What would you tell a tennis player who wants to get started in pickleball?
First, I’d say that pickleball’s main attraction to everyone, not just tennis players, is that it’s very easy to pick up and have fun on the first day. Tennis players are obviously very coordinated with volleys and ground strokes; pickleball strokes are similar, so tennis players will get off to a good start.
What they’re going to find is that after that good start, they have to make a mental effort to transition from one sport to the other, because you can’t just try to play tennis on a pickleball court. That will get you to a certain point, but not really far, unless you take some things away from your traditional tennis game plan and adapt them to pickleball.
You alluded to this, but what’s the biggest challenge for a tennis player coming over to pickleball?
Tennis is very much a groundstroke game these days. You’re basically just hitting big groundies from the baseline, and a big serve. The main thing in pickleball is knowing when to hit big groundstrokes versus when not to, because a lot of tennis players will just choose to keep whacking away. It becomes clear early on that won’t cut it against decent pickleball players.
Generally speaking, you can pin down success in pickleball to shot selection. That’s definitely the hardest thing for tennis players to learn. But when they get that, it becomes very fun, because they know they have control over the ball. It gets them over that mental hurdle of doing the right thing at the right time, and the sport becomes a lot easier for them.
Tennis players are used to strings making contact with the ball, while pickleball uses a solid paddle. How do you generate spin with no strings?
The paddle doesn’t catch the ball nearly as much, so you’ll see a lot of tennis players trying to use semi-western forehands or even more severe grips, which sends the ball straight into the ground. The best way to think about it as a tennis player is to play a very flat game, like an old-school style of tennis. Volleys are different as well as groundstrokes. In tennis you often cut the ball, or hit it kind of like a slice. Everyone knows the classic tennis volley where the racquet face is open, whereas in pickleball, it’s pretty satisfying that you can do a little more with the ball. There’s not just one way to play.