It’s another sunny winter day with light traffic making for a nice drive to Dayton, Ohio for some pickleball. I played with a couple of people that I don’t typically see on Sundays there, which is nice because the variety they offer and the unexpected shots they hit is so appreciated.
We play with the Dura there and being convinced that my Selkirk paddle would work well with that ball I pulled it out to use and evaluate. My theory wasn’t working out but I stuck with it after the first game tried to wait it out and get as many reps as I could to get more comfortable with it. It just wasn’t happening.
I switched to the Icon, deciding the Selkirk paddle will likely just end up on my wall of paddles in my office. The Icon has an edge guard which can be customized with different colors but I add weight to my paddle and put colored electrical tape over it. The edge guard is 3 parts. I recently noticed the electrical tape, which was white, was getting choppy from me hitting the ground so I replaced it with blue tape. I only replaced the top section (2 white edges, 1 blue) making the paddle look completely different, so much so that someone asked me if I got another new paddle. I answered no, I just put a different dress on her.
I started out with my partner I’m doing a round robin with later this month. We lost but the people we were playing were nice enough to let us stay together in the next game to work on a few things. We played a little better but everything she set up for me I butchered. I blame the Selkirk paddle because when I switched to the Icon I started playing better. It has to be the paddle and not me, right?
When we switched to mixed my serve was going a lot better. I really am not doing anything that terribly unique with it. I am strictly just stepping into it and trying to keep a fairly low drop. If I do it right it barely goes over the net and it skids a little bit. If I get a little bit more power on it then it goes a little bit deeper.
There were probably a handful of times that they didn’t call it out and they could have but I can’t see the line. I just know how it felt, it wouldn’t have surprised me if they called it out.
There were a bunch that flat out were good serves and that’s a nice feeling because it is how I served before I had my knee done. When I came back from my knee replacement, I decided that I didn’t want that extra movement so I switched to more of a static or planted serve. What I’m doing now is better than I anticipated it would be so I’m pretty happy.
The thing I notice with the serve is if I can get it decent the ball comes back a lot shorter. So if I have a strong forehanded partner it can be a lot of success. And it’s a lot easier to hit drops when they’re close like that.
I did evaluate my games yesterday because they’re on video and I was really stressing about how much I miss body shots and transition blocks. A lot of times the body shots are just speed ups and I don’t have my paddle up. I think it’s going to be important for me to work on improving that part of my game.
I had 2 ATPs on the day, 1 was a success and the other came back and I stood and watched it go past me, losing the play.
