Tips for Pickleball Beginners That Will Keep You in the Game
I recently talked to teaching professional Ben Paquette on the Pickleball Fire podcast. He said he teaches a lot of beginners because the sport is just starting to take off in the Dallas, Texas area. He had a couple of great observations which he shared to help people without a sports background who take up pickleball.
Tip #1
While the team who makes the fewest errors in a pickleball game usually wins, know that when learning the sport you are going to mess up. And it is okay to do that! Even the number one men's player in the world, Ben Johns, makes errors as you saw him doing when he lost the first game in a singles match against AJ Koller at the Pickleball Professional Associations Newport Beach, California event.
Paquette said, “The most challenging thing psychologically for these people is they have only so much free time, right? Whether they're retired or not, they only have so much free time. They want to come here and just do something that's new. And if a person who is older or not an athlete tries something for the first time and they don't seem to do well, it's very easy for them to dismiss it and say, well, I don't want to do this because I don't want to waste my time not being good at something.” So, know that when you are learning to play pickleball, it's okay to hit the ball out or in the net. It's natural to do this and your game will improve in time.
Tip #2
One of the fun things about pickleball is you can hit the ball hard at each other and it's likely no one will get hurt as we are essentially playing with a wiffle ball. Paquette said he sees beginners hitting the ball hard at each other all of the time. He recommends to actually slow the game down as this helps your hand-eye coordination. Ben likens it to when you first learned to drive. You didn't go 60 miles per hour on the freeway, but instead you drove slowly around a parking lot. The idea is similar in pickleball. Slow the ball down so you can become more comfortable controlling the ball. This improves your hand-eye coordination as you are able to hit more shots in a rally.
