Pickleball Magazine 2-6 Courtesy of PickleballTournaments | Page 74

THE ‘PROBLEM’
BY DANNY ORTEGA
E
arlier this year, my mixed
doubles partner and I blazed
through a tournament and won
silver. Our serves that day were consistent and
without a care in the world. Three days later, at another
venue and a different bracket, my same partner lost all
control of her serve. It was so frustrating to her that she
insisted we use all of our time-outs to practice her serve
and discuss in detail what might be happening.
At another recent tournament, a very similar thing
occurred with my men’s doubles partner. In our first match,
he couldn’t drop his serve in an ocean. Consequently, we
lost our first match and wound up in the “opportunity
bracket” where something rather miraculous happened.
He began to serve with his opposite hand. Mind you, it
wasn’t necessarily pretty, but we all know the first rule
of pickleball: “Thou shalt not miss thy serve!” Together,
we went on to win the gold in our bracket with his rather
72
unorthodox approach to the serve. He made a change and
did what he had to do to win.
Over the years I have noticed a syndrome associated with
a lot of sports that require a ball to be struck. Whether
it’s golf, tennis, baseball, football, even pickleball—you
name the sport—there is an affliction that can haunt even
some of the sport’s best. It is often called the “YIPS.” This
will be the first and last time in this article that I will use
this dreaded word. This malady seems to manifest itself at
the most inopportune times. It’s something that happens
to some muscles of the body as they begin to twitch ever
so slightly, but whose effect begins with the large mass
between the ears: the human brain.
Many athletes who have played a sport well have
mentioned being “in the zone,” that area of an endeavor
where no mistakes happen and the flow of their game
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