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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.
[00:00:05.000] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement, specifically your pickleball mind. My name is Tony Roig, the host of this weekly podcast. It's a pleasure to be with you. Hope you're having a great week. This week, we have a three-parter. The first part, we're going to talk about our sisters in pickleball first. I think it's a really important subject. I think if you listen to this podcast, you're part of the pickleball therapy community. You're in a group of pickleball players that can actually do something with this information, so we're going to explore that. Then I'm going to have a rift in this week's podcast. I need to have some therapy with you here. Then at the end, I'm going to answer Carol's question. Speaking of Carol's question, I may owe you guys an apology because I didn't realize that Spotify had that many comments in there. I frankly didn't even know we had comments on Spotify, but found that out this morning. If you sent a comment in the last few years and I didn't respond to it, it was something that was a question, then your response. My apologies for that, but now they have it on the radar.
[00:01:02.540] - Tony Roig
If you have questions in the future, you want to have a conversation about things inside the podcast, something that worked for you, didn't work for you, something that made sense or maybe didn't, put it in the comments on Spotify. Feel free to do that, and we will do our best to keep track of that and answer them as appropriate as I'm doing today. Before we dive into the podcast, I appreciate everyone who's had a chance to pick up a copy of the book and check it out. If you haven't had a chance yet, you can find the book on... It's The Book. Find it on Amazon, on Barnes & Noble, or Walmart. It's also included in your Kindle Unlimited. If you're a Kindle subscriber, I think it's called that. I think it's Kindle Unlimited. The Kindle Subscription Service. You can read it. It's just included in that or Kindle Select, maybe. Whatever it is, just look for it in Kindle. If you find it in Kindle and you're subscribed to it, you'll be able to read it. We wanted to make sure you had access to the book, so we put it available in there.
[00:01:57.320] - Tony Roig
All right, let's tackle this first subject. It's going to be a heavy subject, but we're going to dive right into it, which is, how's your sister doing? Here I'm referring specifically to our pickleball sisters, our sisters in the sport that we love and play. The reason this became front and center for me in terms of my thinking was because of the controversy that happened. I think it was a week and a half ago now when I'm recording this podcast, when the men's US hockey team wins the gold, there's some locker room banter, or what's called locker room banter, that appears to suggest that or diminish, if you will, the accomplishment of the women's hockey team, US women's hockey team that had won gold three days before. And so that got me to thinking about this idea of locker room banter. Is it harmful? Is it not harmful? There's a lot of backlash to it from women athletes, both in hockey and outside of hockey, and just folks in general. So it got me to thinking. I've never been a woman athlete, so I I don't know personally what that's like, but I can use my brain and my thinking to process and to try and understand what we may be doing with this idea of locker room banter.
[00:03:12.800] - Tony Roig
It also causes some self-reflection. And because I'm not going to tell you that I've never been involved in that conversation as a younger person, but now I'm a 56-year-old man. I'm a coach, so I can think about it a little bit more fully, and you're going to see there's actually something that occurred I also wrote an article about this that's going to be probably published in the Kitchen. I don't control their publication, but I'm going to submit it to them for consideration for their publication. But in writing the In case I realized something about the way that I was thinking about this subject, so I'll explain that as we go through that. I want to be clear, this is not an article about condemning. It's not an article about criticizing We're backward criticizing. That's not the point of this. This is a forward-looking article, but we're trying to explore a subject and then determine, is there something that we can do? And at the end, I'll give you some suggestions that we can do. I'm going to suggest you that this conversation is for all players, male player, female player, all players. This is a conversation that we all should be involved in.
[00:04:23.200] - Tony Roig
Again, if you listen to the Pickable Therapy podcast, I'm confident that it's the conversation that you'll be open to having, whether you agree or disagree with me. I don't know, but you'll be open to having the conversation. All right, let's look at this idea of lockerer and banter, or like, harmless little humor, harmless comments, and let's explore. Is it really, in fact, harmless? I'm going to start from the premise that the banter itself is of no value. Basically, the banter, the very foundation of the banter is a diminution of somebody else. That's the premise of it. Otherwise, the comment is flat. The reason it lands is because there's this idea that there is this relative difference between one group and another group. So it's basically diminishing another person. And there's no reason to do that. There's no value in doing that. And I dive a little further, which is we all came from our mother. That's just the way that we're done, we're made, we're constructed. And so our mother was the reason that we are here. Fed us, probably. Clothe us, take care of the housing. I mean, all those types of things. I'm not saying that that's all the time, but for a lot of us, that was the reality.
[00:05:46.660] - Tony Roig
That was my reality. But yet, when we're out on a pickleball court and a woman comes out onto the court, I don't know that... I think it's not unusual for the players on the court, particularly Only male players on the court, to wonder, is this woman going to be good enough to hang with us on this court? And we don't generally have the same exact thought. If a male player comes on the court, average male player holding a paddle, walking normally, probably think, okay, they can handle themselves. A little bit different standard, when a woman player comes on the court and the idea that, I hope she can play. It's just there's this difference that happens with a person who literally is the person that if she had children, not every woman's a mother, but these are our mothers. And so we're having this idea that because you're a female player, I'm going to ask a question that I wouldn't ask otherwise. I would say there's really no reason to diminish somebody else. But even if it was just diminishing somebody else with nothing more, with nothing further, because we're going to go a little deeper on this, with nothing further, then maybe you would say, Okay, not great.
[00:07:03.920] - Tony Roig
I'm not a huge fan of it, but what's the big deal? There's no harm. So let's go ahead and explore harm now. But before we go to harm, I just want to make sure I wrap this first one up. I don't think I wrapped it up well enough for you. There's an initial question that you need to ask yourself, which is, should we diminish another person just for our chuckle? Even if there was no harm to them, assuming no harm to anybody, should we do that? I'm to submit, the answer is likely no. There's other ways to engage in life that don't require that. But it gets worse because you're going to see that there's actually two harms that we're going to explore. There's an internal harm to the utterer and the participant, and there's an external harm to the target of the comment. So let's dive into those now. So let's talk first about the internal harm to the utterer and to those that participate in that conversation. And it's basically the internal harm is what I want to explore in terms of how I even develop my thinking as I was writing the article.
[00:08:11.500] - Tony Roig
So as I'm writing the article, I write the following sentence. Many of the best players I have played with and against have been female players. Now, this is me writing the article on its first draft, trying to work through this subject. And so I write that sentence. Many of the best players I played with and against have been female players. Now, to me, when I first wrote it, that seemed okay to write. That seemed like a fine statement to make. And maybe to you, when you hear it, you're like, What's wrong with that? Kind of statement, right? I mean, so I'm going to say it one more time. Many of the best players I've played with and against have been female players. Now, here's the problem with that, right? What's the next sentence, right? What's the next sentence that I'm going to say here? The next sentence has to be something like, Therefore, female players should be able to play pickleball because I've played with good female players. You see? So there's this fallacy that's built into the statement that I'm making. But it's a fallacy that's built in because of... I'm thinking I'm saying the right thing, but I shouldn't have to say that, right?
[00:09:25.000] - Tony Roig
I mean, a female player should be entitled to fully participate in pickleball, period. That's it. Not a female player should be entitled to participate in a pickleball because I, Tony Roig, I can vouch for the fact that I've seen good female players. That's not a condition of playing this sport. So Why does it seem that that statement needs to be made? And that's a pernicious internal harm that can happen to the participants. You create this irrational, illogical condition to female players participating in this sport, which shouldn't be there. So I'm going to submit to you that the statements, in addition to being not necessary because They're causing harm to somebody, they're diminishing somebody else, I should say, not harm. They're diminishing somebody else, period. That should be enough. They're causing internal harm to the utters by creating this framework or this landscape where if If a female players need to do more or show more. There needs to be some qualifier so that they can enjoy the sport. And that's not the only one, right? The other one is the one about the players come on the court, a female player comes on the court who you don't know, and you ask yourself, Oh, I wonder if she can hang.
[00:10:45.080] - Tony Roig
I wonder if she can handle this, right? Because she's a woman, the same thing wouldn't be asked an equivalent male version of that person. And that's something that is harmful to the utterer. Now, let's get to the final harm, which is the external That's the harm. That's the harm that's caused to the female players who are the, quote unquote, buts of the jokes, right? And here's the thing. It's not like female players don't know this is going on. It's not like they're oblivious to these conversations, right? So think about that for a second. What's that like? Where you're repeatedly reminded of, or not reminded, because it's not reminded would make it sound like it's a legitimate thing to be reminded of. Where you're repeatedly told or repeatedly that maybe you're not as worthy or as good or as something than your male counterparts. It's got to be eroding, right? It's got to feel eroding. I'll tell you that I would submit to you, based on my interactions as a coach, that what I've noticed is, generally speaking, these are very general statements, right? But I will say that female players generally underrate themselves or undervalue their performance, whereas male players, again, not all of them, but male players generally overvalue their performance.
[00:12:06.520] - Tony Roig
I've dealt with male players who swear to me that they're playing 4. 0 or 4. 5 pick-able even. They might be playing 3-0 to 3-2 pick-able, maybe three, five on a good day. And I've met female players, and I remember one is specifically at a camp who this female player, she was an older woman, she was a baller, absolute baller, right? And probably 4. 0 pickle ball in her age bracket. And she considered herself for 3. 0. And again, I know that doesn't apply to everybody, but generally speaking, that's the experience that I've had. And when I've spoken to other coaches and other players, they express similar experiences. So it'd be different if that was my experience and I was sharing it, and they were like, No, it never happens in my area. It happens. And so there is certainly some effect, right? I think you could argue, reasonably argue that there is some effect from negative statement after negative statement or diminishing statement after diminishing statement, and the perceived self-worth of individuals. So this, again, harmless, or not, again, harmless. What we started with was a premise that there's a harmless locker room conversation.
[00:13:24.500] - Tony Roig
This locker room chat isn't so harmless, right? We have needless This is diminishment of other human beings. We have harm to the expressor or the folks around them in terms of how they view their interactions with female players. And then you have the negative impact on the female player. I think that should be enough to suggest that this banter should not be engaged in, and it should be discouraged. Let me give you what I believe are some things that we can do to perhaps reduce this and then maybe turn this around so it doesn't happen as often or ever in the future. I'll start first with the male player, and then I'll give you my suggestions for female players. I will give you a caveat there that I know that I'm trying not to overstep my role because I've never been a female player, so I'm just offering my suggestions as a coach. So for the male players, I would say, avoid engaging in the locker room banter. That needlessly diminishes your sister. And then next level is to call out any such talk in your circles. Just call it out and just say, That's not necessary, or not appropriate, or you can explain to them if you want to go further, the harms of it.
[00:14:41.540] - Tony Roig
Welcome female players to join your court. Be the player who's the champion, if you will, of the female player coming onto the court. In other words, welcome them. Don't just accept them. That's fine. If you just accept them, that's okay. But why not champion them? Why not call out to a female player? Hey, Susan. Hey, Sarah. Hey, Lisa. Come on. I got you. You're going to partner with me. We're going to kick some butt, stuff like that, right? Empower the groups. And listen, I wish it wasn't necessary, but I think it's maybe not necessary, but it's certainly helpful to have that in happening. And then, generally speaking, do what you can to be supportive and welcoming to female players in your community, whether you have two different courts, a beginner intermediate or intermediate, advance. And you know there's a player playing on beginner, female player on beginner who should be an intermediate, maybe go up to her and say, Hey, listen, why don't you come over to an intermediate and play with me a couple of games? I think you can hang on this court. Do that a thing. And we should be doing that anyway, right?
[00:15:38.630] - Tony Roig
Just general big picture. But this one, we're focusing on our sisters. And I use that term both for men and women. Female pickleball players are our sisters, and male pickleball players are our brothers. So looking out for them. All right, let me talk to you as a female player now. And I offer this as a friend and coach, and I'm not thinking of mansplaining here. And I'll open It's up to you. If anything I'm saying here is incorrect, could be improved, if I'm mansplaining, send me an email, please. Let me know. Tony@betterpickupall. Com. I don't pretend to have all the answers, and I'm open to getting better at stuff. For female players, I would suggest to continue providing a welcoming environment to female players. I know that in my local pick-up-ball community here, there are several women's groups who play together. I think it's super fantastic that they play together, that they support each other, that they're there for each other. I think that's really powerful, and I encourage that to continue and grow as much as possible. And again, this is a friendly, unsolicited advice as a coach and as a friend of yours, be realistic where you're on the game, but don't try and avoid going lower, right?
[00:16:53.240] - Tony Roig
Just be objective with it. If you see a cord and you're like, I can hang on that cord, go play on that cord. Don't be, Hey, I can't play on that cord because because I'm not good enough. That happens too often, so just be objective about it. Then if this is helpful to you, allow me to be a reference for you in your corner, and I'm going to share a story now to tell you how that came about and what the offer is. Basically, this is a student of mine. Several years ago, we became friendly and we communicated with each other about things outside of just how are you doing with your shots. Keep me updated on what was going on with her and her progress and things like that. She was traveling. I believe it was a work trip, but she was traveling, had her paddle with her, went to some courts. There was an open play going on, but male players were there. Small open play, maybe six players, something like that, as I recall. She looked at the court and said, I can hang on this court. So she approached and asked whether she could join.
[00:17:51.360] - Tony Roig
The first question out of the male player's mouth was, What's your level? She was honest about it and said, 3. 5. Now, from her perspective, these gentlemen were not more than 3. 5, so she should have been fine playing on that court. She was not allowed to join the group because she said she was 3. 5. I'm going to digress here real quick. This is a guess by me, but I'm guessing that if I had showed up to the court with my bag and my paddle, and they'd asked me what I love when I had said 3. 5, I think they would have let me play. But beside the point, it goes back to what we talked about earlier, but that's not the point right now. The point right now is she was not allowed to play. So in talking to her, that was troubling to me. So I suggested to her a solution, maybe, or at least a stop gap, which is the next time she traveled, the same thing occurred, right? She looked at the court, she saw that she could hang, and she was asked her a level that she should respond by saying she's a 4.
[00:18:52.950] - Tony Roig
5-level player. Let me be clear, 4. 5-level player. Now, my guess is that if she... Her play, she was a good player, but she was not a 4. 5-level player, not in the traditional sense of that term. So maybe she gets some pushback at the end of the session or something like that. You tell me you're 4. 5. They don't look 4. 5. Sometimes, a snarky comment like that. That's when, in addition to just offering the idea of the 4. 5, saying you're 4. 5, is you can tell... I told my friend, I said, Feel free to tell them that that's not your rating for yourself, that that's a rating that I gave you, and then you give them my name, and you give them my email address, tony@betterpickleball.com if they have a question about my rating of you, that I gave you a 4. 5-level rating, and that's what you go by. And I extend the same offer to you. If you're listening to this podcast and you ever need to say your level in a situation where you know you can hang on the court, right? So I'm trusting your judgment. You make the call.
[00:19:59.400] - Tony Roig
I can play on this court, and you're asked your level, feel free to say 4. 5. And then once they question that, you can always refer them to me. Now, I want to be clear about this real quick. I'm not suggesting that we can get around, like facility rules and stuff like that, because every facility has There are rules, so you can't just walk into a facility, say, I'm a 4. 5. Tony Roy said so. That's a different story. What I'm talking about here is where you see a group of players at a park or something like that, and you see them and you say, I can do that. And they ask you as a condition to you joining them, what's your level? Then you can say 4. 5, and then you can use me as your background as your backup if that will help you. I'm going to wrap with this just from the article itself. Life provides each of us continuing opportunity for growth. I, for one, regret ever having been a part of or silent during locker room banter. My hope is that each of us can grow in this area, and doing so, add to the growth of a healthier Piggerball Collective, including For Our Sisters.
[00:20:56.570] - Tony Roig
I know that was a little bit deep and big, But I think it's an important subject. Anyway, so I wanted to bring that with you. And in fact, the RIF relates that some. I'm not going to dive into the details on the RIF too much, other than tell you the way that I handled it and how I think I could handle it better in the future. So I'm going to dive right into the RIF. So the RIF happened this week, playing some pickleball. The situation arose on court where I didn't like what was happening on the court. I felt like a good friend of mine that I played with for years, behaved in a way that was not becoming of himself, frankly, and of our group. And he put me in a very awkward spot with another friend of mine who I had invited to play with us. And the situation, I was trying to figure out why I got pretty pissed. And you listen to a podcast, I'm not saying I have a temper, but I know how to navigate things better now and stuff like that. But I got very pissed during this game.
[00:21:58.200] - Tony Roig
And in fact, I told my friend at the end of the game that we were going to have a conversation. We haven't had the conversation yet, but we're going to have a conversation about what occurred that day. What I want to share with you is what happened from my perspective, not from my friends, either my friends, but from my perspective. I was trying to figure out why was I not able to unplug sooner from the event. There's a couple of things I think that happened. One was the behavior didn't become, and I guess, looking in hindsight, I don't think the behavior it became bad until it became repetitive. So it's not like the first time it happened, I could have gone, Okay, let me pull the plug on this situation. It was when it repeated that it became bad. And then again, looking at it in hindsight, what I think I was feeling at that time were two things. One was I'm processing in real-time, though delayed, I think, because I think I still could have short-circuited it a little bit. But I was processing it in real-time. And then Or it's delayed in processing in real-time.
[00:23:02.340] - Tony Roig
I'm seeing what's happening, but I'm not really connecting the dots. And there's a certain amount of incredulousness by me, that this is happening, that my friend is doing this. And what he was doing was incorrect to my other friend, but it was also incorrect to me. It was a betrayal of our friendship because what he was doing was disrespectful to me as well. I'm not trying to diminish the impact on my friend and the other situation, but I'm just speaking here on how I'm reacting to it and how I'm feeling was a compounded. There was a compounding of seeing something that was going on that was incorrect, and then also feeling myself being disrespected. So the way that I responded to it, which I wish I had done differently, was I started hitting out more fully. Frankly, if I've gotten a short ball, I probably would have tried to to tag my friend. That's what I was feeling. I was feeling, I'm going to... This is effed up, and I don't like what's happening right now. And I was getting upset about it. In hindsight, with reflection now, what I should have done is stop the match.
[00:24:16.540] - Tony Roig
That's the easiest outcome, right? And that's what I would suggest you do, right? If you ever feed yourself that way, is just you just pull the plug, or you just flip that switch, or you're just like, I'm out. Walk up to the net, tap paddles, you can give me any reason you want to, and get off the court. That's what I should have done in hindsight. And I'm hoping that if anything like this occurs again, that'll be my reaction sooner, rather than waiting until the end of the match, getting all pissed off, going a little nutty on the court, and then telling my friend, the friend who is acting inappropriately, We're going to have a conversation later, and then walking off the court. We did have paddles and everything like that, but I wish I'd done it sooner. Learning experience for me, wanted to share with you because that's part of our bargain here at the podcast is whenever something like this happens, I'd like to share with you so that I can grow and you can grow along with me. All right, let me dive into Carol's question here. Carol is a pick-able system student.
[00:25:20.080] - Tony Roig
We call it TPS. If you see the comment on Spotify, it says TPS. That's the pick-able system, which is our program, our online coaching program. She's asking about the third shot drop. Here's her question. I always felt that you encouraged the development of this shot in TPS. Again, that's a pick-able system. I put in a lot of work on it because I thought it was a valuable shot to help me help make my way to the line and slow the tempo of the game down. So can you say more about this? Now, TPS is The online coaching program that includes basically all of the major pieces of a pickable, including the third shot drop, is one of the shots covered. And the third shot drop is, as Carol points out, it is a valuable shot that helps you make the way to the line and slow the tempo of the game down. That's absolutely true. The question here, the issue here is one of priority. What order do you do it in? Third shot drop, important shot. But when should you focus on it? All of our coaching, including inside TPS, is about return side first.
[00:26:17.890] - Tony Roig
We always say return side is the key. So you really want to have, we call it a spick and span return side. You want to have your return side locked in. If your return side has holes in it, then the third shot drop is falls off to the side until you have your return side sorted out. Then you come back to the third shot drop. And this reality bears out when you look at tournament play, high-level 3. 5 tournament play. And the reason I say high-level tournament play is because this is a US Open, these US Open matches, one of the majors, gold medal matches. So two best teams left standing to the gold medal at the US Open. That's about as indicative of high-level 3. 5 play as you can find. And it bears... That analysis bears out the the fact that the third shot drop inside a point construction is of nominal use, like 12 % of points in those matches. If you want to see all of the numbers and see the breakdown, and also show examples of how they're scoring, or alternatives to scoring that don't include the third shot drop, check out the full video on IntuPickle on YouTube.
[00:27:20.780] - Tony Roig
It's I-N, the number two, and the word pickle. So IntuPickle on YouTube, and you can check that out. You can also search at... I'm sorry, @bestpickleballcoach on YouTube, because why not have that name? So at bestpickleballcoach on YouTube works as well. As I mentioned earlier, if you have any other questions or you want to have some conversation about this podcast or any other episode of the podcast, put it down in the comments and we'll do our best to answer those. If you haven't gotten the book, highly recommend it. Consider rating and reviewing the podcast wherever you listen to it. It helps us reach other players who haven't yet had an opportunity to listen to the podcast. And as always, share this podcast with your friends or anybody who you think needs to hear this podcast, this one in particular. Because if you enjoyed the podcast or they need to hear the podcast, then sharing it with them makes sense. I wish you well this next week, and I will see you next time on the next episode of Pickleball Therapy. Be well.