Today was a modification of the Tuesday night group. We had a sub for one of the one of the gals but it was a solid group. Something very unusual happened tonight and it affected my play. Can you guess what? We played with the dang Dura ball and of course I was awful.
I hit serves in the net, struggled with returns, hit overheads in the net, you name it, I was messing it up. I think I just like to blame the Dura.
I did try my 2-hand backhand when I could and I was very, very unsuccessful with it. That wasn’t the ball though. I think I didn’t get my footwork down.
Overall I think I played okay but I was not very comfortable ever, because of the ball. Because it bounces so high I wanted to hammer it every single time and had to force myself to drop. Despite having to force myself to do them, my drops were okay. They weren’t great, but they were solid.
I did have one ATP, it probably was not going to be in, but she blocked it and it went out. So, it counts. There were a few volleys that I was pleased with because I kept them deep.
Everybody had great hands tonight. That Dura really messed with all of us in different ways. One gal seems to know how to use it to her advantage with her serves and with some of the spins she puts on the ball but the majority of us were kind of like, whoa, look how far that went after we hit it.
I did work on the middle coverage a few times. I got the results I wanted on one side which was actually the worst side to do it on. She could not resist hitting where I wasn’t and she missed it. It’s still a risky move for me to make. There were a couple of times where I definitely did not need to cover the middle because my partner was there and I was stealing her ball to hit. That’s kind of awkward when you’re working on something that isn’t necessarily needed at this level but I need to see it to know if there ever would be a scenario that I would be able to capitalize on doing it.
It was a pretty good night. We only have a couple weeks left on the schedule but I’ve enjoyed playing with them.
I showed a couple of them my latest sticker idea and both of them seemed to like it but not for the reasons I had hoped. My jokes just don’t land, even on stickers. My 2 latest sticker ideas someone has commented to put them on a t-shirt but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her play pickleball in a t-shirt so I don’t know that it would be a big seller if I did that.
