INSTRUCTION
LEARN TO RESET
By Alice Tym
WHAT TENNIS PLAYERS AND TABLE TENNIS PLAYERS
NEED TO UNDERSTAND ABOUT PICKLEBALL
I
recently attended the World Championships in
Punta Gorda, Florida, with two of my former
Yale tennis team players. It was their first
tournament and I had a chance to observe their
metamorphoses from tennis to pickleball. One player
had never played; the other had hit a few times. They
won bronze. A few more warm-up matches and they
would have taken gold.
Tennis players and table tennis players all have court
sense and understand how important it is to have good,
efficient strokes. They’re able to make the scoring
adjustment and the adaptation to double elimination.
Double elimination requires preparation of food and
drink for a long day and a change in mentality to “it’s
never over until it is really, finally, over.” But there’s
another fundamental between pickleball and tennis
and table tennis that players need to understand, learn
to play, and make the mental adjustment to their game
plans. That is the reset.
Both tennis and table tennis points are like chess
moves. In tennis, you serve a slice wide to elicit a short
return and an open court so that you can
hit deep to the far corner in hopes of
taking the net with the opponent
out of position and scrambling,
throwing up a lob that you
put away with an overhead.
Or, in doubles, straight
serve and volley.
In table tennis,
players put hellacious
spin on their serves
and attack a popped up
return. In both sports,
points build on moves
56
TO SUBSCRIBE, CALL 888.308.3720 OR GO TO THEPICKLEBALLMAG.COM
that result in a crescendo. The point is concluded after a
well-thought-out strategy.
Not so in pickleball. Players have a strategy, but the
serve is not dominant as it is in tennis and table tennis.
The court is smaller than tennis. The ball is slower than
in tennis or table tennis. Then there is the reset. You
hit a “putaway” and the opposition takes pace off of
your putaway and gets you into a dink game. Cat and
mouse. Back and forth. You see an opening and smack
it. Then someone hits a soft ball and you are back in the
dink game. In tennis and table tennis, you put the ball
away. In pickleball, you reset. Patience. Change of pace.
Soft shots.
Tennis and table tennis players who take up pickleball
have to learn when and how to reset. They have to learn
to mentally adapt to the frustration. It is an attitude.
You need the skill to be able to take pace off the ball and
the shots to keep in the game. It is not just shot making;
it is defusing the opponents’ shots as well. Most of all,
you need the mindset to start over and over. Your great
shot may come back. Suddenly you are in a dink game.
Patience. Reset.
My players learned quickly. They
worked on touch and placement.
Most of all they worked on
turning frustration into the
delight of maneuvering
their opponents out of
position and finally
ending the point. That
is the difference in
pickleball. Placement.
Patience. Persistence.
And, maybe a little
more patience. •