Ep. 308 - Don't Argue the Call - the Definitive Conversation on "Out" Ball Disputes

Episode 308: The Definitive Guide to Out Ball Disputes

Here's the situation. Score is 10-9-2. Your team is serving. You hit a volley, crisp, and it lands right on the line. A hair in or a hair out.
Your opponent calls it out.

You're sure it was in. What now?

Most of us go straight to the challenge. That instinct makes sense. You saw what you saw, the point mattered, and nobody likes losing a game on a call they don't agree with.

But before you say anything, run through a few questions.

Who created the situation? You did. You hit the ball so close to the line that your friend was put in an impossible spot. Unless you believe they're cheating you, they made the best call they could in a situation you handed them.

Where is this conversation going? They say out. You say you saw it in. They say they saw it out. Then what? Even if nobody escalates, the temperature on that court already changed the second you opened your mouth.

Is there enough riding on it? Is this point worth spending your friendship capital on?

Are you 100% sure you're right? Would you bet your life on it? I clipped a call like this recently and zoomed all the way in. I still couldn't tell you. I wouldn't bet a dollar on it.

And if we want to play by the rules, the rules are clear about whose call it is. Theirs.

Last one. Flip it around. They serve, you call their ball out, and they come at you about it. How does that feel?

Work through those questions, and the answer shows up on its own. Move on. Don't pause. Don't look twice. Toss the ball, serve, carry on.

In competitive play with a referee, an appeal is fine. That's what referees are for. An appeal is not a dispute.

And here's the part that matters most. Those same filters work off the court. Is it worth the cost? Where is this going? Am I sure? How would this feel from the other side? That's a useful screen for a lot of disagreements that have nothing to do with pickleball.

You're out there to play, see your friends, and have a good time. Protect that.

In the riff, I take you behind the scenes on the new course we're building here at Tony Roig Pickleball. It starts from a premise I want you to sit with: you are a capable, intelligent adult, and you can learn to navigate this game yourself. My job is to transfer what I know to you. Yours is to go play.

A thank you to the founding members who have joined us. This coaching, including this podcast, is possible because of you. It means a lot.

Be well,

Tony

What is Pickleball Therapy?

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.

# Pickleball Therapy — Episode 308
## Don't Argue the Call: The Definitive Conversation on "Out" Ball Disputes

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Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. It's the only podcast dedicated to your mind. My name is Tony Roig. I'm the host of this weekly podcast. It's a pleasure to be with you.

This week's podcast, I am going to go over with you the definitive guide to how to deal with out ball disputes. You're not going to want to miss this episode of the podcast. It's got a lot of stuff in here to help you process dealing with out ball disputes, but not just out ball disputes. Life disputes. Because a pickleball mental journey translates to a lifelong mental journey. It's good stuff. And then in the riff, I'm going to give you a behind-the-scenes update on what's going on with our new course here at Tony Roig Pickleball, which is my new home for all the coaching and the work that I'm doing in pickleball.

As we dive into the podcast, we have several camps coming up. The Boston camp is either sold out or almost sold out. I'm not sure. I think there's one player who may have a spot reserved on that one. So that one may be sold out by now. Chicago is starting to move. We get a lot of inquiries about Chicago. So if you're in the Midwest, interested in joining us for a camp, Chicago, October, let's do it. The Dallas camp is starting to get filled up. So if you're interested in that Dallas camp, definitely check that one out now. And then we have several camps here in my home base here in Tampa, which is beautiful all times of year. It's a little hot right now, but it's still beautiful. But certainly when the camps are scheduled, the temperature down here is going to be, we always say that's the reason we live in Florida. So if you're interested in a pickleball camp, make sure you check those out.

All right, let's talk about out balls, and out balls specifically, out ball disputes. How do you deal with that when there's an out ball dispute?

And let's go ahead and set the stage. Let's make it spicy. Let's make it interesting. Score is 10-9-2. Your team is serving, of course, at 10-9-2. You get a volley. You hit the volley, crisp, you love it. Everything's great. It's right there. It's right on the line. It's either, you know, a hair's breadth in or a hair's breadth out. And your opponent calls it out.

What do you do in that situation? How do you deal with it? What's the right approach? Again, you hit the ball. You think it's in, or it might be in. But let's even go, you think it's in. You're 100% sure the ball is in. Your opponent calls it out. Very close to the line, though. Not something that's six inches in. What do you do?

So let's go through several different ways of approaching this. And I think by the end, I think you'll agree with the premise that we're going to land on here.

Let's start here. Who created the situation? Okay, so you and your opponents, and I'm assuming most of the time, most of the time you're playing with friends, right? That's who your opponents are. So you now have a situation. You hit the ball. They've called it out. You don't like it. Who created the situation? The answer is, you did. You did, because you hit the ball very close to the line. One way or the other, inside or out. Could be in, could be out, right?

So if you created the situation, why not take some agency, right? Why not take some ownership over that situation? And when you think about it a little bit more broadly, right, you really put your friends in a tough spot. You hit the ball so close to the line that you're putting them in an impossible situation to make a call. And unless you think they're affirmatively cheating you, they're probably making the call, actually, not probably. Unless you believe they're affirmatively cheating you, they are making the call the best way that they can, right? They are actually doing the best that they can in the situation that we created. That we created.

So let's start from that premise, right? We created a situation. Maybe we shouldn't get all bent out of shape because we don't like the call at the end of the day.

Another thing to think about here is, where's this conversation going? Right? Your opponent says, out. What's your next play? What's your next move? Are you sure? Or are you going to say, I saw it in? Okay, and then what happens next? Let's play through it, right? Let's just game-play it a little bit. What are they supposed to say? No, I saw it out. And then what are you going to say? No, I saw it in. Right? Are you just going to keep going with it? Are you going to escalate?

Even if you don't escalate, what's happened already? The minute you challenged them, what happened to the temperature on the court, to the enjoyable time you were having with your friends out on the pickleball court? How's that going for you, right? So just think about what happens when you initiate that conversation, what's already happened, and where are you going with it. Right? How far are you going to go with it? You know, are you going to back down? Are you going to make them back down? Is somebody going to have to back down on this court, or else we're going to have, I don't know, fisticuffs, words? I'm not sure. So where are you going with the conversation?

Next question is, is there enough riding on this? Like, is it sufficiently important to win this particular point, and in this case, this particular game, to create this unpleasantness on the court, to take a stand? Is this the hill that we're dying on, this hill right here, right now? In a situation, going back to what we talked about earlier, that we created, right? A situation where we put our friends in a tough spot. Is this the moment? Is this important enough to us to spend that capital of ours and potentially burn a relationship? Potentially. Definitely damage a relationship. Even if it's a small damage, there's damage. Is it that important? Is there enough riding on it?

The next one is, are you 100% sure you're right? I know you think you are. I get it, right? But are you 100% sure you're right? Would you bet your life on it? I'm going to bet you wouldn't bet your life on it.

I actually was doing some clipping earlier today, some video clipping, and I'm going to post a little short about this. A serve. It was called out by our opponents, right? It was like right there on the line. To me, it's a toss-up. I wouldn't bet either in or out. I wouldn't bet my life on it being in. I wouldn't bet my life on it being out. I don't know. And I cropped into it with the video tools that I have. You know, I cropped into it. I looked at it. I mean, the ball, if it's in, it's in by a smidge. If it's out, it's out by a smidge. And I wouldn't bet a dollar on that call.

And so, you know, when you have these situations, again, that you created, that conversation not going anywhere except, you know, negativity, are you even 100% sure that you're right? Tough one, right?

And, you know, if we're going to be rule specific, right? Because I can hear some of you thinking already out there. I think I can hear you thinking. All right. Some of you may respond to this by saying, well, those are the rules. The rules are the rules, and if it's in, it's in, right? All right. If we want to play by the rules, whose call is it? What do the rules say about that? Who gets to make the call there? Your opponent. Not you. Their call. And remember, going back to the, if you will, the original sin, or the root cause, the situation was created by us. The rules say it's their decision what the call is. So that's another strike against arguing.

And then the last one I'll tell you is, let's flip it around. Okay? They're serving at 10-9-2. You're at the baseline. They hit the ball. You call it out. How do you feel when they create a problem for you, when they come at you because they don't like your call? How does that make you feel as a pickleball player and just as a human being? Probably not great, right? Challenging your veracity, challenging your call, challenging the situation. That they could challenge you in a situation that you didn't, not that you had nothing to do with, but you weren't the initial causer of the situation. They were. They hit the darn ball right there next to the line. So what do you do, right? How do you feel? I'm guessing, not good.

So when you think about the litany of ways you can come at this, right, I think the answer is pretty apparent, which is when you have an out ball dispute, when you have any kind of disagreement about an out call situation, you've got to move on. You just got to move on. Then nothing happened, you know? You hit the ball. They call it out. Don't even hesitate. Don't pause. Don't look at them a second time. Don't do anything like that. Don't elevate the temperature in the room, because you will elevate the temperature if there's any indication that you have a problem with the call. You just say, oh, man, I missed it. Toss the ball, they serve, carry on with life.

Do not get bogged down with these calls. It's just not a good investment of time, energy, friend capital. All the factors are against challenging perceived injustices in the out call world. And I would submit to you, to me it's the same in tournament or in competitive play and in rec play. So tournaments, league play, things like that.

Now, if you have a referee in a tournament, I have no problem with an appeal. I have no problem with an appeal, right? Because in tournament play, that's what the referees are for, right? You make the appeal. Oftentimes the referee can't overrule it because they're looking at the non-volley line. You just move on, right? There's no money in getting bogged down in a conversation about that.

And in fact, if you watch any pro matches, they don't really get into it with each other. They just use their challenge, right? They're not even sure. And they're professionals. And there's referees on the court who aren't even sure. And I can tell you, sitting in the commentating booth, we'll watch it on the screen as they're replaying it, and they're zooming in on it, you know, cropping in on it and showing it bigger and bigger and bigger. And me and my fellow commentator will be like, I don't know, would you? They'll say in, I'll say out. Or I'll say in, they'll say out. We can't tell either.

So why are we expecting more from our friends on a Wednesday morning or on a Tuesday evening game, for them to have this eagle eye, and if they didn't see it perfectly, then what, they're cheaters or something? You've just got to move past that.

And I'm going to tell you, this way of thinking about it, you know. Is it worth the cost, right? Is this significant enough for me? Where's the conversation going to go, you know, game-playing that? Are you 100% sure that you're right about it, right? Flipping it around, how would you feel? All those different techniques that we use, or questions that we asked regarding out balls, guess where you can use that too? In life.

You know, when you have a disagreement, when you have an uncomfortable situation, when you have something that you're going to make an issue of, right, in your personal life outside of pickleball, why not use the same kind of filters, the same screens, to get to whether it's something that you want to articulate, that you want to bring forward? It's just a really helpful way of reducing unnecessary conflict in situations when it's not warranted.

Out ball disputes on a pickleball court. A dispute is never, ever, ever warranted under any circumstances. Even in competitive play, you make the appeal. That's not a dispute. Just make the appeal, and you're done. No disputes on that.

So hopefully that helps you navigate out balls and, you know, keep the temperature down on the court, and just remember why you're there. You're there to play pickleball, see your friends, and hopefully have a good time.

All right, let's dive into the riff.

So I want to give you an update on what's going on behind the scenes here at Tony Roig Pickleball, what we're up to. And I want to let you know that right now, I've been working my tail off on the most comprehensive course in pickleball. This is the course that's going to have everything that you need, both step by step as well as on your own if you want to DIY it. Basically, if you want to navigate yourself, it's going to have the answers to your questions. Because it's not just going to have, like, in this situation do this, in this situation do that, right? It's going to have, this is how the situations are built. This is how the framework of the game works, given those situations, so that you learn how to navigate the game on your own. You become your own pilot, your own master inside the sport of pickleball, as opposed to just trying to remember, you know, what did Tony say in this lesson? What did I read over here? What did I see over there?

So, you know, many of you already know that I've developed a lot of pickleball curriculum in the past. Developed the most comprehensive camp and online curriculum courses that are out there. I can tell you that this one is even more thorough. It's updated, and it's structured. It has the benefit of my additional years of coaching. So this program is going to be really powerful.

And I already alluded to this a little bit, about how it works. Basically, it's going to train you. But here's an initial premise that I think is really important to understand about the way that I think about coaching, but also the way that I would submit to you that you may want to consider thinking about for your development as a player. And so, the whole course starts from the premise that you are a capable, intelligent adult human being. Okay? What that means is that you can learn how to navigate pickleball yourself, right?

Yes, I can guide you, right? And the TRP coaching team can guide. But you're the one on the court. You're the one making decisions in real time. You're the one deciding shots and strategies. You're the one picking the shots that you want to focus on and things like that, right? That's going to be you. And you're going to be empowered enough to do that. Because the job of the course, the way I see it, is to transfer my pickleball knowledge and the pickleball knowledge of the coaching team to you. And this course is going to do that for sure.

I'm super excited to unveil the course. It'll be unveiled in September to the general public. If you're on our email list, you already got notified in the Coaching Digest. But if you're interested in early access, you can just click on there. There's a link that'll take you to the founding information, and you can decide if that's right for you. If you haven't seen the Coaching Digest yet, it's in your inbox. If you haven't received the Coaching Digest and you believe you're on the email list, send us an email, [e-mail]. We'll get it sorted out. If you're not on the email list and you want to be, go to tonyroigpickleball.com. Join the email list. It is free to join the email list, and you can join the community for free and get some free courses. A lot of good content on there for you.

So, and this is really important to me, I want to give a big shout out and a big thanks to those of you who have joined the founding community here at Tony Roig Pickleball. You are the players who make this coaching, all the coaching, including this podcast, possible. And it means a lot to me personally that you've shown faith in the project and in what we're doing. And without you, again, it wouldn't be possible, and I really appreciate it.

I look forward to seeing some of you in, I think, a couple weeks in Boston, and then a few others of you up in Chicago in a month or so. And for everybody else, I'll see you next week on the next regular episode of Pickleball Therapy.

Be well.