Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy,
the podcast dedicated to your Pickleball improvement.
Hope you're having a great week.
We are midweek after the US open.
It was a really good week,
long week to be sure.
We've had a lot of work going on,
a lot of,
a lot of things we had to get done for upcoming
academy courses,
as well as the upcoming summit.
But overall,
fantastic weeks hanging out with the Better Pickleball team.
Jill, my wife,
came down,
we hung out for a few days.
It was a,
a just a nice event.
I got to play some good,
good tournament play,
which I'll share with you more in the riff today.
So just all in all,
a good Pickleball week as as we like to have in
Pickleball today,
what we're gonna be focusing on is we're gonna be focusing
on, on the baseline.
We talked about that last week.
I think this baseline concept has a lot of legs,
if you will,
right? It's one of these things that I think can really
radically change how you engage with the game.
So if you've missed that episode,
highly recommend you check that one out.
It'll give you the,
the elements to look at in terms of setting your baseline.
But this week I am going to continue on the baseline
idea with two additional thoughts about the two additional perspectives or
concepts that have to do with the baseline.
And that arose out of a conversation that I had at
the Euros Open with a friend of mine and a fellow
senior professional Pickleball player who has agreed to allow me to
identify him.
So he said he's happy to be transparent about it.
I asked him if it was okay to I,
I, I,
I mentioned to him I'd like to share the story.
I told him there was different ways I could do it.
He said it was fine to share his information,
so I'm going to tell you who he is.
That's part of his journey too,
that that'll help you also understand that all of us,
no matter the level of play,
you know,
really have,
you know,
we, we,
we, we struggle,
right? We,
we, we humans just like,
you know,
at, at all levels,
right? We're all humans and we all have the same kind
of thing.
So we're gonna talk about the baseline.
In that conversation,
I realized that there is a potential trap,
if you will,
in terms of trying to apply the baseline.
So I'm going to share that with you today.
And then,
as I mentioned in the riff,
I'm going to share with you some more stories from the
US Open as we dive into the podcast.
I appreciate everyone who was able to rate and review the
podcast more recently.
As I mentioned last time,
it helps us reach other players.
And I wanted to read one of those if I can
today, which is from Survivor number one.
Recently, a fellow Pickler turned me on to this podcast,
and now it has become an intentional listening activity that I
do, especially before I go to,
I go do,
to do my league play games,
my league play.
I also re-listen,
when I feel like I'm hitting a plateau.
This is definitely with the time to pause and listen with
intentionality. Keep up the great work.
Seattle Seashore,
Pickleball League loves you guys.
So, a couple of things here.
Obviously, I'm,
I'm glad it,
it's, you find it helpful to you survivor,
number one,
and I appreciate you leaving that review.
But if you notice,
it starts off with,
recently a fellow Pickler turned me onto this podcast.
So how did you know,
how did Survivor number one get all this podcasts by one
of you letting her know about it?
And so that's the power of,
of sharing,
right? The power of,
of letting others know about the podcast that may in fact
add something positive to their lives.
So if you can please continue sharing it.
One other quick note on this,
if you can,
there's a way to follow the podcast on your,
on your podcast platform.
Do so there's usually a little plus sign or something like
that. Again,
it just tells the algorithm,
Hey, this is good stuff.
People like it,
and it'll show it to other players.
If you can do that,
that'd be amazing.
And, and as last time,
if you can rate a review it currently,
that'd be great as well.
All right,
let's continue the conversation about the baseline.
I'm not gonna repeat everything from last time.
Again, you can go check out that episode to get the
details on setting the baseline.
But the basic idea,
right, is that,
is that when we play in terms of,
you know,
when we,
when we play and when we evaluate ourselves,
right? How do we,
do we need,
we, we,
we should be cognizant of this idea that there's a baseline
that's appropriate for us.
And what we need to do is we need to compare
ourselves to that baseline,
not to some arbitrary imaginary,
you know,
fantasy world.
Us to the baseline,
to what makes sense for us based on where we are
right now,
based on the amount of work we put in,
et cetera.
And so,
during the US Open,
I had the,
the, I had the pleasure of speaking with lots of great
folks who I,
I I I've come to become friends with and,
and have great experiences with.
And I happened,
actually, I'll tell you a funny thing.
Side note is I was,
I went to the pro tent.
This was on Sat Saturday.
I can't,
it might have been Friday,
I can't remember.
But I went to the,
the pro tent,
and I see a friend of mine,
Mandara, another senior professional Pickleball player who owed me some socks.
And so it's long story,
but he had promised me some pink socks,
which I really liked that he wears.
So he gave me a pair of socks.
And, and then while I was in there,
I see another friend of mine,
mark Milner.
And so I turned to Mark Milner,
who's a senior pro player I mentioned earlier,
who said it was okay to say his name.
And so I turned to Mark and I see him sitting
there, and I'm like,
man, it's good to,
you know,
great to see you.
You know,
it was,
it was great to see him.
I've all,
I played with him a,
I played against him a few times and always enjoyed his
competition as well as his behavior on court,
as a gentleman on the court and off the court.
And in talking to him,
he seemed kind of down right about the performance,
right? And he,
he made,
I don't remember the exact words,
but he said something that made me think,
okay, he,
you know,
mark isn't happy with how he performed on this day or
during the tournament.
And so I said to him,
Hey, it was on Friday.
Now remember,
'cause the podcast had just come out.
So I said,
you know,
listen to the podcast that just dropped.
It has to do with the baseline,
and it'll help you like,
maybe like reframe your thinking,
right? Like,
if you have a baseline that's right for you,
you're gonna feel,
okay, how did I perform relative to that baseline?
And it'll be great.
And so I gave him a little details and whatever.
And then during the conversation,
mark said to me,
he says,
you know,
he says,
yeah, you know,
that sounds really good.
I, I appreciate what you're saying,
but, and here's the,
the trap,
right? Then he said,
I know I can play better.
And here's the problem with that,
right? It's,
it's fine to know that we can do better,
right? In,
in a theoretical sense,
right? That every,
everybody listening to this podcast,
right, you can play as good Pickleball as you want,
right? I mean,
in, in theory,
right? You just put in a lot of hours,
you study the game a lot,
you get a good coach.
You, you know,
it could be us online,
it could be in person,
whatever. I mean,
you do all these things,
right? And you basically,
sure, I mean,
you can play much,
much better Pickleball.
That is true,
but that's a theoretical world again.
So what we're doing is we're,
we're basically,
we're, we're not.
The baseline is the idea of the baseline is it's supposed
to keep us in reality,
it's supposed to ground us in the reality of our situation.
And, and I'll give you one brief example from last time,
which is,
let's assume that there's just a lot going on in your
life, okay?
It could be a family situation,
it could be a work situation,
it could just be financial stress,
whatever it is.
I mean,
any, any number of things,
right? It could be,
you know,
a friend that you don't get along with anymore that used
to play pick with whatever it is,
right? And that thing is causing you stress,
it's causing your mind to be preoccupied.
Probably not gonna play the same as you would if everything
was hunky dory.
And you felt amazing about everything in life,
right? The reason,
'cause you're a human being,
right? You're human and you,
that's how we are wired.
That's how we're,
you know,
built. And so if you set a baseline for yourself,
right, based on the reality that you live in,
but then in the same breath say,
but I know I can do better,
you're not really doing the baseline,
right? You're,
you're, you're falling into the trap of going back to theoretical.
You right?
This not magical,
it's not magic,
right? It's just not reality,
right? It's someone who you could become baby,
right? With a lot of work and effort and things,
and maybe in the future that'll be the baseline for you,
right? 'cause you move your baseline,
right? Your baseline can move.
But you need to be,
you need to be,
you need to be realistic,
right? You need to be honest is the word I'm looking
for. I'm trying to find a better word,
but honest is a good word,
honest with yourself,
right? This is where I'm right now.
And there's nothing wrong with that.
I mean,
you are,
again, wherever you are in terms of how much time you're
putting into the game in terms of practice,
where you're at mentally,
where you're at physically,
maybe you're injured,
you know,
things like that.
So you have to deal with the realities that are presented
to you and avoid the temptation to fall into the theoretical
again, right?
That's the trap.
The trap is a theoretical trap that you fall into by,
again, by saying,
you know,
I, I believe,
you know,
I, I I know I can do better.
That's theoretical.
You, baseline real you,
okay? And when you set the baseline,
as long as you performed relative to that baseline,
everything is fine in terms of your performance.
Again, that doesn't mean you can't improve in the future,
right? Doesn't mean you can't try and move your baseline,
okay? With some work,
you know,
more ex focus on it and focus on your game,
focus on your growth and things like that.
Move the baseline,
that's fine.
But in the moment when you're evaluating your performance,
right? This is like a snapshot of your performance.
You should use your current baseline and avoid the trap of
going theoretical.
Okay? So that is,
that is,
and, and,
and the thing about Mark,
you know,
and myself included and,
and other,
other pros who I know,
you know,
we all,
we all have the same kind of struggles in terms of
our performance,
in terms of our,
you know,
how, how do we do relative to what we can do.
I had a conversation with a,
not a senior pro player,
a top pro player at Nationals.
And it was basically the same conversation I had with Mark,
you know,
in terms of,
I won't say her name because she,
I haven't,
she hasn't given me permission to do so,
but I can't tell you that she's a top player.
I can't tell you.
I just ran into her.
I started having a conversation with her and she was very
down about the way she played.
And she's a top player,
you know,
top 30 for sure,
top, top 50,
a hundred percent sure,
top 30 probably when she's on her game.
And, and she was down on herself,
right? And so it's the same thing.
Why? Because the baseline that she was reaching for is a
theoretical baseline in terms of,
you know,
I know I can play better.
Well, not today,
right? Because that's not the baseline that applies to you today.
So that's,
that's how you want to use that baseline.
One other baseline concept that came became clearer to me during
the US Open was,
you know,
you have to be careful.
Another trap,
if you will,
is to use,
you have to use your baseline,
not somebody else's baseline.
And what happened was,
on, on that Friday,
I played with Stephanie Lane and we had a tough first
match against my good friend Scott,
and his and his partner Cheryl.
Tough battle.
Tough, tough battle.
We were down pretty big in the first game.
We were able to pull that one out and then win
it, win the second game,
you know,
reasonably well.
But I mean,
basically it was,
it was a tough battle.
It was a good,
good match.
And we run into our second match,
we run into a buzz saw.
So we had to play David Wach,
the Badger and Chris car,
who ended up,
I believe it ended up with silver or gold,
I can't remember.
It might have been gold.
I think it was gold.
Chris, I'm sorry if I forgot,
but I,
I think it's gold.
But anyway,
but they ended up doing very well.
They ended up running deep and doing great in the tournament.
And actually,
I take that back.
They got bronze.
My bad,
they got bronze still very good because on scenes will ended
up with gold,
as I recall.
Maybe it ended up with silver,
silver, silver,
bronze. My point is,
they played,
they played really well in the tournament and they were a
tough team.
So here's the,
but here's the,
here's the takeaway,
right? When we finish that game,
and we look at it objectively,
okay, we step,
we step back from a minute and we look at it
objectively, what is my Stephanie's baseline relative to Chris and Dave's
baseline? It's not the same,
okay? As a team,
in other words,
like our,
our ability to compete at a certain level and their ability
to compete at a certain level,
it's different.
If we both play to our baseline,
right? We both play perfectly to our baseline.
Chris and David are likely gonna win most of those matches.
That's just objective reality that we have to deal with.
Now, can we beat them?
Sure. We would have to play out of our minds way
above our baseline,
and they would probably have to stumble a little bit.
Then we have a chance of beating 'em.
That's how,
that's how the game is played,
right? When you have a a,
you know,
a baseline difference that is as big as,
as that one potentially,
right? Is not potentially as that one in reality.
And why,
why is that different?
Well, I know that David and Chris work a lot at
their game,
right? They,
they work hard,
and we gotta respect that.
We have to applaud it and we have to celebrate it
and say,
that's great that you guys are doing that.
I, on the other hand,
spend most of my time doing this.
I record podcasts,
I'm writing the book,
you know,
doing the YouTube stuff and also our,
our internal teaching,
our academy work,
right? We have a a,
we have a live game study coming up,
which I'll mention to you in a second that you can
join us at.
But basically,
you know,
we have all of these things.
That's where I spend my time,
okay? I don't spend my time out there drilling and playing
tournaments and playing,
you know,
competitive rec matches and things like that,
that get ready for tournaments.
That's my choice.
So, so my baseline,
I can't expect my baseline to be the same as Dave
and Chris,
I should say.
Stephanie still has a full-time job,
right? And so she,
and she does a lot of I-P-T-P-A certifications to certify other
coaches throughout the country.
So the point is,
you know,
it's fine.
In other words,
I mean,
just have to deal with reality.
Our baseline and their baseline is gonna be different.
And Stephanie and I had a nice conversation after the open
or after our day when we were talking about the day
and we had this conversation.
I think it really helped,
right? To say,
okay, let's look at the relative baselines and say,
you know,
it's just,
that's the,
that's the reality we have to deal with.
And I would say relative to our baseline,
I thought that in that match,
even though the score wasn't fantastic,
we played competitively and we played well relative to our baseline.
So watch those two traps.
One is the theoretical baseline and the other one is this
comparative baseline,
if you will,
right? Where I'm comparing myself to somebody else.
And you'll better be able to use the baseline.
In the riff I'm going to share with you,
I wanna share with you a particular story about the U
us Open.
It has to do with hybrid Pickleball where you play with
a wheelchair player,
one wheelchair player,
one standing player.
It was really eye-opening and exciting.
And I wanna share with you some le lessons that I
took away from that experience.
Before I do that,
I wanted to let you know that we do have a
live game study coming up this week.
So the week after you're hearing this,
the, the,
it's the May 1st,
May 8th,
and May 13th,
I think are the dates.
Anyway, you'll see the dates when you go to the website.
I'll put a link down below it.
You can check those out.
This is a,
we don't do these that often just because of time commitments,
But it's basically,
I'm coming into a room,
a zoom room with you.
We're gonna put up a match and I'm going to start
the match,
and I'm going to tell you what is going on during
the match.
We'll talk about mechanical areas that are good and could be
better. We're gonna talk about strategic areas the same way.
We'll foc we'll find some nuggets that are like,
this is really awesome.
We'll find some stuff that,
okay, this could have been done better.
And here's why.
If you have questions,
you get to ask me the questions.
It's a lot of fun.
If you like Pickleball and you want to grow your game,
game studies are an amazing way to do that.
So join us for that class.
You can join us for one session,
two sessions,
or you want,
you can join us for all three.
Then you get the most out of the process.
So, all right,
let's jump into,
lemme tell you,
and let's jump about the riff and I'll tell you about
what happened during the US Open in the hybrid division.
I had the pleasure of playing with Ken Dumond.
I got to meet him briefly at last year's US Open
Stephanie Lane,
who's part of our Better Pickleball team and helping us with
some coaching programs that we have going on,
has known him virtually her whole life,
like 40 years.
And, and anyway,
so she,
what happened was this year he had a partner lined up
for the opener for the hybrid that his partner couldn't,
wasn't able to make it.
So he,
he talked to Stephanie.
Stephanie suggested that he reached out to me and I was
more than happy to do it.
And I'm,
I'm really so happy that I agreed to do it.
Just to give you context,
about four years ago,
I had been at the five years ago,
actually in 2019,
I had been at the open early and they had a
wheelchair exhibition match.
Ken wasn't there at the time,
'cause Ken only,
Ken's been playing about two years,
but there were four gentlemen playing,
two from Canada,
two from from the us.
And the,
I was just fascinated with the sport and the strategy that
went into it.
And just watching,
you know,
those gentlemen out there competing.
And so I asked John,
Fran saw,
and Philippe,
who were the two gentlemen from Canada,
after they were playing,
if down playing it,
they would do some videos with me for YouTube to show
wheelchair Pickleball ballers,
how to play Pickleball.
So we shot some videos,
they're still on the YouTube channel and into Pickle.
And so I,
you know,
I've had an interest in,
in wheelchair Pickleball.
Sometimes we're just para Pickleball,
but I think the current terminology is more wheelchair Pickleball.
So in terms of wheelchair,
Pickleball and its growth 'cause just a beautiful way for players
out there to be able to engage with this sport.
And so anyway,
so I get,
I get there on Saturday,
we're gonna play the hybrid.
We had practiced a few times and I had gotten some
ideas on the strategy,
and I believe we went to,
and we won our first two matches.
Then we got knocked out by the gold medalist and then
ended up losing to the fourth place team and the back
draw and the semis.
So we're in,
we got the both semis,
we got knocked out both times.
And so we ended up,
I think in fifth place.
But it,
the, the experience that I wanna share with you is,
you know,
it, what I,
what I really enjoyed about it was it was a little
different than other US open brackets that I played in,
because all the batches are played in the same,
on the same courts.
So we go back to the courts 54 through 59,
something like that,
and we play on those courts.
So we're all together the whole,
the for the duration,
which I think is awesome.
But what I loved about it was every player went out
there and gave their,
all right,
we all went out there.
I mean,
we had one,
one player,
one wheelchair player that I was playing against,
got hit on the nose with the ball during the know,
off the bounce on a hard serve that popped them into
her nose.
That was,
you know,
we were kind of,
she was okay,
but you know,
that that was,
and then we had another player later on who like flipped
backward on the chair because getting ball that was far away
from him.
So everybody's out there leaving everything on the court,
literally blood,
sweat, and tears on the court.
We're all the standing players,
the wheelchair players,
we're all fighting as hard as we can to compete,
but at the same time,
we're not losing perspective of the game,
right? We're not losing perspective of that.
We're out there playing Pickleball,
you know,
we're talking with each other.
We're, we're,
you know,
we're, we're high fiving,
we're hugging at the end.
We're, I mean,
there's all this stuff that it's,
it's, it's like everything that's great about Pickleball awesome competition,
you know,
just battling out there,
just, just,
just like I said,
just giving everything right while at the same time,
enjoying the camaraderie,
enjoying the spirit of Pickleball that I think,
you know,
sometimes, you know,
it gets lost a little bit.
You know,
we've been playing,
you know,
a lot of us have been playing for many years now.
Clicks form,
things like that.
And okay,
some of that's okay.
I mean,
that's fine to play with your friends and things like that,
but at the end of the day,
you know,
let's not forget the bigger picture of Pickleball.
You know,
and, and I'll,
I'll issue this little challenge for you.
We've talked about it in prior episodes.
You know,
when you're thinking about who to,
who to invite to play Pickleball,
right? Who to put the,
whose hand to put the paddle in,
don't overlook.
Friends of yours,
relatives, acquaintances,
things like that who may be in a wheelchair or may
have a,
a physical disability.
In fact,
Ken, my,
my US open partner got introduced to the court and,
and sorry,
in country to the game by Stephanie,
our mutual friend.
She a few years back,
just put a paddle in his hand one day and said,
let's go hit some balls.
And I believe the story was he played for like three
hours and it was hooked.
And ever since then,
it's become a really big part of his life.
You know,
it's a big part of his life.
It's not,
it is not trivial activity frame.
And so again,
when you think about the sport and you think about,
you know,
is there someone in my life who I could share this
with? You know,
broaden your,
maybe broaden your,
the scope of,
of who you might share it with,
including folks who are in wheelchair.
So, alright,
that's this week's podcast.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Again, if you're,
if you want to do a game study,
it's an awesome opportunity.
These are live,
there's no replays.
You just come in and we talk Pickleball.
It's an amazing experience and I look forward to seeing some
of you all at the live game study.
Again, I'll put a link down below if I don't see
you there,
no problems.
We will see you next week at a regularly scheduled podcast
of Pickleball Therapy.
Rate and review it,
share with your friends.
As always,
if you enjoy the podcast,
they probably will too.
I'll every great week and I'll see you next time.