PICKLEBALL INSTRUCTION
PLAYING
ON
BY STEVE PARANTO
O
ver the years I have had many opportunities to play
competitive pickleball on many types of surfaces. In
the ‘80s, most of the USAPA tournaments were played
indoors in Washington state. The clubs at that time had
indoor/outdoor carpet, so most of my early tournaments
were played on this surface. I now live in Oregon, where
most of our tournaments are indoors on gymnasium
wooden floors. I have also played tournaments on tile
floors, rubber floors, synthetic wood floors, concrete
floors (just like a garage floor) and of course tennis court
surfaces. Here’s what I have found…
All surfaces can play drastically different from each other
and some surfaces will suit different players better—just
like in tennis where some players do well on fast surfaces
and others on slow surfaces like clay. Back in the ‘80s we
had a great singles player (Earl Birdsall) who was almost
unbeatable when playing on the carpet, but he could be
beaten when playing on a faster wooden floor. Future hall
54
of famer Billy Jacobsen also developed his amazing control
game on this carpet surface.
The other big variable in this equation is the ball that
is used on the particular surface. Technically all approved
balls can be used indoors and outdoors on any surface,
but it can be a huge mistake to choose the wrong ball for
a particular surface. In the early days of pickleball, we
used the Cosom Fun Ball exclusively for both indoor and
outdoor play. Now we have many choices of balls and it
is important to play with an “indoor ball” when playing
indoors on a fast surface such as wood, tile or concrete
that has no texture. I’m not going to talk about brand
names to choose, but I do strongly suggest not using a
hard ball when playing on these fast indoor surfaces—
unless you want very short rallies with very little dinking.
There are also a couple of indoor balls that are very hard
and will also result in short rallies that don’t resemble
traditional pickleball.
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