Happy Thanksgiving! I truly hope it was a great one for you and your family. Irene and I, having just recovered from Covid, had a lot to celebrate and went out with close friends to do just that….and had a pretty good turkey dinner, yay! We know we have a lot to be thankful for, including each other, the family including a new arrival, and both past and present dogs!
Recently I suggested to a close friend, a fellow pickleball player, that I could contribute hints and suggestions to her ongoing pickleball group chat. She demurred, thinking that unless I could make it “fun” and fictionalize a humorous story around my suggestions, that most people wouldn’t want to read what I had to say. That most people simply Google for what they want to learn or at least read about. The implication was that our age most people don’t listen – or learn – much that’s new anyway. So, in essence, why bother…either them or myself?
Initially my feelings were a bit hurt by this. I maintain a pretty strict policy about not coaching other people, even if they ask, and only reluctantly and rarely join in coaching and teaching sessions….although in the past Irene and I have conducted literally 100s of pickleball clinics, teaching sessions and mentoring programs. So why was I offering, and why do I so seldom do it today?
The first part was just ego. I always have something to say, even when I don’t say it. The second part is, I guess, because I know at heart that my friend is right. When I’m on the court playing, I clearly choose to not offer suggestions….it’d be like your pulling my teeth to get one out of me. What you do on the court is your business, and although you might be screwing up our one game together, I just don’t care. I don’t play tournaments any more. And winning a single recreational game is (almost always) meaningless to me now. (Yes, honestly compels – there are a few rare exceptions.) A game lasts – what – twelve minutes? Another one starts right now.
How I feel about how I play is a different story. I still hate making unforced errors and although I’m still a decent player for my age, I make more now than I did “back then”. And, now needing a back operation, having had other surgeries, and just being old, I’ve lost a few steps, so the “hero” shots are mostly beyond me these days.
(For those of you needing an example of a “hero” shot, I haven’t made an “Ernie” in a year, although I’ve made a few ATPs -Around The Posts – lately.)
That said, I still know what’s right and what isn’t when I’m out there. And, yes, I’ve got the background to say that. Irene and I built and administered a number of simple to complex skill-based rating systems for the large pickleball clubs we ran, and personally evaluated dozens if not hundreds of players in the doing. Many of our process suggestions were eventually incorporated into the USA Pickleball Association (USAPA)’s own rating system. So, yes, I can still recognize screwups when I see them…I’m practiced at that. And at least 10% of the time, I can cover for your screwups when I’m on the court with you. But my own little code calls for me to be a nice guy; most (but not all) who know me would probably agree – so I won’t say anything about your mistakes even though, frankly, most of what you are doing wrong is VERY correctable.
Example; I played yesterday with a truly nice man visiting here from Florida; let’s call him James. James reported that he, on his home courts in Florida (an apparently very busy pickleball club of several hundred, playing on a total of six courts) was rated as a “2 out of 5”, with “1” being the highest. This would translate in my thinking to his being about a 4.0-rated player, with 5.0 being the top. IMHO, a USAPA rating of 4.0 is VERY good. Irene and I, when last rated, were playing tournaments (even occasionally winning) at 4.0 and 4.5 and any good 4.0 team could keep up with us much of the time. 4.0 is the level that guarantees, in my thinking, that you are a pickleball player…you know what to do and when to do it, and do those things, most times. The only difference between you and I, or, better, between you at 4.0 and any 5.0, is consistency. In the day, I was – at 4.5 – more consistent than the 4.0’s, and almost any 5.0 was more consistent than me.
I didn’t offer my opinion , or respond at all, to his self-assessment, but (again, in my opinion) James is far from being a 2 out of 5 pickler, at least not if 2 is near the top and not the bottom. Let me give you one example, and I swear it’s only one of four.
After Jerry returns a serve, he stays at the baseline and does not come forward to the No-Volley-Zone, the line nearest the net. Ever. I don’t mean he didn’t do it once. He should have and didn’t EVERY SINGLE TIME. If he were Catholic, I would say this is a mortal sin and he might rot in hell…but perhaps in my pre-Christmas depressive mood I’m being too extreme? It’s certainly the equivalent of you waiting at a very busy crosswalk for the “Walk” sign to begin flashing, and then staying on the sidewalk.
Fortunately I, a still-spry-for-78 player, know how to poach. And so I did, and therefore we won, at least the first game, beating two decent players maybe 11-6. The second game we played against players who were worse than Jerry; true beginners, 2.0 or 2.5 if we had been rating them. And one of them is a woman who, yesterday, was the weaker player on her team but whom I think is gonna be a good player in a year or so. So I asked her as follows:
“Janet, tell me what you’re working on? I’ll try and hit you what you need.”
“Are you messing with me?” she asked. “But, sure, I’d appreciate have you hit some short returns. I’ve gotta practice coming in and getting set.” (Didja note that what she wanted to practice was the opposite behavior from what Jerry was exhibiting? I’m sure you did.)
“K, deal,” I said. “I’ll give you short shots.” And I did the best I could, being somewhat gentle with my own shots while poaching everything I could of Jerry’s when I was at the NVZ (or short) line, setting her up for her short shots. And by golly Janet got into the rhythm of that and, towards the end, was playing lights-out, and they beat us, 11-10, her going down the line past my poach for the game-winner! Bless her heart, I loved her for that! Still do, writing about it today! Yay, you, Janet, you rock.
(Was I coaching, btw? Not really….more following thoughts from The Inner Game of Tennis and giving her practice shots, letting her work out what was right and what wasn’t, knowing she could.)
Under these circumstances Jerry, way in the back court, probably only got a third of the balls he’d normally see; I was poaching the rest. But not once did he try to come up, right? Never is never, and the boy does not come forward.
So OK, it’s only pickleball, and I don’t think either Jerry or I cared that we lost a game. (I know I didn’t, at least.) But after that, he wanted to change partners and play against Mike (who is equal to me) and I so he could experience playing against better players. So we played two games, dumbing it down a bit. He never never came forward and he never asked for advice. Neither Mike nor I offered him any. But the 11-3-ish scores should have told him something, if he was listening.
And the point of all of this? My friend, mentioned at the beginning of this post, was right in calling me off from volunteering my unsolicited suggestions. Only a small percentage of players listen. Janet and her ilk, being learners, they’re gonna find what they need when they need it; I hardly think it a coincidence that I showed up for her yesterday – we all know that’s the Metaverse speaking. And someday Jerry may ask for help, and maybe he won’t. I’m guessing the latter, but hope springs eternal.
And just to satisfy my own curiosity, how do YOU handle the act of given unsolicited advice? I have no reason to believe I’ve got the one answer, so I’d love to hear from you.
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I started working in banking for a very small community bank. So I never had the opportunity to take any of the fancy American Banking Association classes in order to learn the official “right” ways to do things. As time went on, I moved on to really big financial institutions where I did lots of teaching and mentoring. By that time no one figured out that what I was teaching was how to do things according to my self taught methods. Oh well, the results were good, so what the heck.
I developed a version of the walking around manager approach. Boy the results were really mixed. The few bozos who had actually had some “formal” training thought that I was absolutely crazy. They would argue every step of a process even though we arrived at the same conclusion. Their argument was that management would challenge their methods with some kind of punishment. I started to back off a bit, identifying the really talented staff. But I wouldn’t volunteer any advice. They often sought me out with difficult problems, and I would coach them through to the conclusion. Those folks formed the core of a group that would visit my office quite a bit for informal tutoring. I figure that unsought advice is often uselesss.