Tuesday is ladies night, our second-to-last scheduled evening. We had a sub and played some good games but I’m not really sure how to describe the day. For me, such nitpicky things can overwhelm my limited brain space. I wore shoes that I don’t like, I wore crazy shorts that made me uncomfortable, my t-shirt was too tight, my normal hat wasn’t clean so I had to wear a backup hat…all of those little itty bitty things take up thoughts that can and usually do cause conflict with my game. Knowing I had those quirks to battle I figured, what the heck, use a different paddle.
Not knowing we were going to use a Dura ball, well that was just icing on the cake. It was full-on chaos for any of my pickleball routines.
Everyone actually played a lot better with the Dura this time around. We all seemed to have a little bit better control and were figuring out how to take advantage of hitting it hard. There were a few times a couple of us, myself included, got hung up on some service returns because it bounced funny or kicked in a different way. But for the most part I thought everyone played okay with that ball.
I used one of my older Icons that doesn’t have any extra weight on it. Even though it is a midweight paddle and the one I normally play with is lightweight, the midweight one weighs less. That makes sense, right? I’ve added lead tape to my lightweight paddle to make it heavier than the midweight.
It was nice to swing a little easier and still have decent shots here and there. I missed some shots and I tried some stupid stuff with the paddle being lighter. Weird stuff like thinking I could curve a ball in or catch a ball super low and get it over. The paddle didn’t make the shots magically work. They were still bad shots to take.
Most the games were pretty close. There wasn’t a lot of dinking so there weren’t any ATPs but there were a bunch of good, strategic plays. Everyone pulled off a sneaky serve. A specialty serve? An unexpected short or angle serve that was a winner. Even with as many weeks as we’ve played I haven’t adjusted well to playing against players who stay in the transition zone. I’m actually worried I’m starting to pick up that bad habit which will get me killed against super strong players. I’ll have to pay close attention to where I am on the court which will be great, another thing for me to think about instead of just playing.
I am so eager for tomorrow because I’m not playing or drilling. I’m so tired. I’ve been on the court 46 hours over the last 19 days and every time I play I feel drained. I’ll still be on the court for the ladies drill clinic but I’m hoping it will be a relaxing day and I can regroup.
It’s been tough to keep up with a daily recap of my play. I expected it would be a lot of the same stuff over and over. With the exception of writing about an outstanding shot someone took or writing about my feelings being hurt because of play rotation or some oddball thing that happened one day, it’s mostly rinse and repeat. Another day I’m tired. Another day I miss shots I don’t want to miss. Another day my mental game messes with my physical game.
I recently asked a friend I play with every week a very specific question. What do I need to work on? Her answer was, confidence. I have all the shots, I just have to work on my confidence. I was shocked, which is shocking since I mean, I read my own writing. I see how much my mental game interferes with my performance. But I had no idea I gave off an unconfident vibe. Willing to help, she sent me a video she thought might make a difference and it did.
In January I wrote a post and mentioned how I never win with a gal I play with and how bad I feel about it because we are both pretty good players. After watching the video I decided the next time I played with her we would win. No matter what, we were going to win. The confidence was in place and we won all 3 games we played. It was that simple!
Last weekend I had dinner with some of the people I played with and it was really interesting because they were talking about specific things to do in order to beat specific players. I was surprised how much detail was being shared and couldn’t help but wonder, what do they think is the trick to beat me? Not wanting to be quite as direct as I was with my friend, I tried to disguise my approach. I knew this was a group that drilled so I asked what they do when they drill so I could work on those things too. Consistency and confidence was the response – which wasn’t aimed specifically for me but stuck out to me because, there’s that confidence word again.
Wanting to continue the momentum gained from the video, and now hearing 2 different people drop the confidence bomb, I decided to follow up on a recommendation a friend gave me last summer (I’m slow to take a hint I guess) to read the Inner Game of Tennis. I’m confident it will make a difference.
