Pickleball as a Sport

I should talk a bit about pickleball (pb). 

Rich II, a fellow golfer and frequent visitor to these posts, has taken up the game, as well as Steve, also a golfer.  Then there is Dave and Mike, who don't golf, but hang out at the dog park together.  Note that they have dogs, it's that they are dog lurkers.

Steve is a good golfer and has played a number of the racket sports before.  He took to pb quite quickly and it didn't take him long to adjust to the ball and paddles.  He made a comment in re pb that reserves to be passed on.  The comment was, "This game has a nice speed."

Yes, I would agree with that.  When they designed the game they did a good job.  It doesn't require too much running, or much strength, nor agility.  It does require a bit of all of those, but not much.  The balls bounce ok, but not too high. 

The court is about 1/4 the size of a tennis court and the areas behind the baselines is not real deep.  You get away with this due to the lack of bounce of the ball.  The also created an area from which you cannot volley the ball.  This is named the kitchen.  You can volley but you can't be in or fall into the kitchen in doing so.  Also if you are serving, you can't volley the return of service.  Serves are done underhanded.   All of this is to slow the game down a bit.

Now what you can do is to volley a ball that is hanging over the kitchen, but you have leap to the side of the court.  This is known as an "Ernie."  I'm not sure who Ernie was, but his fame, small though it maybe, will live on.

Finally let me touch on the paddles.  The current state of the art are a honeycomb composite with graphite or aluminum or various plastics.  They are about the size of a racketball paddle.  And they provide a very nice sound when the ball is hit near the middle of the paddle.  Ben Hogan talked about the "unmistakable click of a ball well hit."  If you are as good a golfer as I am, you don't hear that sweet sound very often.  But even us beginning pb players hear it quite often.  It's nice and the ball paddle interaction has a nice feel.

We've been playing pb on Tuesday and Thursdays for an hour.  Then we kind of wilt.  Sweat soaked and wobbly of leg, we seek the shade and a slug or two of water.  It's been a nice variation on golf.  It's an excellent full body work out.  Rich II was so taken with the game he went and got himself a paddle.  He found an old Davis tennis racket cover for protection.  I used to have a Davis racket and the cover brought back a few memories.

We had the courts to ourselves for a few weeks, but then others showed up!  They play indoors during the Winter and move outside during the fair weather.  They have a machine that will lob balls for them, they have a leaf blower to clear the courts and they have buckets of balls.  Big buckets.  We have 12 balls between all of us.  They have 20 gallons of balls.

One of them played a game with us and learned us a bit about the rules.  They are friendly and complimentary.  Bonding on the pickleball court!