Pickleball is supposed to be ___!
Pickleball is supposed to be FUN!
My wife Doris and I have been playing Pickleball for almost 4 years now and we LOVE it. We play an average of four to five days a week with a variety of players of a variety of levels. My wife is a 3.0 player and I have been playing at a 3.5 level. We are both short so we are good at getting lower shots. And we are 67 and 68 years old and retired. We play in the mostly in the Chicago area but have also played in Arizona and Florida, and most recently in Naples.
As avid and pretty good ping pong players, (I won the men's ping pong tournament while on our honeymoon and my wife won the womens) Pickleball came naturally for us. We also had some great help from friends we made playing about the rules, scoring and some strategy.
My wife is a "Placer", meaning she is great at placing the ball where her opponent is not, while I am more of a hard shot, spinning ball lobber. We play for three reasons. First, to stay active and in shape. Second, to improve our skills and lastly to have FUN!!!
We firmly believe that Pickleball and laughter go hand in hand. We have rarely played where there was not a ton of laughter being heard. And that is great because laughter, especially for older folks, is like medicine. As a stand up comic, I am usually the one making the jokes or quips but we have others in our group who also join in the fun.
For example, I was playing a game against one of my friends and I really wanted to win, so on the last volley when the score was 10-9 in our favor, I jumped at a high shot and banged it into his foot and thus winning the game. My momentum, however, brought me all the way down to the floor where I laid like a beached seal. No harm done, albeit a little pain in my buttocks and a win make the fall worth it. Moments after my fall, one of the woman we play with named Vicki came walking through the court. Now Vicki is one of the nicest and quietest players in our group, so when she walked past the spot where I fell, stopped, looked down at the floor and said, "Somebody needs to tell the front desk about this dent in the floor". The laughter was thunderous. The loudest coming from me and my wife. That's how we know we are doing pickleball right.
Of course, we all want to win. Of course we all want to move up on the levels scale. And of course we all want to become better. But to us when you have all that and you don't have the element of FUN with laughter and smiles and community, then you have missed the point of the game.
Even when I played in a league a few years ago, my focus was first and foremost to have FUN. And I did. And guess what? I won my division. And in the process I made a lot of new friends and was able to help some of them get a little better.
Let's face it folks the game has the word pickle right in it, so how can you not have FUN. So practice, warm up before games and work on your dinks, but do not forget to enjoy the game, the community and most of all the people you are meeting and playing with, cause Pickleball without People is pretty boring.
God bless and keep on spinning baby!
