Observations from a prolific pickleball career of 4 days (and counting)
- Anyone who's played tennis before they've played pickleball plays pickleball like they're someone who once played tennis.
- Tennis stuff doesn't always work for pickleball.
- Sometimes you need table tennis stuff, like a topspinning backhand.
- At other times, you'd want to use badminton stuff: weird racquet angles to parry volleys.
- At yet other times, especially if you're playing outdoors at the mercy of the wind, any familiarity with a Frisbee comes in handy to predict the ball's trajectory.
- The balls with the smaller holes are ridiculously different from the ones with larger holes. They move so much faster.
- In Hawaiian, "puka" means hole. They call it pukaball there.
- I have no problem with the sound the ball makes when it hits the court, but evidently there are some who find that the noise is "trauma-inducing" and wreaks "discord and physically debilitating stress." I suppose it takes all kinds....
- The scoring is really weird for the longest time until it suddenly isn't anymore. More inspiration from tennis, clearly.
- In 2022, pickleball was declared the official sport of the state of Washington, where it was invented. I expect to see everyone there playing pickleball all the time when I visit the Pacific Northwest later this month.
- Switching between the offensive serves where points are scored and defensive serves where points are denied keeps the game interesting and provides ample opportunities for comebacks.
- Contrary to some criticism I've happened to hear, pickleball can actually be a lot of fun and can be really tiring too. Like it was today.