Grand Canyon State Games

Pickleball as an Art Form – A Must Watch Video

Jeff

“Pickleball is a ribbon of dreams, a tale told by a genius, full of sound and fury, signifying everything! The ferocious triumph of the human will to excel is a thing of beauty to behold. All four players should be proud.” Keith via comment on – 15 Shots to Kitchen Line

This is the first paragraph of the post highlighted above…

“The Pickleball Channel uploaded this video (linked below), that shows how it took Alex Hamner and me 15 shots to make it to the kitchen line (24 more shots to win) straight to their Facebook page on February 22, 2016, and at the time of this blog post the video had 121,270 views with 1,433 people sharing this video!”

Click to see VIDEO

Watch this amazing pickleball point between Alex Hamner & Jennifer Lucore and Mona Burnett and Bonnie Williams at the Grand Canyon State Games.

As Keith’s remark above implies, pickleball can be an art form when done at this level! Great job!

You can read the entire story at Jennifer Lucore’s Blog post and don’t forget to look at the comments as well!

Pickleball: Almost Just Like You

Jeff

The link below is to the Grand Canyon State Games 2015 men’s Pickleball finals in El Mirage, AZ between Justin Rodgers & Dave Weinbach and Steve Wong & Aspen Kern.

I would encourage you to watch the video. I wouldn’t say it is an exceptionally exciting match, but there are some good observations that can be made:

These are top notch players, perhaps best in the world, and they make the same mistakes we all make. They just make them less often.

  • Notice how much of the game is played in or near the non-volley zone.

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  • Also note how every once in a while the direction of the shot is changed by the player hitting the ball into the opposing non-volley zone. Angling the shot seems to give the offensive player better odds at getting the ball over the net and keeping it shallow and low. I have found this to be the case in my playing as well.

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  • Interestingly, the lob was NOT used to back the opponents off of the non-volley zone area. Beginners and some intermediate players use the lob quite often. This underscores the difficulty of making great lob shots and turning a defensive position in to an offensive one.

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  • The players do not serve hard, but try to serve in such a way that they can get to the net on the third shot or shortly thereafter.