My Tuesday ladies group got cancelled so I had to pivot for some pickleball play. The timing of one darn babysitter altered our schedule so I decided to hit up the old local rec center and see if I might be able to get a couple of good games.
It was nice to see some of the guys I used to play against and run into some of the original players in Columbus – people who played long before I even knew about the sport.
I did not attempt any of my roll shots. I mean, I attempted a slight variation of a roll on a couple of shots, but I didn’t want to speed anything up because these dudes are fast. That’s how they play, fast. They hit it hard and they play fast.
I can’t compete with that so it’s in my best interest to try to slow it down. The roll shots, if done correctly, have a little bit of pace on them which would be a disaster for me against those fellas.
Most of the guys there like to go after my backhand. They know it’s not one of my strongest shots so a lot of serves came to my backhand. In that facility there’s not a lot of space behind either baseline and there is a lot of activity behind one baseline. You kind of have in the back of your head, is someone behind me, is something happening back there, how much room do I actually have? That’s a lot of things to think about and then poof, a deep backhand return is upon me.
That’s something for me to keep in mind when I go to a new facility. I need to really pay attention to how much space I have behind me. The bubble and this facility eliminate what I consider the proper space to do an effective backhand return.
Today I eventually decided to shake around it and do a forehand and fortunately, that did not end up getting me punished. I was able to get in position for whatever came back.
The games were okay. If I had a good player then the other team might have scored 3 points. If the other team had 2 good players, then my team only scored 3 points. The games were pretty lopsided but I still had good opportunities to work on shots and get tested in ways that I don’t always see with my normal group.
I did land a backhand ATP that surprised me and everyone else. I’m glad I had the option to play despite my normal group getting cancelled.
