After I’d been told I wasn’t allowed to play pickleball at the club I worked at, I was disappointed, a little pissed off, and more motivated to find better competition to play. A little searching online and I found that one of the big tennis centers had open play sessions a few times a week. I packed up my stuff and drove out to the suburbs and found the tennis bubble where the pickleball was set up that day. I didn’t know what to expect.
I must have been giving off a newbie vibe because as soon as I’d walked in someone came up to me and said “you new to this, what’s your level?”… I told him I’d just started a couple weeks back but that I thought I was pretty decent. He looked at me skeptically and told me to head over to a grouping of 2 or 3 courts with a “we’ll see how good you are” dismissal.
After 10/15 minutes warming up and stretching while studying the games being played, there was clearly one court where the serious players were holding down the fort. I’d decided to bail on the courts I’d been sent over to, and instead went and hung out on the sideline waiting for that game to end.
To say it was a revelation might be a bit dramatic, but was a REVELATION! I’d only ever played on the indoor court floor with the much slower jug ball – this ball MOVED! It was fast, it was exciting, these guys were better than me. This is what I came for.
I knew enough to know the basic strategy, get to the net, wait for opportunities….I was able to hang in there. That’s all it took, I was hooked!