One Good Idea!

From the USPTA Southern Conference notes from Rick Wille

Dan Beedle-Using the orange ball for Cardio tennis allows you to equal the playing level allowing more variety of athletes to play together. This helps you train for tennis by playing tennis. Without equalizing the levels, many pros resort to feeding balls for an hour without the athletes playing the sport. Having lower pressure balls is key to safety and leveling Cardio.

Tim Smith- New pickleball players start off hing hard and play “tennis” on the pickleball court. It can work against some players, yet it’s a part of everyone’s game. The No Volley Zone, aka the Kitchen, was put into the game to make it a unique sport. Players need to use it to their advantage. Hit drop shots into the Kitchen to advance to the line and dink unl you get a high ball to aack to win the point. Make the transion from banger to dinker.

Walker Sahag did a dynamic presentaon combining her experse with video. She explained the significance starng forward on the serve, shiing weight back, loading, and finishing the serve with weight forward and staggered

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footwork going into the shot. This creates a more explosive serve pung the returner on defense. She went on to discuss how important footwork between shots is taking a minimum of 8-14 steps. Deep power serves provide a serving advantage for the plus 1 return. The potency of the serve sets up the control to win the point. She noted several mes how the beginning of the point raises the percentages taking the offense to win the point. A major percentage of points are 0-3 shots max in singles. This translates to 30 second points. In summary, the serve is a combinaon of beginning weight on front foot, shiing weight to back foot, loading serve, and exploding with staggered footwork on front foot to take control.

Ma Grayson discussed keeping league season pracces focused on 1 or 2 concepts for the enre season vs. having new strategies and drills every week, which can createe confusion and lowers probability of improvement. His teams saw a big improvement in taccal decision-making in match play pung them in these situaons repeatedly in pracce. This was his priority all season. This helped them understand what shots were available to them based on what the opponents do. Once the team players realized that every shot they pracced wasn’t available during the match, they could focus on aacking and decide what shot would work best.

Todd Upchurch- “You don’t the difference unl you know the difference”, from his Hall of Fame speech.

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