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Author of the bestselling book“ Pickleball Mindset,” national pickleball champion Dayne Gingrich sheds light on how to think on the court.
Me by MATTHEW SCHWARTZ
It’ s 1980 and 10-year-old Dayne Gingrich is watching an NBA game on TV with his father. The kid isn’ t just watching the action. He’ s studying it, analyzing it.
“ My dad and I logged more hours debating, dissecting, and analyzing NBA games than I could count,” Gingrich writes in his bestselling book,“ Pickleball Mindset”( coauthored with Jill Martin).“ Even as an elementary school kid, my dad didn’ t quiz me on player strategy or court strategy; he pushed me to consider the internal qualities that differentiated the good athletes from the great athletes.”
His father’ s focus planted a seed. Gingrich eventually became a prominent mental performance coach, first for tennis players, then for those in other sports. He has also tutored kids who have test-taking anxiety, sales executives, and pickleball players.
Jill Martin had been reading Gingrich’ s social media posts about using mental skills to help pickleball players and convinced him to put those strategies into a book.“ Pickleball Mindset” is not another tome about how to play. It dives deep into how to think on the court.
“ Being intentional on court is possible at all levels,” Gingrich says.“ Especially at the lower levels, players become singularly focused on getting the ball over and‘ not missing.’ Ironically, the more we attach our focus to not making mistakes, the more mistakes we make and the less we see on the court.”
Although“ Pickleball Mindset” uses the sport as a backdrop, its subtitle is“ The Blueprint for Peak Performance.” Indeed, the tips presented are aimed at helping readers make smart decisions off the court as well as on.
Gingrich acknowledges that he made poor decisions when he was young.
Dayne Gingrich and co-author Jill Martin in her Santa Barbara home where they wrote“ Pickleball Mindset.”
He was All-State in tennis and All-Conference in basketball at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California. He could have had a college scholarship in either sport but lost the chance.
“ I didn’ t work hard enough, was entitled, got bad grades in high school, thought my natural talent was enough, and wasn’ t a good teammate,” recalls Gingrich, 54.
He attended Santa Barbara City College for a little over a year, then quit to play semi-professional tennis.
“ It was somewhere in my 20s when I understood I wasn’ t where I thought I should be,” Gingrich says.“ I was sick of being mediocre and falling short of what I believed to be my potential. I saw people around me
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