Weekly Review #1

This is the start of a recurring series where I review how the week has gone, games played, lessoned learned, as well as any resources I found fun or useful.

📝 Summary

📊 Current Rank: ~3.25 (Self-Assessed)

This week was all about getting in some time on the courts to apply the skills and strategy I've been practicing / learning about. While I was capable of some higher level play, I continued to miss easy shots while still struggling to solidly close points when given the opportunity to.

I plan on being more diligent on tracking the games and how they went, but as far as an estimation of what I played:

• Casual Games: 20
• Challenge Games: 5
• Tournament Games: 0

In the future, I intend to track stats on games won / loss, but for this week I think it would be accurate to say that I lost most of my challenge games and won maybe a little more than half of my casual games.

✨ Highlights

1. 🏆 Win: Played what is likely my most intense game to date. We were down approximately 4-10 and managed to claw our way to win with a final score of 15-13.
2. 🏆 Win: I was able to pull off a sustained forehand dink rally that felt really polished.
3. 🏆 Win: Played in my first 3.5-4.0 bracket game and managed to win some legitimate points and not get pickled!
4. 💡Discovery: Got to experience the Life Time (Reston) and Dill Dinkers (Rockville) indoor courts. Overall had a great experience and will write more about them in dedicated posts.
5. 🔬 Research: Got to try the Lobster Sports Pickleball Machine - The Pickle Two! Overall a good ball machine, but it wasn't as easy to use as I'd have liked. More on this experience in another post.

🧐 Reflections

The soft game still matters.

Even though there's a lot of talk about the meta of pickleball changing to hard drives and fast fire fights in the kitchen, the reality is that the ability to reset and control the pace of a game is important at the intermediate level. I played against a lot of bangers this week and many of my solid points came just from managing pace along with controlled positioning which caused unforced errors on my opponent's part.

Fast balls and fire fights are fun, but for me personally, I really hate losing a point because I couldn't manage a soft shot properly.

Run after the ball if it's lobbed.

Something I noticed is that I have a bad habit of watching a lobbed ball go over my head before deciding whether to act on it. This put me in a bad position a number of times where I wasn't able to catch the ball or straight up lost the point because I assumed it would be out.

Even though it costs more energy, this is a reminder to myself that if a ball is lobbed, just go after it and then wait for it to drop so I can respond to it if necessary. This way I don't lose out on point that I would otherwise have the chance to save. This goes even for balls that get lobbed over my partner's head (since most people don't want or can't exert the effort to mad dash for a ball).

Communication with your partner is important.

This one sounds obvious at face value, but especially when you are queuing as a solo player with random people, you can't count on play history to know how to handle things. Being clear about what balls you want to get (or you would like your partner to get) can go a long way in making games go smoother for everyone.

In addition, aside from communicating strategy, being encouraging to your partner can help to pick up their spirits. Especially in communities where the air can be competitive, I realized that players are constantly sizing themselves up against the rest of the court and positive encouragement to your partner can go such a long way especially when they may feel like the weakest link on the court (even if that isn't true).

💎 Internet Gems

• Funny skit on the dynamic calls on whether a ball is in or out
• Useful tip on why attacking the ball from a low position is generally a bad idea
• Insightful advice on court positioning after resetting a ball

👉 Next Steps

It's Christmas week, so my guess is it'll be tricky to take lessons or get a lot of games in with people out of town / busy with obligations. So my plan for this week is to:

1. Wall drills with trainer paddle to improve eye-hand coordination
2. Footwork and swinging drills to improve muscle memory
3. Establish a more solid warm-up routine before playing to prevent injuries
4. Figure out a way to record my games so I can start posting those and reflecting on them when weeks are slower like this one.