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The podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. We are here to help you achieve your pickleball goals, with a focus on the mental part of your game. Our mission is to share with you a positive and more healthy way of engaging with pickleball. Together let’s forge a stronger relationship with the sport we all love. With the added benefit of playing better pickleball too. No matter what you are trying to accomplish in your pickleball journey, Pickleball Therapy is here to encourage and support you.
[00:00:04.880] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. Hope you're having a great week. This week is the PPA in Lakeland, Florida. If you're going to be at the PPA in Lakeland by chance, please say hello. I'll be there pretty much all weekend. By the time you listen to this podcast, I expect to be there Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And so if you have a moment, please say hello. If you're not going to be there, look for us on the TV screen. Again, you'll see the aggressively orange cap that I wear when I go to those tournaments when I'm coaching. And then the other news that I have for you is that the Pickleball Therapy, the book, is officially... Well, it's been out for a little bit on PDF, but now it's officially out on Kindle, Amazon. You get it on a paper copy of it. So check that out. If you have a moment to review the book, I certainly appreciate you doing that. If you've already read the book a PDF, I know we had several hundred players that went ahead and got an early copy of the book.
[00:01:04.700] - Tony Roig
I appreciate you doing that. You're in the best position to let other players know what you think about it. And we certainly appreciate you doing that. We're doing our best to provide the content. Sometimes it can be challenging to reach players who have not yet crossed paths with us. And as we always say at the end of the podcast, if you enjoy the podcast, they probably will, too. Same thing, if you gain benefit or value from what you hear during these episodes or the concepts that we share, then my guess is that you have some friends who would, too. So if you will review the book, it'll reach them. And if you want to share it directly with them, that's cool, too. Also makes it pretty cool holiday gift, I guess. If you're into giving gifts, that's a pretty cool gift to give. All right, so let's dive into this week's podcast. We're talking about what your identity is. Do you know who you are in the pickleball sense? I think It's an interesting way of coming at yourself and thinking about yourself as a pickleball player. And I'm going to start with the idea of a few pro players, just to give you a sense of how I think about their identity as players.
[00:02:14.480] - Tony Roig
That'll help us then move into thinking about our identity as a player. So as I mentioned, I'm going to that PPA in Lakeland this weekend, doing some coaching and things like that. So I think about teams and players and how they come at the sport, what's their identity as a player. And so I'll share some of the players that you may know about and how I view their identity as a player, as a pickleball player. So Ben Johns, the best male player, he's a grinder. He will grind And grind means just dink, dink, and dink, and dink until the cows come home. He's not in any rush. He's not looking to get crazy creative. He's not looking to do anything fancy. He just plays the most fundamentally sound. I'm going to put this in. This is in like quadruple quotes because it is not boring at all. But I'll put quadruple quotes around boring pickleball, if you want to call it that. He will just grind you. And he's not looking to be flashy. He's not looking to hit winners that are amazing, that everyone goes, Oh, my God, that was amazing. He is happy to stay in a grind, cross-court dink grind, because he knows that he is...
[00:03:24.760] - Tony Roig
I'm going to say he's the best dincer in the male game today, and He can outdink pretty much any player out there. So if he can do that, why not do it? He's very disciplined, but he's a grinder. He's just going to grind. On the other side, on the other group, in the female group, you have Analee Waters. Now, Analee Waters can grind, too. She can if she wants to. But I view Analee to be more of a... Looking to create a little more, looking to attack from the corners, looking to wreak a little bit of havoc. She trusts her hand, so she's going to go live. And then, again, look to create something there. Same thing with Hayden Patricken on the male side. Hayden Patricken is more of a disruptive player. He's looking to create chaos, looking to... He can be patient, too. He's not out of his mind, but he does definitely look for these little spots to tack from, forehand, backhand, create uncertainty in the opponents. With Ben, you're certain to know what he's going to do in a situation. It's just, how do you beat that? What do you do to solve that?
[00:04:32.860] - Tony Roig
On the female side, I would say Katherine Prento is more closely aligned with Ben. Patient player, likes to dinks a lot, just moves the ball around and stuff like that. She has to play a game that's a little more, not has to, but she chooses to play a game that's a little more controlled, because that's her strengths, right? Not so much, I'm going to go toe to toe with an Annaly Waters or an Anna Bright or a Tyra Black on power. So that's how you would think about those players or how I think about those players. And then you can think about also team identities, right? Those are individual identities. Team identity is interesting because take It's a partnership of Anna Lee Waters and Anna Bright. Now, you pair Anna Bright with almost any other player than Anna Lee. You look to Anna Bright to be a creator, look to Anna Bright to be an offensive contributor in the sense of dictating and moving, trying to initiate. When she plays with Anna Lee, though, Anna Lee now is the alpha, right? Anna Lee is the top player on the court. So Anna Bright has to adjust her play to be more of a supporting player, and she does a great job of it.
[00:05:44.120] - Tony Roig
Basically, to support Analee, to set up Analee, create opportunities for Analee to attack. You've seen that in the male game, you see that, too. For instance, recently, there was a switch from left to right by Federico and Hayden, Federico Staxer and Hayden Patricken. It used to be Federico played on the left and Hayden played on the right. That made Hayden the supporting player and Federico the dictating player. Now that Hayden is on the left, Hayden is a dictating player, and Federico on the right is a supporting player. Again, it's not right or wrong thing. It's just an identity thing. It's understanding what we're trying to accomplish. That's a strategic understanding as a team. So the question that I think is helpful for us as players, mere mortal players, so to speak, is what's our identity? What What is your identity as a player? How is it that you like to engage with the sport? Do you like to play more of a soft game, more of a controlled? I'm going to control the court. I'm going to control the pace of the rallies. I'm going to use the non-rally zone a lot or the kitchen a lot.
[00:06:46.440] - Tony Roig
Or are you more of an aggressive player, more of a disruptive player? I can tell you, personally, me, I am more of a disruptive player. I'm more of an aggressive, get in there, mix it up. I put a lot of pressure on my opponents. If they get out of it, and I'll tell you a story in the RIF at Matt, the game that I played this morning, that was 12: 10 that I think you'll find interesting in terms of how I think through these rallies and the outcomes. But I tend to be more disruptive, more like, you're not sure exactly what I'm going to do. I'll throw in some lobs, I'll throw in some attacks off weird positions. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. But overall, I'm a relatively accomplished player, a competent player out there, so it works for me. The other thing is I have to be true to who I am as a player. I have added some additional soft game to my game, but I do find that if I fall into this ding, ding, ding, ding, ding I don't really lose the plot, if you will, because that's not how I want to play.
[00:07:51.540] - Tony Roig
And so now the plot belongs to another player, which that's not how I want to play the sport. There's nothing wrong with that. Dinking, by the way. Dinking is fine. If that's your plot, if that's how you interact with the sport, that works great. But I think the key is to start to think about, what am I as a player? How is it that I want to go about solving this puzzle? Do I want to go about solving the puzzle through more soft game, more hard game? Some of this will be dictated by skill set. Some of the pro players who I've worked with are more not tennis background, not They don't come from a lot of tennis or college tennis and things like that. So they don't have an intrinsic shot built into their game that came from playing a lot of tennis. And so let's say you come to pickle ball from not any racquet sports background. You're really going to try and build your game around more shots that don't require an amazing forehand drive, for instance. Whereas if you come from tennis, maybe you're more comfortable with a forehand drive. So you'll add more shake and bakes, more off bounce attacks off of your forehand or back hand, depending on which one you like, into your game.
[00:09:04.220] - Tony Roig
But a lot of your identity will come from your skillset. That's not to say you can't learn new skills. You can, certainly. I mean, there's nothing stopping you. But just understanding where your skills are will help you build an identity for yourself. And some of it is also your personality. What's your personality like? Are you a control type of... You like things to be slower and in control, or do you like things to be a little more chaotic, a little more crazy? Then you will gravitate to that. I think what's important here also is to keep in mind this idea that this is your experience. This is your pickleball. This is your interaction with the sport. Be true to you. Be true to yourself. Be true to who you are as a person. Be true to the skills that you bring to the table. And be true to your understanding of the game in terms of where you're in the game as you build out your identity, or not build out, but as you understand your identity, then build your game around that identity. I think it's important to avoid... We talked about it briefly, or maybe not briefly, we talked about it the whole podcast, but we talked about it in a prior episode about mimicking pickleball.
[00:10:20.440] - Tony Roig
Not as rewarding. That's where you just copy somebody else. So you say, this player is really good. This player has a lot of success. Here's what they do. So I'm just going to do what they do and just try and copy their way of playing. There could be a skill gap there, potentially, but also there could be just a personality gap. What I mean by that is they see the situation differently. Their eyes and their brains work differently. So when they see a situation arise on the court, they go, Okay, this is what I see. I see an opportunity to attack. And your brain's going like, There's an opportunity to attack. I don't see anything there. It's better to hit a soft shot to the outside and set up another ball or something. But if you're trying copy the player that sees the attack opportunity, now you get confused, right? That's not how I come at the sport. Now, let me be clear. That does not mean that you cannot grow yourself. In other words, you grow your understanding and identify attack opportunities you didn't see before. That's a different conversation. What I mean here is that when you look at a rally, right?
[00:11:22.100] - Tony Roig
What you see is you see, I want to solve it by doing these things. But this other player, this banger player, let's say, is having my success. So I want to now shift what I'm doing and just copy what they're doing, blanket copy what they're doing and just basically lose myself, lose who I am, and replace it with somebody else. That's what I'm talking about being careful with this idea of mimicking another player as opposed to developing yourself inside the identity that you have for yourself as a pickable player, respecting yourself, being true to yourself, and then developing that game that's going to work for you. Because even at all levels that we study, we see players with different skill sets interacting and having success depending on who executes better. I'll tell you a quick story here. It's a match that I really like to break down and study. It's a 2017 bronze medal match at Nationals at 4: 5 in the women's division, and it featured two radically different identity teams. You had one team And both very good, by the way, in their respective ability sets. One team was a bona fide banger team.
[00:12:37.740] - Tony Roig
Excellent strokes, tennis strokes, and beautiful shots. The other team had... One player was a blend, had a little bit of tennis, not as, I don't believe, as high level tennis as the two on the banging side, but had some tennis skills. And then one player had zero tennis skills, zero, zero. A very unorthodox approach to the game in terms of the stroke mechanics. But it it worked. She could make it work. So you had basically one banger team and one hard team, one soft team facing off. It went to three games. It was a phenomenal match back and forth. Who's going to win this thing? Soft team ended up winning in three. And it just shows you that if you understand how you're coming at the game, if you understand what you want to do and how you want to solve the puzzle, utilizing your skills, utilizing your personality, you can have success even at the highest stage, at 4. 5 at nationals, playing the way that you want to play, as opposed to trying to just copy the players opposite you the way that they're approaching the game. Something to think about and something to reflect on in terms of what it is that your identity and then building around it.
[00:13:50.500] - Tony Roig
Just be careful about that thing about mimicking somebody else. All right, let's dive right into the RIF. Played this morning, real good group of players that I enjoy, always enjoy hanging out with. Got to see one player I hadn't seen in quite a moment. A guy named Todd, who's one of the OGs, original gangsters for my area. One of the players I learned from, one of the top players in the area back in the day, and still a very, very good player. So we were playing me and my friend David were playing against Todd, and we're all friends. All my friends. My friends David, Todd, and Tom. So me and David against Todd and Tom. We had a nice little match. We were at 8-8. We got it to 10-8, I think, us, or 10-9 us. We had an opportunity there. I'll tell you about that shot in a second, just to tell you how I think about it. And then they ended up winning 12-10. So you know that 10-9, the shot was not successful. They won 12-10. If you listen to the podcast for any amount of time, you may already know that the way I view 12-10 games is basically it's the same.
[00:14:47.300] - Tony Roig
Whether you're the 12 or the 10, that's an awesome game. Both teams walk off the court head high, I hope, but haven't given their all. So at 10: 09, David served a Todd I was on the right side. There was a medium-ish to short return of serve heading toward David. So I could have let David have it, which maybe would have been a better approach. But I decided to take it with my forehand and break the X intentionally. If you know about the X, that's where you can break the X. So I broke the X, and I went at Todd coming forward. We had caught Todd a couple of times in transition and been successful with it in prior points. So I'm like, Let's try that. So So I take the ball, I roll it towards Todd. I left it a little higher than I wanted to so he could get a hold of it. Todd, he's left-handed player. He has really good hands. He was unable to basically take his forehand, and then he's like a ping-pong guy, so he has a lot of cutting on it. So he cut it, passed me down the line for the winner, avoiding the...
[00:15:50.980] - Tony Roig
If he misses that shot or if we get another ball to put away or something, then we win the game. So Todd was able to dig out of that hole, and they ended winning at 12: 10. So how do I think about that rally? When we're on the serve side, our job is to apply pressure on the opponent, on the return team. I look at that rally as one where pressure was in fact applied. Could the pressure have been greater? Yes. Was there another way of approaching it? Sure. But I feel like pressure was applied, and Todd survived the pressure. Todd executed the shot that could have gone net or could have gone wide by hitting a winner past me down the line to get out of that situation. So when you have those rallies, I think it's the best thing to do is to... You can still explore some if you want. Like I said, I could have let David take that one. Basically, if they were playing a tournament, I probably would have said to David, Hey, David, if you get it, go to Todd. I'll come in and finish. But it's a rec game, so we really don't do that stuff.
[00:16:59.520] - Tony Roig
So So I decided, Okay, I'm going to take it, attack it, and do the best I can. Again, we had already won some points doing that. So you can think about it some if you want to. But big picture, you have to, or you should, I should say, you should just allow the rally to be what it was, meaning we applied pressure. Todd did what Todd had to do to get out of that situation. Kudos to Todd, celebrate Todd's work. And then everything is cool, right? We learn to losing 12: 10, no big deal. Good match, good day, good day of pick a ball, seeing friends. It's been something I hadn't seen in a minute. So just a different way of breaking down a rally. Think about your play in that way. I think it'll help you. If you listen to last week's podcast, we talked about avoiding overwhelm by focusing on one thing, where you're at right now. This is another way of coming at that, which is basically, don't need to get into the weeds about every little thing that could have been done better in one particular rally at the end of a game.
[00:18:03.440] - Tony Roig
When you look at it with a big lens, you go, okay, that looked like you did what you needed to do. Todd did what he needed to do. He brew the rally, you move on, and then that's the end of the game. Anyway, so hopefully that helps you process rally-specific situations. That is this week's podcast. Again, if you want to get a copy of the book, it's available now in copy as well as on Kindle, if you like those. There's a link on the website at betterpickleball.com. We'll put it in the show notes as well for you, so you can get a copy of that in time for the holidays for your friends and family and all of your friends. Get a copy of Pickleball Therapy, the book. If you have a minute to rate and review the podcast, really appreciate you doing that. As always, please consider sharing this episode with your friends. If you enjoy the podcast, I'm going to bet dollars to donuts that they will, too. Hope you have a great week. Hope to see some of you in Lakeland. Until next time. Be well.