PICKLEBALL – I CAN DO THIS

Everyone is playing pickleball and my local park is offering free lessons. And Amazon sells the paddles for a cheap $20.00.

So I’m all set. Geared up with gym togs and paddle I front up at the appointed time and eyed the other student players. They were all old but no one as old as me. So I kind of pranced a bit on my toes to show how athletic I am. I wiggled my shoulders to add to the athletic effect. The first thing the instructor said to me was, “Shoes no good. You fall. No good. Get $40 Nikes, court shoes.” Obviously she wasn’t impressed. I ordered the shoes that night the but they sure didn’t cost $40.00.

.The teacher was middle aged and in very good physical shape. She was one muscle; her entire body was one, well-defined, finely tuned muscle. She even had muscular ankles. Her name was Elba. The lessons were inside an air-conditioned gym with tape delineating the court, including the kitchen. The kitchen is the front section of each court and players are not allowed in there except to return a ball.

We’re into it. Elba started by teaching us to serb. We serbed, one by one, with varing degrees of success. Elba has difficulty with the word Serve and it comes out Serb. I don’t know why but she is consistent with Serb. My serve we no better or no worse than anyone else’s but I learned to wallop that ball! Hit the hell out of it to get to the other court and not short in the kitchen.

The next lesson involved Dinks, which just means short shots into the Kitchen. We practiced that for a while. It seemed like my racket shrunk when I bent to hit the ball back, which wasn’t very often since the opponent across the net seldom returned it. I always just missed it by a little bit and the ball went sailing past to the bleachers behind me.

Need to work on that. A fellow student suggested I bend over more, a lot more.

Next we had to serve aiming at specific spots. One serve to the left part of the kitchen, one to the right, and one down the middle.

At first my dink returns were way too soft. So I took a deep breath, bent my knees more. bent my body and slammeeed that yellow wiffle ball.

It missed the kitchen. One went very west, one went very east, and one is still headed to the North Pole. The instructor stared at me and waved me off the court without comment.

When I entered the gym for the next lesson, I was wearing bright white court shoes, trimmed in purple. They were extremely ugly and I looked like I’m plodding on platypus feet. But Elba nodded approvingly.

Strangely enough it did not help with my movement. It was like the message to move forward to the oncoming ball took a long time to transmit from the brain to my feet. By the time the message go to my feet, the ball had whizzed past me.

An experiened gentlemen pulled me aside and pointed out my slow reaction time, which was no surprise to me. He made several suggestions, the most helpful being the location of a practice wall outside, open to any and all. Aha. Good idea.

And the third lesson was much the same as the first two and I’m not sure I’m improving. In fact, I’m not sure any of us are improving.

So I decided to stay in the gym and watch the seasoned players do pickleball, which was an interesting exercise. Sure, they hit the ball more often, but most of them didn’t move. Most of them didn’t turn their paddles sideways for a ‘punch’ shot. Many didn’t Serb the way were taught. So our little group of learners weren’t too far off from the players with skill levels just above beginners.

Can’t wait to tell the other students in our group. Hell, yeah, we do this!! Just a little more practice on Serbs!