What a Best-selling Pickleball Author Tells New Pickleball Players

John Callahan is a renowned pickleball champion and the author of an Amazon bestseller about pickleball called Pickleball Tips, Lessons, Strategies, & Myths.

On the Pickleball Fire podcast he talked about how he got introduced to the game.  He said it was purely random. Callahan was invited to join the game when two people playing pickleball in a park caught his interest. As soon as he played his first game with them, Callahan’s burning passion for pickleball began and drove him to buy three paddles the very next day with his son. 

He used to teach tennis before stepping into pickleball, and he was asked by one of his former tennis students to be her pickleball coach. She was a state champion and wanted to start playing nationally. Having started his pickleball academy in St. Louis in 2017, Callahan has had many students who have gone on to play in the US Open.

Callahan shared an incident from his career. He was asked by a student who was also a gold medalist to play alongside her in the US Open. When they reached the finals, he found himself playing alongside one of his students against yet another student. That was one of the most memorable occasions for him as a teacher.

As Callahan shared, many of his students had little or no sports background, while others were transitioning to pickleball from tennis. In his book, inspired by the students he met who became great athletes, he has dedicated the first chapter to pickleball players transitioning from tennis and the second one to those with little or no sports background.

When asked for general advice for pickleball players, he said that recognizing that pickleball is a unique game – different from tennis and other racket sports – is the first hurdle faced by most players from a tennis background. His advice was to have some discernment, make the right shots at the right time, remember that the ready position is more important than the court position, and avoid falling for the ten greatest myths related to pickleball that he has included in his bestselling book. Even when it comes to tournament preparation, Callahan recommends using a discernment strategy and reducing unforced errors in the game.