Today was an interesting pickleball day. I actually took yesterday off and I didn’t like it. I thought maybe I could use a break because Monday I tweaked my knee, twice. I’m glad I took a break for my knees sake, but then today, I felt like I didn’t know which way was up on the court.
I can get really in my head on taking days off. I know it isn’t the end of the world but it didn’t feel good playing today. My knee was fine, but my shots, performance and decision, weren’t great. It’s a tough position to be in, not knowing if I should rest for my knee and risk getting worse on the court, or playing to keep my game solid and risk my knee getting worse.
I did the drill group but cut out a little bit early so I could meet up with the group that had asked me to play. Our drill group plays games the last half hour and since the group I was joining was outside, I wanted to catch as much daylight as I could.
We did our normal dinking and drops in the drill group. I played a little game where they had targets and got points if they landed in the kitchen and more points if they hit the target. I wasn’t sure how that was going to play out but it actually ended up being okay. The group is so competitive I think they love stuff like that.
I did a drill where they practiced lobbing. Because it was mildly collaborative, they knew when the lobs were coming, it was pretty safe and allowed practice of both the lob and the retrieval. That ended up being a really good drill.
With one group, I had them drive balls that were fed short. That was a little sloppy because both sides were going at the same time. It turned out okay but wasn’t as smooth as the other drills.
When I went to play it was at new courts for me. They were nice and new and felt like they were in the middle of nowhere. But no one was really there so we had no trouble maintaining our court. That makes it worth the drive because when it’s 70 degrees out, pickleball nation is out as well. Getting a court to yourself is a real treat.
We had five so we rotated after each game. The first game I played, I kind of just counted on my drill group as my warm up. That was not accurate, I needed a warm up, especially since I was playing outside. I let that get into my head, from the sense of trying to fight it. Trying to tell myself it’s ok to play outside and then thinking about that more than just playing.
We played with a Dura ball, which I don’t normally use. In my first game we lost and I was playing with the lefty. We got down pretty badly and finally started stacking, to let him kind of have his comfort zone. My theory with 2 lefties is if we both typically stack, let’s stack. I’d rather have 1 of us uncomfortable than both of us. If I’m playing with a guy, that’s pretty easy to decide who will be comfortable.
Once we started stacking we came back, but we didn’t win. My next game we got spanked. I played with the other girl that was there and we did alright. We got ahead a few points but then kind of, I kind of lost it. I started dropping shots high and they ate that up.
Finally, I got a win when I played with the guy that I played with at nationals. Even though we don’t play together much I do feel more comfortable playing with him than the other people there because I feel like I know what he’s going to do. We did well enough to win but I still didn’t play great. He covered for me a bunch.
Overall, I did not have a very good night. I got whacked in the face from a ricochet off my paddle. It was kind of a surprise shot and I got my paddle there too late, hitting my paddle and then my face, right in the cheekbone. It didn’t hurt that bad but left a little mark. Right after that, another ball came and I did the exact same thing again.
It didn’t hit me in the face because it wasn’t hit as hard but I clearly didn’t have my paddle up in either scenario. I guess my takeaways from my very poor performance is I definitely need to be working on consistency with my drops, my returns and I need to keep my paddle up.
It was cool playing with different people at a new place, I just wish I would have played better.
