Should You Play Patient or Aggressive?

Feb 22, 2024

Hey!

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 two parts: 

1. Helpful Tip (Video) – Transition & 4th Shots.

2. For the Pickleball Nerds – 2 Thought-Provoking Ideas from Others.

A Helpful Tip (Video):

There’s hundreds of skills to learn in this game. And at times, it’s overwhelming to know what to work on. But wait, I have good news for you.

Work on the 2 skills I talk about in this video, and you’ll improve faster than working on tweeners and ATP’s — although those are fun :)

Enjoy!👇

For the Pickleball Nerds:

The majority of players try to play PB, jumping back and forth between two categories: Patience & Aggressive. They’re constantly attempting to figure out when to attack and when to wait. This causes a mental separation between the two skill sets, often freezing them into not knowing when to do what. 

When they’re disconnected like this, too often, patient turns into passive and aggressive turns into reckless.

Instead of separating the two, combine them. Think of every ball we hit (except for resets) as patiently aggressive. Create a mindset of “calm - fire.” Dinks are patient AND Aggressive. Attacks are patient AND aggressive.

IF, we shift our mindset. Being consistent and patient doesn’t have to be mentally different from being aggressive and threatening.

– Dayne Gingrich

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From Winning Ugly by Brad Gilbert. (And yes, it’s tennis, but the same applies to pickleball.)

Too often you have the risk vs. reward calculation backward.

Namely, when you don’t have an advantage in the point — like when you’re forced over to the doubles alley in the backcourt — you try to rip the impossible one in twenty lucky shot, like the 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.

But 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.

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. 

Until next week, 

Kyle

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