65: Back on Court: Pro Event Takeaways, DUPR Frustrations, and Three Quick Fixes

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[00:00:55] Welcome to 4.0 To Pro. The pickleball podcast that focuses on a single shot, tip, or strategy to improve your pickleball game with every single pocket-sized episode. Our goal is to make you better on the court every time you hear our voices.

[00:01:16] Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of 4.0 to Pro, your pocket-sized pickleball podcast where we teach a single shot or strategy every single episode. I'm Michael O'Neal here in sunny Long Beach, California. Joined by one Mircea Morariu there in Boca Raton, Florida, where we've got the band back together. Hello, Mircha.

[00:01:35] Yes, sir. We certainly do. And I, for one, am very glad to be back with you, my friend. Missed you. Obviously, we've been keeping in touch. But life has been taking us in other directions, unfortunately. And we really need to get back to what is most important, which is pickleball. Clearly, pickleball is more important than pretty much everything. I did just swing by the PPA Finals, Mircha, there in San Clemente. Nice.

[00:02:01] Yeah, it was cool. I mean, I've been there a million times. It's right down the road. And it was a really cool environment. Surprisingly, all the top seeds won. So it wasn't like the most exciting. But if you guys have never been to a pro event, the open pros, the people you see on all the TV shows and stuff, you can't believe how fast their hands are, first of all, in real life.

[00:02:24] And the defensive positioning and the ability to reset from everywhere on the court, from every angle is breathtaking sometimes to watch in person. It really is. It's amazing. And when I was coaching full time, it was particularly stark to just see it right in front of me, how fast the balls are going. It really doesn't do it justice when you're watching it on TV. In person, it's really spectacular.

[00:02:51] And, you know, I think that should be a show topic. Like, what can you get from watching pro matches? And, you know, we can go into that a little bit today or we can separate that. So we have a kind of hodgepodge of things to talk about today since we've been AWOL for a bit. And we are happy to announce we're back. And we are going to make a concerted effort to produce more quality shows regularly and hopefully get back to the swing of things. So we appreciate everyone's patience.

[00:03:20] I can't tell you how many people have come up to me at the different tournaments and playing US Open, the APP Sacramento, and just locally. It's really amazing. I play Patch Reef a bunch and have been going there to work on a few things on my game. And how many people have come up to me and said, great podcast and we miss you out there. Where is it? We really appreciate it. Exactly. Yeah, I've gotten a ton of DMs as well and emails from that and that sort.

[00:03:45] Exactly. Just for the record, it's 100% on Michael. It's been his fault the whole time. So just want to lay that out there. Yes, yes. 100% guys. I'm joking. We are mutually responsible. I'm now about six weeks in to my CRBN Barrage paddle. Carbon, of course, has been really good to us over the years. And I've, first of all, never hit better drives. I'm using the Carbon Barrage 1, which is the elongated shape.

[00:04:14] And I've got some weights on the throat and then kind of a heavy heel weight. They make like a 6 gram and a 12 gram. I think that's right. Not 6 ounce, 12 ounce. 12 ounce would feel really heavy, I think. But it is such a rocket. Enough that people that have been playing with me for years are like, what is going on with your drive right now? And I'm like, it's just in fuego, as they used to say on ESPN. Nice. Yeah, it's really, really good.

[00:04:38] So if you guys haven't checked out the line from Carbon, the Barrage series, I think it's probably like most, the analog would be like the boomstick or something like that. It's a very powerful paddle. It took me a while to figure out resets. And I'm still popping a few resets up. But really loving the power and the snap to it. And carbonpickleball.com, you can use the promo code 402P at checkout to get 10% off your order. So go do that. A really, really important thing that I want to emphasize about the paddle.

[00:05:08] I actually used the four when I played the US Open. What's been really impressive to me ever since the True Foam series came out is how durable these paddles are. And I mean, I've played with, I mean, I don't know how many, but I'd say easily a thousand or more paddles. And these are really the most durable paddles that I've ever played with. There's no like massive break-in period. You know, a lot of the paddles, and it was more the Gen 3 before they came out with the foam paddles.

[00:05:37] But a lot of the paddles, you know, you had this right out of the box. Then they would break in. Then you have this, you know, two to three beaks, sometimes longer kind of a sweet spot era where it plays exactly like you want. And then after that, there's further breakdown with the grit going down. And then also delamination slash core crushing, whatever you want to call it. I'm really impressed with the durability of these paddles. Well, me too.

[00:06:05] And it's just a very consistent paddle out of the box. And then as you play with it, I have something to, we have a few things to share with each other. But one thing I'll share, I played a mixed tournament, Mircha, 5.0, 35 plus with my good friend, Michelle. And we played a few tournaments together and it's great. She's got a really well-rounded game. And I really enjoyed just one of the great attitudes on a pickleball court and really, really fun.

[00:06:31] This was around Robin and we had, I think, 10 teams in our group. So we were playing, no way, we had 11 teams. We were playing 10 games and we ended up going five and five. And three of our losses were 11 to 10. So had we won one of those, we got fourth overall. But had we won one of those, we would have gotten second in the tournament. So we would have been silver. Oh, wow. That's literally one point. And I had, one of them was on my paddle and I just missed it.

[00:07:00] I missed a ball this wide to win one of the games. And then we ended up losing. But my duper, Mircha, went from, I think in mixed, it was like a 4.7 or something to a 3.9 because of that. Wow. So I'm now, this is now 3.9 to pro. So I encourage anybody who wants to, please invite me to your tournament and let me play 3.5 and see how that works out.

[00:07:27] So I don't know, maybe there's a whole show about duper and at what point it starts becoming relevant. And to further emphasize this point, in gender doubles, Michelle played with her partner, Ellie, and they won. They went 9-1 and won 35 plus 5.0 women's. And her duper went down half a point. She was at like a 4.7 and went down to like a 4.2 or something like that.

[00:07:56] So what is going on with duper? Well, what's going on is that they're using the score as a significant barometer in how your rating is affected. So interestingly enough, I hadn't looked at it in just so long. I typically don't. And then someone asked me, hey, didn't you win the last tournament? And I was like, well, the last men's, yeah, I won it. It's like, interesting. I looked at your duper and I think it went down. You should check it out.

[00:08:25] So I took a look at it and the mix, I thought maybe it was because of the mix because the mix didn't go that well the day before. But we played an event in Nashville. It was a champion series pickleball tournament. And so there were a lot of really good teams. For example, Jaime Onsenz and Yusuf Pazidi, which are two of the top, top players in men's doubles. You know, Jaime's been number one in men's and mixed on the APP tour for a while. Anyway, they finished fourth. So Jose Derisi and I won the tournament.

[00:08:54] We beat great, I mean, just had a bunch of good battles. Darryl Wyatt, David George, excellent players. And in fact, my duper did go down. Now, it didn't go down massively, but it went down slightly. And the reason was because of one game in the first round. So we played these two guys that don't play a lot of tournaments. And I noticed that their reliability scores were very low, but they were solid players.

[00:09:22] But their reliability was very low. And we had one 11-7 game. And I thought that was kind of interesting. Because of that one game was the primary reason that my duper went down after the entire tournament. And, you know, one of the things that I think that they should do is really weight the matches by round. Because what happens in the semis and the finals, the gold medal match, is not the same as the first round. They should not be weighted the same.

[00:09:52] And, you know, I've had this discussion before. And obviously, it's fallen on deaf ears. And interestingly enough, they claim to be ageless and genderless. And now they've started doing it. But originally, what do you think would be one of the primary things they'd want to use? That would be the split-age events. Where you have a 50-plus pro and then an open pro. And we used to have in nationals, it was, you know, both mixed split-age and gender split-age. Now, they still have them at the U.S. Open.

[00:10:20] Anyway, to go back to that, that they had excluded those from duper. And not just that, like for the last two years, APP has been putting things in UTR. And that obviously was a failure. And so now they're back, you know, the APP is back, you know, putting data in duper. Yet two years of data are gone. So it's just the ratings are just, I don't know, it just doesn't make sense to me. However, they are trying to improve things.

[00:10:47] They have kind of split things up into gender and mix now, duper. And they do have actually an age-weighted or age-appropriate or whatever it is. So your overall duper is slightly different than your age-modified one. So at least they're trying to make some progress. I think that the scores are weighted far too much. And I found it interesting that when you play against a team that has a very low reliability,

[00:11:10] at least it appeared, and I'm not sure that this is the case, but it appeared that the duper was affected just as much as if I played someone where their reliability was really high, which doesn't make sense to me. We had one game in that tournament where we straight up just got beat. Like, we just weren't in one of the games. They were really good and dominant. And it was like, all right, we're not going to beat those guys. And it's funny because I had trouble with the same dude in a tournament like two years ago. He just, he's really good at taking over the court. And it's really hard. He's a huge human.

[00:11:39] He's like 6'4 and moves really well. And he does, and his partner just lets him play singles. It's hard to get around him. And they win because of it. It's just that same thing when you see those clips online where like, play singles, bro. It's like, yeah, that's that. And he's definitely playing that more maybe pro level of mixed. But anyway, neither here nor there. I just thought it was funny. I don't know, I guess I'm going to have to dig it back up so I can play some APP tournaments at some point. I do want to share something that I think everyone's going to relate to. You ever have one of those matches where you just can't hit a ball?

[00:12:08] Yeah, sure. Everyone's had those. Oh, yeah. Well, Jose and I, I don't know if he'll be excited that I'm sharing this. He's a great partner. He's a phenomenal player. Great guy. We've been fortunate to have a lot of success on the APP tour and other things. Anyway, we played in Sacramento. It was very windy. And we played a first round, had a super tough match from a new 50 plus player, Daniel Roditi, who is the pro. He's here. Oh, exactly. He was actually at our tournament. He watched probably my greatest game. Exactly.

[00:12:38] And as you know, he's a really good player. And we played him first round and Jamil Atja, who's also a friend of mine from Southern California. And he's an excellent player, just doesn't play a lot of tournaments. So we played them first round, which was a very tough match. We won in three games, very competitive match. And then the next match, Jose and I played. We played really good players, Laurent Young and John Hostetler, which we had beaten last time, actually, in that last Nashville tournament that I mentioned. And I was missing everything. And oddly enough, Jose, at the same time, was missing everything.

[00:13:07] I don't think we could have played worse. It almost appeared like we were trying to miss the ball. And we weren't. I mean, even we were down. I don't remember how it was. I think we lost like two and four or four and two. We just started laughing because neither of us could hit a ball. I mean, returns, volleys, serves, everything. The wheels fell off. And it was by far the worst match I've ever played in pickleball. And oddly enough, it was also the worst match I've ever seen him play. So anyway, it happens to the best of us. You know, we got back on the horse in the backdrop.

[00:13:37] You know, you can reset. But I just wanted to share that with you because it was quite something. And we all have them. And, you know, sometimes you just got to laugh out there. First of all, that's hilarious. It's like when you look at your partner and go, you know, people tell me I'm supposed to be pretty good at this. What happened? What is going on in here? I will say the highlight of my tournament, Mircha, was a walk-off ATP to win 11-10 in front of a huge crowd. So that was pretty cool. Yeah, that was pretty fun. That was the highlight of the day for me.

[00:14:03] Just to wrap up the Duper discussion, I don't know a whole bunch about the reliability score, how their algorithm works right now. But do you think that there's a certain, I don't know, switch or trigger that from a reliability score standpoint where it starts looking more accurate? Because I don't look at how I play and go, oh, that's a 3.9 player. Do you think there's like a certain amount of tournaments? Or how would I dig myself out of this? Do we have any idea? Do I just do the Duper reset for 30 bucks?

[00:14:33] The short answer is I don't know. I guess you could do the Duper reset. The thing is you have to play up sort of, and that's really one of the keys. And that's why at a certain level if you're playing Senior Pro, for example, you can't really advance your Duper very much because you're always going to be playing, depending on your level. So if you're a high-level Senior Pro player, you can't really go up very much. Yeah.

[00:14:58] Because you're in that pool where everyone's kind of similar, and so you can't really advance. You can only almost like kind of go down and bounce back up a little bit. Along those lines, what you need to do is really kind of play up and hope that you get a bunch of points during a few games with high-level players. Like if you and I play Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio, and we lose 11-2, 11-2, our Dupers are probably going to jump up a bunch, and theirs are probably going to go down. Because I bet they'd be expected to beat us 11-0, 11-0.

[00:15:28] And that doesn't really make sense if they beat us 11-2, 11-2. And it might be hyperbole, but it's not that much. I bet you if we get four points or something, and we may not do that. Yeah. But it's certainly possible that they're screwing around and, you know, they're playing whatever. You get my point. Yeah. It's pretty interesting. I will say, and we can move on, watching that tournament in San Clemente, just watching the open pros dinking and how they move and where they put the ball.

[00:15:55] I was just thinking in relation to the people I know and even the pros that play at Los Cab where I play, just dinking looks like it puts so much pressure on the other team from location. And, like, it would be so easy for Anna Bright or Ben Johns or Annalie Waters to get a pop-up in a couple of dinks from any mortal. Because it is really, the pressure they put on those dinks is incredible to watch in person. Well, especially if you're playing in the same court as them. So, yes. That's what I mean.

[00:16:23] I can vouch for that, yes. That's what I mean. Like, you've actually shared the court with them. Probably had to deal with that, which is a whole other level. So let's chat, Mircha. We both have a couple things to chat about on this show. Why don't you lead us off? And this is a bit of a grab bag. I don't know what he's about to say and vice versa. So why don't you lead us off on this? We've been thinking about show topics, and obviously they're just a slew that we can choose from. And just a few things that I've really been noticing in terms of what people do and what they can improve on,

[00:16:53] meaning what people do in terms of mistakes out there and what they can improve on and the lowest hanging fruit. Just a few things come to mind. And we've done show topics on some of these, but I'm just going to reiterate them because it's incredible what a difference they make. Number one is moving or running through the ball. And it's not just running through it, although that's the biggest component of it. It's also moving your body, like in terms of your torso or jerking up your head or your shoulders.

[00:17:21] If you do one thing today when you go out and play, when you get a ball in the midcourt, stop and hit. Feel stable. Feel balanced. Get the feel of the ball on your paddle in that sweet spot. Mentally think about hitting the sweet spot. Run to the ball, stop. Hit, whether it's a drop, whether it's a drive, whether it's a volley. And the key to that is split stepping right before your opponent is about to hit the ball.

[00:17:49] Wherever you may be, split step, then hit the ball in a stable, non-moving fashion. And it happened today when I trained with this gentleman every week and we do a lot of play games together. And he is doing such a great job at slowly improving on that. And he still runs through balls. And he knows. We all do. Yeah, we all do. And I'm not, you know, I've certainly done it and I still do it.

[00:18:15] But when you recognize the mistake that you've made, that is so huge to your improvement. Because the more you mentally just make a note, hey, I stopped. I was stable. The ball went where I wanted to go. Next time you run through the ball, okay, I ran through the ball. I duffed it. It popped up. I hit it out, whatever. That is improvement. So give yourself some grace because you're going to make the mistake. But if you do one thing today when you go out and play or tomorrow, stop, hit, then go.

[00:18:42] Especially in that transition zone midcourt area. But it's really with all your shots. When dinking, when turning, et cetera. Really focus on that. And you're going to improve your game. So I just got CPR certified two days ago, Mircha. I thought, you know, I'm on the court with a bunch of 50 plus year olds in hot sun. Probably not the worst idea to be able to do. And there's this device called the AED, which is the thing that when you go to the, you see the ER shows and they go clear and they shock people.

[00:19:11] The AED is a small version of that that is portable and very typically around. And I was very new to the CPR thing. Of course, you being a doctor, you know what, maybe where I'm going with this. But when you're doing CPR, which is this manual pushing of the heart to try to keep it or get it going or keep it going. And there's an AED available. You use the AED. The AED trumps everything. It is the thing that it's like, no, it will monitor and shock and give you instructions. So if there's one available, you use it.

[00:19:41] In relation to footwork, this thing that you're saying trumps everything else. No matter where you are on the court, if you're just stopped when you hit the ball, it's more important than where you are physically positioned on the court. Now, ideally, this is a great piece of advice I heard once. Ideally, you are where you want to be. You're ideally in the perfect position to hit that ball. But if you're not, it's still more important to be stable and still than it is to be moving

[00:20:08] towards that ideal position 100% of the time. So to be stopped when that opponent's about to hit the ball and just be balanced and ready to go either way is better than running to that spot where you know they're probably going to hit it because it's really wide open and full of space. It's the one thing that if you can just drive into your brain, please, if I could just stop expecting the transition zone. Like you said, stop when I'm hitting the ball. I promise your game will get better. 100%.

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[00:21:37] So that was one thing that I've been noticing. The other is partner communication. In pick up rec games, and I go back to Patch Reef because I've been going to open play there to work on some things. Typically, I have games that I've set up. But it's been fun to go to open play. It's called Patch Reef? Yeah, Patch Reef Park in Boca Raton, Florida. They just built 18 covered courts. And they're redoing the, I think, 10 or 12 outdoor courts. Anyway, so it's 18 covered courts. And it's shockingly packed the majority of the time.

[00:22:05] They have morning and afternoon open play. And then you can reserve it in between. Because they used to have 10 courts that you could reserve all the time. They had a few open plays here and there. Now they have open plays twice a day. I've been stunned at how popular it's been. It's amazing. Anyway, in open play and so the open rec play, it's shocking how little partner communication there is. And even the simplest things like, let's hit it to Joe. Let's hit it to Susie.

[00:22:30] Let's hit it to the, let's hit thirds to the person that's moving or mine in the middle, yours, et cetera. It's amazing. And you don't have to talk for 20 minutes before you start the game. Can I interrupt you really quick and clarify a couple of things? Sure. Before you keep going. So this is when you say open play, you're stepping onto a court with strangers, which is something you haven't done a ton of in the last few years. You typically have set up games. Correct. Number one, this is, I love this.

[00:22:59] I love this for you because it's what we all experience all the time, but more than you probably typically did. So whenever I would come with these stories. Anyway, so A, do people by default, just because you're local, do most people know who you are and your level? I'd say most, obviously not all. So, you know, the majority, but, but the majority is maybe 60, 40. So. Right. Are you getting on court sometimes with 3035 type players or is it all advanced stuff? Yeah. Okay.

[00:23:25] So you're on with strangers and have you experienced yet where like when you suggest something like that, someone just goes, why? Like, cause they haven't recognized the threat or the shot or the thing that you're trying to do and it's too much to try to explain to them while you're on the court with them at the time. I haven't really gotten the why. Okay. I typically include that when I'm talking, I'll say, Hey, let's try hitting it here.

[00:23:51] And for the most part, you know, people are, you know, very cool or they listen. They don't really, Oh, I'm not going to do that. Or I haven't run across literally that one single time. There hasn't been one person at all that has any pushback. Like, I mean, I'm obviously polite and very brief about it. You know, I'm not like, Hey, you know, you bonehead, like you're hitting the stronger guy every time. Yeah. So I just kind of try to point out, Hey, if you hit it, if you notice that when you hit it here, we get this.

[00:24:19] And they look at me like, yeah, I never thought about that way. And, you know, you notice if I'm over here, if you're over here, you get a better ball. And they're like, yeah, you're right. And so the vast majority of people have really appreciated the, you know, very brief discussions that we're having on there. That's cool. So they're not questions, very open to it. And it's, it's been pretty cool. Have you had to do the thing where you've played a few points, but they're still throwing

[00:24:46] shoulder and neck high balls up that you're, your opponents are crushing. And you go, all right, that's, that's what this game's going to be. Yes. Because of the skill level isn't quite the highest, but the more important thing is that almost to a person that they're trying to get a little bit better if I share something with them and they try to do it. And, you know, that's all you can ask. I mean, you know, you can ask me to do certain things and I won't be able to do them, you know,

[00:25:11] with the level of an open pro player or one of the top players, but everyone is going to miss balls or hit pop-ups, whatever, and screw up. We all do it. The pros do it. Even the highest levels pros do it, although they do it less than everyone else. But the point is, is when you're generally trying to hit the ball in the right direction or you're trying to be in the right spot, you're going to get better balls and you're going to hit better balls. It's just that simple. I can't remember what the stat was and why this particular thing just popped in, but you talk about missing balls.

[00:25:41] There was some, I don't know if you and I were talking about it, but there was some stat where in a tournament, who was it? Was it, uh, I forget who it was, but they didn't miss a serve return or a third the entire match. Oh, wow. That's amazing. It was two tournaments ago. They didn't miss a single one and they were just perfect. And I'm like, God, can you imagine just not, I don't say having to worry about it, but having that much consistency to not miss a single third throughout an entire match is pretty amazing. Well, I love that, dude. I think it's super cool. And I think it's helped.

[00:26:09] I think that in and of itself will foster a lot of show topics for us because you're, uh, you know, you're mixing in with the commoners. Thank you for that. Uh, we're all commoners, man. And that's what's the beauty about pickleball. But you know, it's just such a fun game. So we all love it. The other thing that I've, you know, the last thing, it was really three things I've noticed, but the last thing we've talked about a million times is hitting out balls, you know, the

[00:26:36] amount of out balls that are hit on a daily basis in the open play is astronomical. Yeah. And, you know, I'm, I'm telling when I go out there, obviously I'm, I'm calling no, and I'm kind of famous for that, you know, out there. No. Yeah. But, uh, you know, people start to recognize it once I start to do it and they're like, oh yeah, that was out. That was out. And you know, we all hit out balls. I go back to the same premise.

[00:27:04] You know, people say, oh, I couldn't get out of the way. Get that out of your mindset. You can completely get out of the way. You can get out of the way if you make the decision when the ball has not crossed the plane of the net, when the balls across the other side, when your opponents are about to hit it. And we had a full episode on this and, you know, we'll probably have to do another recap. But if you make the decision when it's on the other side of the net, you can definitely get out of the way. And that's when you have to make the decision.

[00:27:34] So I'm just saying, just take the mindset out that, you know, you can't get out of the way. You can. Tell that to Jack's sock, Mircha. When Zayn Avertul, I could see it. You know, Jack was just slow. He was a full, he's a big, he's a big dude. Yeah. And to clarify one, one thing, sorry, one additional thing. If you get hit by a ball, there are one of two people at fault. Yeah. Yourself. Yeah. Or your partner. Or your partner. Yeah. All right. Don't blame the other side.

[00:28:04] No. Oh, they're targeting me, blah, blah, blah. I mean, of course there are, you know, reasonable things like, you know, you're not targeting an 85 year old. Yeah. Slow person that, you know, can't move. But of course. But when you're a competitive game, when you're all about the same skill level, it's either your fault or your partner's fault. Correct. One thing I will say regarding the out balls. And it was a significant factor in our tournament, Mircha.

[00:28:33] We would have, it was probably three or four points per game. I'll just leave it there. But, and they were 11, 10. And they were 11, 10. Exactly. It all mattered. It all mattered a lot. And as you move up that duper, the reliable duper ladder, it tends to matter more that it gets very nuanced. And you're like, oh man, that was one opportunity that we missed. And I'm not saying I was perfect, but there was a lot of out balls that were hit.

[00:28:57] Anyway, I don't want to say it's the responsibility of the partner, but for sure, if I'm on the right and you're on the left and the ball on the other side is on the right. So it's right directly across from you. My perspective on that is better than yours. I can see if it's going to be going out probably easier than you can. Absolutely. Sometimes it's hard to gauge if you're playing someone who's, it is really strange, Mircha,

[00:29:24] in that like 3.5, 4.0 world, when some of the balls aren't hit that hard, it's sometimes they drop, they drop and they'll hit, you know, within a foot of the baseline. And that's, damn it. It looked like it was going to be out. It was this high, but it just fell. But in general, I really like, I even said this to a partner yesterday. I said, dude, you got to yell. If it looks like it's going to be out, you have to tell me, I, you know, I'm doing my best to gauge it, but it would have been nice to like, have a little like, no, you know,

[00:29:52] cause I would have listened to that anyway. Yeah. It is a major, major factor. And sometimes I watch some of these, I could walk down to the local park here and I see a point that they're three out of three, five players. And I was like, wow, that was six out balls in a row that everybody just hit. Like they were playing overhead tennis and they just kept all hitting it above here. And I thought that was kind of amusing. Yeah. I have a little tip about this. And we had a, again, we had a full show and we did talk about drills and we'll do that again.

[00:30:21] But one little tip is go stand at the kitchen. All right. Bounce the ball as if you're, you know, practicing a speed up. Okay. Yeah. So bounce the ball, kind of speed it up if you will. And so pretend you're hitting a speed up. Obviously there's no one across from you. So it's just you on the court. Yeah. See how relatively soft you have to hit the ball to keep it in the court. Yeah. You can do this by yourself. Yeah. Just try it. Yeah.

[00:30:49] Just try and sort of target the baseline or, you know, just pass the baseline and see like you really, you can't swing that hard from that spot and keep it in, you know, unless you're really shaping it. But anyway, the moral of the story is that you're hitting more balls than you think. Even the balls that are low, not to mention the ones that are flying high or flying high at an angles towards the side of the court. Yeah.

[00:31:16] You know, if you're on the right and the ball is going high to your forehand on the right, it's going out most likely at an angle. Right? Not straight ahead. I'm talking angle. Yeah. And it's the same thing. If you're on the left and the ball is going to your left shoulder or higher and it's coming at an angle, it's probably going out. Ole! We've definitely talked about this ad nauseum on a couple of shows. So go back and listen to those if you can, you guys.

[00:31:44] There's some tells that the other team will, even before you start playing, you can look and see how the other team is stroking the ball and go, all right, this guy's got no topspin. It's unlikely that if he takes a full swing, it's going to stay in the court, especially if it's like within a foot of the baseline. If he gets more than a foot in, it's probably going out because he doesn't have that shot. We see people wind up and take these balls that I go, there's no open pro in the world that that ball would have stayed in.

[00:32:13] And you've volleyed it right back to them. I'm like, it was going to hit the fence. What are you talking about? So anyway, either here nor there. Yeah. I was thinking about it, I was actually thinking about it this morning. I was like, if I ever write a pickleball book, it's going to be titled Let It Go. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So my thing I wanted to chat about, and then we're going to wrap this show up, Mircha. I wasn't exactly sure how to frame this, but it was something along the notion of what to do when the game is passing you by. And that was, that was harsher than I mean for this to be.

[00:32:42] Here's what I'm saying. I play with a gentleman somewhat regularly that has a very 2023 pickleball game. He's got a gorgeous slice backhand drop. He's got amazing dinks from either side, but I feel like because the game has turned aggressive and offensive that he feels like he needs to be way more offensive with his shots. The problem is they're really easy to read.

[00:33:12] He's very easy to counter. And, you know, he telegraphs the balls. He speeds up where he shouldn't. He's super impatient with where those things are. And I keep thinking if we play the guy, I'm like, just go back to the one that you're great because that one is good. When you get into a dink rally with him, especially on the backhand to backhand side, left side, left side, good luck, man. Cause he's so consistent and perfect with that, but he does feel the need to step back

[00:33:38] and try to hit a, you know, a drive or some kind of speed up that inevitably goes into the net. Like he really rips it into the net a lot. I'm curious about what your take is on this. I think he should just stay in his wheelhouse. And if he wants to continue and work on that new part and drill some of the newer stuff, great. But the decision-making part is difficult. You can see it and go, man, that was, I'm not sure if that was there. I don't know though.

[00:34:04] To win though, I think he could play his 2023 game and have a very solid, very solid team. Your thoughts? Well, the basics are basically still there, you know, meaning if you hit the ball to the opponent's weaker side, you're generally going to get a weaker reply than if you hit to their stronger side. So, and also, you know, when you hit a serve and you get a third, often the best person to hit it to is the one that's moving, the one that's coming up.

[00:34:32] So a lot of the basics about the game haven't changed. Yeah. The consistency and the shot selection, like the accuracy really still trumps power and spin to a certain degree. Obviously, when you get to all things being equal, those things become, meaning like your skill level with your opponents is relatively similar. Those things, you know, come basically become factors.

[00:35:01] You know, who's hitting the ball harder to a certain spot, whatever. But the consistency and the shot selection, those things are just huge. And if you have a certain skill set, you need to recognize what that is and maximize that to the best of your ability. And if you have weaknesses, you want to minimize those. So that stuff is always going to resonate. That's always going to work.

[00:35:26] And, you know, when I coach people, I can't make them into something that, you know, they're never going to be. You have to maximize your own skills, whether it's a certain shot, it's your physical capabilities, it's the mental aspect of the game. Obviously, those all play a role. But, you know, we're not all phenomenal at those except for a handful of players in the world. And, you know, we can all, we know who they are. You can't be great at absolutely everything.

[00:35:55] And so, you know, you have to recognize those things. So, you know, don't go out there and be something you can't. Obviously, we all have things that we can improve on. And you should keep doing that. But maximize your skill set. The first step of that is recognizing what your skill set is. And you have to have some self-awareness. And if you don't, then find a coach that can help you with that.

[00:36:19] The 2023 game can still work magic if you do it consistently and accurately in terms of your shot selection and decision making. I agree. And that's what's kind of my point is like stick to your wheelhouse when you're trying to actually win games. Maybe a little bit different when you're just messing around with a few friends, you want to try some new things and work on a new serve or whatever. Great. I mean, it's fine. Like rec play. But when you're consistently losing, when the game, when the team you're on always loses,

[00:36:49] it's like, all right, something's got to be wonky here. Maybe stick to your things. Finally, Mircea, what are you working on? What are you trying to improve in your game at the moment? I actually am working on Matui. What? So that's been really exciting. What are you saying to us? I'm serious. So I don't know if we actually talked about this. I think I mentioned to you before, but when I played tennis, I played, so back up, I played junior tennis, played some in college, played a few satellites and I had a two-handed back

[00:37:18] hand and I loved it. It was actually the best part of my game. My cross court, two-handed pass, top spin lobs. And then from playing squash for 25 plus years, I lost it because there's no two-handed squash. Like you can't reach the ball. And anyway, so I've been going back to it and trying. And one of the keys I've recognized was that I was keeping my elbows too straight and I was trying to hit everything like a tennis ball. And I basically loosened up my elbows, brought them a little closer.

[00:37:46] You know, it's been really, really fun. So I'm working on it. Don't get me wrong. It's a work in progress. Certainly not tournament ready. But on a few balls, I've been able to speed up off the bounce and definitely some returns, some third drives. It's been fun. Have you gotten the roll dink yet? No. Not yet. Not working on that one yet. No. I mean, I'm working on it, but it's definitely not there. It feels just uncomfortable right now.

[00:38:14] But I've been working on a one-handed roll for a while and that feels very comfortable. It's funny, that part in particular, this is the really hard part about learning a new thing like that. Whereas you start getting comfortable while you're drilling it. You're like, okay, this feels good. And then when it shows up in a real game, kind of accidentally sometimes, you go blah, blah, blah. And it's terrible. But your instinct is to do it because you've been drilling it so much. It starts becoming natural.

[00:38:41] So there's a weird little in-between spot where it's not quite baked yet, but it starts showing up. And you go, oh God, it's not the good version that's showing up. I have that with a couple of shots. And I'm like, oh man. And I even yesterday switched. I had a thing where if I would get a low ball a little bit outside my left foot, I would always try to scoop it with both hands and I would inevitably pop it up. And I just started doing it one-handed just as we were warming up yesterday.

[00:39:09] I'm like, oh God, this is so much more consistent and better than the two-y version. I was just so trained to block with both hands, even down on that left-hand side. But I would really, especially with this new paddle that's got a lot of juice, would pop it up. Anyway, well, that's good. I'm glad you're working on that. That'll be cool to hit with you. Yeah. I was going to ask you what you're working on, Michael. Yeah, that's definitely one of them is I'm actually detuning, weirdly, some of my two-y

[00:39:36] where some of the two-y stuff I'm doing, especially defensively, was popping the ball up a little more than I wanted. And I was biting a bit of your little scoopy one-handed backhand slice thing that you do. Slice drop. Yeah. And if you guys have never seen Mircha play in person, he does have a very unique shot that I really haven't seen too many people do.

[00:40:01] It's this little scoopy one-handed slice drop that you can seemingly hit from any angle, from any height. And it's lovely. And- Yeah, it's a volley reset. JW does it also. Oh, does he? Did you teach him that? Or did he teach you that? No, I think we just kind of evolved with it together. Yeah. Anyway, it's really cool. And I'm starting to work on that versus doing this two-y to my left side outside because I was struggling with trying to keep the ball down.

[00:40:30] But my two-y drive is great. And when it's locked in and it's still not tournament ready, my two-y dink roll is quite nice as well. Every once in a while, I'll hit a diabolical one. It's pretty fun. I think that we should ask some people out there, please, if you tell us what you're working on or you want some show topics or some questions, please hit us up. Brainstock. Yeah. B-R-A-I-N-S-D-O-C on Instagram.

[00:40:59] And Michael. Yeah. Solo hour. And you can always go to picklehelp.com, picklehelp.com and fill that form out. And we will get that email. And that'd be great. We would love some ideas from you guys. We've, of course, covered a ton of stuff on the show. We have a ton of stuff to cover. But, you know, we'd like to have our fingers on the pulse, as they say. Awesome. Guys, you've now just listened to another episode of 4.0 to Pro. It's so nice to be back in your ear balls. Thank you for having us. As always, Mircha, go enjoy your day. Hopefully we find our way to the pickleball court.

[00:41:30] Cheers. Peace. See you next time. Thank you for listening to 4.0 to Pro. For more tips, find us on Instagram at 4.0 to Pro. If you have a pickleball question, submit it at picklehelp.com. Now, get out there and dominate. But don't forget to have fun.

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