buddy was. I had the opportunity to catch up and have a good conversation.
I value his thought process on strategy and since I’m struggling so much with the people who play from the transition zone it was nice to have someone to kind of bounce some ideas around about how to best recognize and adapt to it with the proper shots.
I played 3 games, none of them serious. In 2 of the games I think our opponents were in win mode but I was barely able to stand up straight (didn’t drink enough water). My partner and I lost one game and were losing the second game.
I think I always knew that the people who were waiting to play watched us but I didn’t pay much attention to it because they were behind me. Our opponent hit a horrible shot that hit the net and crawled over for a winner. The people watching cheered and clapped, totally ticking off my partner. He was so mad they cheered a bad shot that he ignored the aches, pains and stiffness and started pulling out some of his guaranteed winner shots. It’s funny what motivates people.
We came back and won, each of us landing a backhand ATP. His was better, he hit the back end of the court, but it was nice that we each got one.
Usually I close the place down on Friday night but I decided to wrap it up and head home because I have to get up super early in the morning to go play pickleball.
