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Are High Risk Shots Worth It?

Jun 27, 2024

Hey!

95 days left until the launch of ThatPickleballSchool on October 1st.

Before we keep going, welcome back to another edition of the blog. If you’re new to the blog and want to go back and check out past editions, go here!

Today’s edition has three parts:

1. Answering Your Questions – High Risk vs. Smart.

2. A Fun Video – The most inspirational video you’ve ever seen. πŸ˜‚

3. Update on My Journey Playing Pro – PPA San Clemente Recap.

Answering Your Questions:

One subscriber shared their biggest challenge is…

“Still wanting to go for that amazing low-percentage shot over the safer more consistent shot.” 

Which got me thinking of this line from the book “Winning Ugly” that addresses this exact thing in Tennis.

Too often you have the risk vs. reward calculation backward. Namely, when you don’t have an advantage in the point, you try to rip the impossible one in twenty lucky shot like one you made a couple years ago. Conversely, when you get a ball right smack in the middle of the court — just back of the service line — suddenly you think, “ooooo, I don’t wanna miss this easy one,”  and play it safe, just push it over the net. 

I say: “Why? What are you thinking?” That’s the time to get more aggressive, take some risk, up the ante. The balls in your strike zone and you’ve got a much better chance to go for a productive forcing shot or winner. It’s an easier shot that offers an easier reward. Take it.

The lesson? Don’t bunt when the balls teed up for a home run; don’t go for a home run when a single keeps the inning going. 

Club players often get cautious when they should get aggressive and aggressive when they should be cautious. Federer may be able to hit a winner from anywhere in the stadium including the hot dog stand, but club players should be more realistic in analyzing when to up the risk to produce the reward. 

In your pickleball game, constantly consider three things.

  1. What ball are you receiving from your opponent?
  2. What’s your current court positioning?
  3. What’s your ability?

And let the answers to those three questions guide your decision to hit an attacking ball or reset shot. Because the decision of when to do each of these often determines who wins and loses games. 

A fun video to get you hyped:

For a while, people have told me to bring back the comedic videos. The truth is, I’ve always loved doing content like that.

But over the last year, the educational content on youtube has been a focus for me, and requires a big time investment to make it good and valuable for you all. So the comedic stuff took a backseat. 

BUT, inspiration has struck a few times recently, and a few days ago — I had the idea to do a remake of the famous,

“Miracle on Ice Speech.”

So I rewrote a script, got my friends in the room, hit record, and this is how it turned out :)

CLICK HERE

Update on My Journey Playing Pro:

I played the PPA San Clemente a few days ago and here’s what happened:

Pro Singles Qualifier:

This was one of the biggest qualifiers of the year with over 120 people signed up to play. Which meant, you had to win four matches to get into the main draw. Which also meant, if I played 4 best 2 out of 3 singles matches in one day, I might pull out of men's doubles the following day due to excessive bodily pain. πŸ˜‚

In my first round, I started a bit shaky. In fact, 6 of my friends (also playing the qualifier) happened to be watching while they waited for their matches to start. At 2-4, I took a timeout because I was struggling to win points. And when I walked over to my friends, I remember saying, “I don't even know what’s going on out here.”

I honestly couldn’t remember what happened in every point leading up to that. I wasn’t thinking much. I wasn’t recognizing patterns. I was just hitting the ball, then getting frustrated when it didn’t go my way, then reset & repeat.

Have you ever felt this way?

It happens to me in singles way more than doubles, primarily because, even though I’ve been playing more singles lately, I still don’t have that many reps. And often feel helpless out there. 

Back to the match…

I got down 3-9 in game 1, then just went on a tear. I’ve said this in the past, but I need to serve bigger from the beginning. At 3-9, I said screw it, and rattled off 8 points in a row to win 11-9.

Then I won game 2 pretty handily, 11-4.

In my second match, it was actually a bit easier. I won 11-0, 11-3.

In my 3rd round match, I played this guy Grayson Goldin, who’s actually playing today in the quarterfinals of the main draw. He absolutely destroyed me. 11-0. 11-2.

The truth is, he’s just way better than me at singles.

I did tell people around the venue when they asked, “it was way closer than the score.” Then I walked away quickly before they could ask me any follow up questions. πŸ˜‚

Between us. It wasn’t. HA! He should have beaten me 11-0, 11-0. 

MEN'S DOUBLES: 

In men's doubles, we were in the main draw and played against the twins, Hunter & Yates Johnson. I really liked that matchup for us going in. We started really slow, I missed a dink on the first point, and suddenly we found ourselves down 5-0 in about 10 seconds. We went on to lose that game 11-2.

In game 2, we started off stronger. The main issue for us in game 1 was returns and 4th shots.

Returns weren’t deep enough and we didn’t do a good job handling their 3rd shot drives. Which is the thing they’re known for. Both VERY good singles players. 

In game 2, we did a much better job on returns and 4ths. Which, for everyone reading, if you’re playing against “bangers,” or players with big drives, the way to slow the game down is to hit bigger returns, get your 4th shots on the ground, and be okay not “keeping them back” at all times. 

Also block your 4ths down rather than deep. One of our problems was we were trying to block balls deep, but their drives are so good the timing has to be perfect and we ended up missing some into the net and long.

Then on your serve, hit more drops so you play more at the kitchen. We did that and won game 2 pretty handily.

In game 3, we started well, up 5-1. 

Then I missed two returns in a row. Not good. And we found ourselves down 6-5 on the switch. That was tough because in game 3, you really want to get to 6 first because you switch sides at 6 in game 3, and then, the psychological effect is in play. If we go up 6-1 when we had the chance, we win that match, in my opinion. That’s how much points early in games matter. 

On the switch, they hit good shots, we made a few mental errors, and it turned on us quickly. We lost 11-6.

That was a tough loss, because when you have an established team on the hook, you have to beat them. They were playing a bit sloppy and gave us a lot of chances to take hold of that match and put them away.

Overall, it was a great learning match. (As they all are). 

If you want to watch, go to 9:38:00 - click here.

Until next week,

Kyle

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