Welcome back to The Pickleball Clinic Newsletter!

Do you ever wonder how the best athletes of all time would do in pickleball? Well, we do, and we've decided to go through them one by one. Plus, we'll take a look at a recent study that came out comparing the popularity of tennis to pickleball, check out some amazing public pickleball courts, find out why it's so important to stop before hitting your return of serve, and a whole lot more.

Let’s do this! 👇

Have you ever wondered how a star athlete from another sport would do in pickleball?  Well, we're going to do just that in a piece we're calling How Would That GOAT Do in Pickleball? Here goes...

Michael Jordan: Widely considered the best basketball player of all time, and maybe the best athlete, we're assuming that a peak Jordan would be very good at pickleball. Obviously his jumping ability and quickness is world class. Also, shooting a basketball requires touch, which might translate well to dinking. Plus, Jordan’s ability to play baseball and golf at a high level demonstrates that his skills translate well to other sports. 

Tom Brady: Brady is considered to be the GOAT in football, but not so much for his athleticism. Instead, he is thought to be the best because of his arm talent, ability to quickly process information, and to be cool under pressure — all of which would be nice to have as a pickleball player too. So while Brady may not be the fastest or quickest guy out there, we still think he'd be pretty darn good at pickleball.

Wayne Gretzky: Unlike the two athletes above, Gretzky played a sport (hockey) that like pickleball, requires the use of a stick or tool to strike the ball/puck rather than just using your hand. So that's got to give Gretzky a slight edge because he's used to holding something in his hands that he has to control so well that it essentially becomes an extension of his hands. 

Lionel Messi: For quickness and speed, sure, Messi has that in spades. He would probably move around a pickleball court beautifully. BUT when a sport does not require the use of your hands (unless you’re the goalie), we simply don't know enough about his hand-eye coordination. Chances are, Messi would be extremely coordinated with his hands, but again, we don't know at what level.

Muhammad Ali: We're assuming that Ali's super-fast hands would translate to extremely fast reflexes, which you need to have up at the kitchen line. We're also thinking that his pickleball footwork would be great because he's used to moving around in the relatively small space of a boxing ring. One thing is for sure, he would almost certainly be the funniest and most entertaining pickleball player of this group.  

Babe Ruth: As the original king of the homerun (along with a career batting average of .342), it's pretty safe to say that the Babe had impeccable hand-eye coordination. The fact that he was also an excellent pitcher shows that his abilities translate in other ways. Yes, he was considered to be on the slower and heftier side, but in doubles pickleball, that wouldn't have hampered him too much.

So there's our list. Who would be the best pickleball player in this group? We'll let you decide for yourselves. 

*We purposely didn't choose G.O.A.T tennis players like Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic because tennis is similar enough that Williams and Djokovic would most likely be the best pickleball players in this group — simply because of the millions of hours they have already devoted to a pretty similar sport. 

Aim for Your Opponent’s Inside Foot When You Dink

The goal is to make your opponent take a step back off the kitchen line to hit the dink. This not only will jam them, but it creates more room for you to hit if they don’t recover properly. It also makes it harder for them to get into a rhythm because this movement is uncomfortable for many players. Try to mix it in next time you play and you’re likely to see more high, attackable dinks or missed shots!

How cool is this video? (Other than the fact that no one is coming up to the kitchen line to win the point. 😀)

The Time Has Come

If you've been reading our newsletters for any amount of time, then you know how much we love JOOLA paddles. But it's not just us. Go to any amateur tournament around the country, and you'll see the courts filled with high-level players using JOOLA paddles. The same thing is true for the pros, where the best players in the world choose JOOLA, including Ben Johns, Anna Bright, and Tyson McGuffin.

Well, their biggest paddle release of the year has arrived. Welcome to the JOOLA Pro IV line of paddles. They are similar to the JOOLA Mod TA-15 and 3s paddles except that these have TechFlex Power technology, which increases dwell time, flexibility and feel.

The paddles in the new Pro IV line are also Dual Certified by both UPA-A and USAP, so they’re legal wherever you choose to play. To start off, JOOLA has released their classic Perseus (14mm and 16mm) model (with the rest of the line releasing soon). With all of this said, get yourself a new Perseus Pro IV before they sell out!

Wow! Just look at these pickleball courts! If you want some peace, quiet, beautiful scenery and pickleball, it doesn’t get any better than this — well, other than that tennis court on the right. If they got rid of that, then it would be perfect! 😉

So where are these heavenly pickleball courts located? In the Rocky Mountains town of Crested Butte, Colorado at Ted Scheske Town Park. Right in the heart of Colorado ski country, the park stands at 9,400 feet above sea level, which means fresh mountain air all of the time.

These courts are so mice that they kind of make us want to move there so we can play on them all year round. Granted, the town name, "Crested Butte" might take some getting used to. 😀 But hey, it would be worth it!

The Art of “Spin”

A recent study was published about the sport of tennis by the Tennis Industry Association (TIA) and the United States Tennis Association (USTA). It tracked United States participation in tennis from 2019 to 2023.

To their credit, it appears that the data they presented is accurate based on their research. However, they do seem to sugarcoat the findings quite a bit. What do we mean by that?

Well, a press release they put out says "U.S. tennis participation surges to new high of 25.7 million players following five consecutive years of growth." OK, let's dissect that a bit.

The way they define a tennis player is "someone age 6 or older who played tennis one or more times in the past 12 months." Sure, you have to define it some way, but that's a pretty generous definition. 😀

Moreover, while tennis technically grew in 2023, it grew by less than 1%. According to this same study, do you know how much pickleball grew in that same time period? More than 50%.

The number of tennis players under 18 also declined by 14% in 2023, which is a troubling sign for the sport.

Fortunately, junior pickleball growth has been skyrocketing in the past few years, as evidenced by the more than 1 million kids under 18 who joined the sport of pickleball between 2022 and 2023 (according to the SFIA 2024 pickleball report).

When it's all said and done, we understand that tennis wants to present itself in a good light. But let's not get it twisted — pickleball has been soaring up the racket sport charts for years, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon. 💪

This is not very nice, and it will lead to some pretty boring points. With that said, if there’s a lot of money on the game, then we get it. 😂

You can’t win a game of pickleball if you can’t serve. Likewise, you’ll always lose games of pickleball if you can’t return serves. (Well, unless your opponent can’t serve, in which case no one would ever win — or lose. 😄) Anyway, the return of serve is a really important shot, and that’s why Matt is here to talk about it. 👇

Key takeaways:

• The secret to a good return of serve is actually based on the two times that you STOP.

• The first time you should stop is right after you get to the ball and are just about to hit it. Stopping at this point prevents you from moving as you are making contact with the ball.

• The second time you should stop is when you split step right as your opponent is about to hit your return of serve back at you. This way you are stable and ready to hit your next shot.

Have you ever heard of "soft tennis." It's a real sport that is played on a tennis court and appears to be very similar to tennis except that the ball is much softer. Because of that, it leads to much longer rallies since it's far more difficult to put the ball away with pace. It looks pretty cool, and as you can see in this point, a lot of the skills should translate well to pickleball.

Why do we mention it? Because the soft tennis world champion, Yuta Funemizu, just became the first Japanese player to sign an exclusive contract to play on the PPA Tour and in Major League Pickleball.

“I am truly honored,” said Yuta Funemizu. “However, this is just a first step on my new journey. My next goals will be to become the first Japanese player... to win a tournament on the PPA tour. I also hope my presence on the PPA tour will help grow the popularity of pickleball in Japan, where the sport is still relatively unknown.” Cheers to that, Yuta, and good luck!

Thanks for reading. See you out on the courts!

- Your Friends at The Pickleball Clinic

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