June 6, 2025 • 18 mins
"Chasing fairies" or the seductive but unproven strategies can often lead us astray on the court. From spinning dinks to rigid rules like "forehand in the middle," it's important to understand the why behind what we do on the courts. Listen to this full episode for more clarity and a grounded conversation that strengthens your mental approach to improvement.
Show Notes: https://betterpickleball.com/247-chasing-fairies/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy,the podcast dedicated to
your pickleball improvement.
I hope you're having a great week.
I'm your host of thisweekly podcast, Tony Roig.
It's a pleasure to be with you.
We are in our new space inside our studio.
We've dedicated this part ofthe studio to the podcast.
Shout out to Kylene for helping us deck itout with all this awesome stuff behind us,
(00:25):
including this great bowl of ice cream asa constant reminder
of what is probably our most significantcontribution to the sport of pickleball,
the idea of having a bowl of icecream every time that you play.
This week, I'm going to betalking about chasing fairies.
And by chasing fairies, you'll see it'sbasically chasing
concepts or ideas that don't reallypan out at the end of the day.
(00:50):
And so maybe taking a different approachthat will be more productive
for you as you move forward.
Before we do that, a couple ofhousekeeping ones as a shout-out, and then
the other one, I want to give you anupdate on a course that's coming up.
So first of all, the shout-out this weekis going to be to our YouTube community.
I appreciate you allchecking us out on YouTube.
(01:12):
If you haven't checked it out onYouTube, take a look at it on there.
It's pickleball Therapy on YouTube,just the same name as this.
You get to check out the studio upgradesand let me know in the comments what you
think about the studio and how you likethe bowl of ice cream and
everything behind us here.
Alan, always appreciate your comments.
Alan is basically consistent.
(01:33):
Alan, not basically, is consistent.
Every week, he has a comment, and we havethese conversations in the community
here on the YouTube channel.
It's really a great way of keeping thefire alive, if you will, in terms
of what we're trying to do here.
Appreciate Craig for coming inand commenting from time to time.
Thank you, Craig.
(01:53):
Shaq, welcome to the podcast.
New listener.
We have Larry, again,another new listener.
Welcome to the podcast.
I appreciate you commenting and sharing.
Greg has been with us for a while, too,and Greg is usually pretty
consistent about commenting as well.
Thank you, Greg, for sharing your journey.
A lot of times, I would submit to you thatwhen you share of yourself,
(02:14):
when you're vulnerable and you sharewhat's going on, the good
and also the not-so-good.Not-so-good, not so good.
Not so good in a negative sense,just in we'd rather it be otherwise.
It's good in general because it helpsother players who may feel
alone in that situation.
It may feel like they're the only ones whoare going through whatever
that is to not feel so alone.
(02:37):
So I really appreciate yousharing that information.
I saw a couple othernew listeners in here.
I wanted to...Hello, Michelle.
Welcome to the podcast.
Kevin, thank you.
Welcome to the podcast.
Actually, I don't know if Kevinis welcome to the podcast.
I think Kevin, you've been around for awhile, so let me know in the comments.
I think you've been withus for a minute or two.
Matt, thank you very much for the comment.
(02:59):
It looks like Daran.
Daran is, I think, fairlynew to the podcast as well.
If you haven't checked iton YouTube, check it out.
If you haven't subscribed to it, asalways, please consider subscribing.
It really helps us reach other playerswith this content.
This content is not the sexiest, andactually the content we're going to talk
about in this podcast is the sexiest.
So one more bit of housekeeping is everymonth we have a live online training.
(03:26):
Think of it like a clinic, anonline clinic, if you will.
It's live.
We come into the Strategy Lab studio here.
We have a state-of-the-art studio.
It's without equal in our sport.
We come in here, we break down some gametape, we look at different concepts,
we answer some questions.
It's just a really goodway of learning pickleball.
(03:48):
And when you think about learningpickleball, the most
efficient use of my time with you as aplayer is for me to
transfer knowledge to you.
I think as players, sometimes we get lostin the idea of hitting balls, which
is nothing wrong with that, right?
Being on court, you need to beon court to learn pickleball.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, it's been really nice to see someother coaches chime in on this recently
(04:12):
out there in the social media ecosystem,talking about how our job as coaches
is to transmit knowledge to you.
We've been doing this for a long time,transmitting knowledge through words.
Sometimes we'll get pushback by playerswho are saying, You're talking too much.
Folks, I don't know.
This is how we're designed tocommunicate other than non-verbally.
But words are important because theyallow me to communicate with you.
(04:36):
Anyway, the online clinic is a reallyinteresting way to learn
more about pickleball.
It's a very comfortableenvironment to learn.
And also because when you're off-court,you get to really focus on the thing.
When you're on-court, you'reworried about doing the thing.
Those are two differentthings going on, three different mindsets.
Anyway, I'll put a link in the show notesand you can check out one of the
(05:00):
One of the online trainings you go on to,the next one, the one in June,
is going to be about dinks.We're going to go deep in dinks.
All right, so let's talk about this ideaof chasing fairies and what
we're talking about here.
When you're young, You have this idea ofthe tooth fairy and Santa Claus and things
like that, and that's perfectly fine tobe young and think about those things.
(05:22):
But as we get older, I think we stillhave a little bit carry-over with that.
And what happens, And it's very specificto pickleball,
is we start chasing these ideasthat are deemed to be sacrosanct or deemed
to be the way we're supposed to do stuffwithout understanding the why.
And then if we don't understand the why,then
(05:45):
First of all, I would submit to you, it'snot as fulfilling for you as a player,
because the more you understand the why,the more you're in the no, and the more
you're making decisions for yourself.
And the other thing is, oftentimes, if youdon't know the why, you end up chasing a
fairy that's not there.
A pot of gold at the endof a rainbow doesn't exist.
(06:05):
It appears to be a thing.
It's not a thing.
And a couple of examples that come to mindare, one is, I heard this from a good
friend and player here locally whoShe's got the pulse on what's going on out
there with pickleball and what playersare doing and hearing and all that.
And we were just talking about the game.
(06:25):
I was talking about the samething I mentioned about the dinks.
I was telling her that what I was seeingis we've advocated flat
dinking forever, basically.
Not saying you can spin your dinks.
I spend some time to spin my dinks.It's fine.
But flat dinking is a great way of dinkingif you don't have consistency with your
dinks, and you can do a lotof lifting with flat dinks.
(06:48):
And what we've been seeing isthe pros have migrated in that direction.
You're seeing more flat dinks from thepros because the pros are realizing that
they don't need to add the extra chance oferror from spinning the ball,
oftentimes in their dinks.
They can just flat dink it into a spot.
What's called sometimes a neutraldink, sometimes called a dead dink.
(07:08):
They will hit those all the time.
Anyway, so we were talking about that, andthen my friend said, Yeah, because
all the players want to spin it.
And then she said, Top spin, under spin.
And then she threw in side spin.
I was like, Side spin?
So I had to stop her.I'm like, Did I hear you correctly?
Side spinning dinks now is a thing?
And that's a fairy, folks.
I can't Think of a reason whyyou'd want to sidespin a dink.
(07:32):
And not even the pros sidespin theirdinks because there's no advantage to it.
But I will tell you this,that spin will definitely increase
your error rate for no gain.
So that's an example of a ferry.
It's something that wehear about and we chase.
Another example of a ferryis a forehand in the middle.
Forehand in the middle, it doesn't work.
I'll give you one quick takeaway here.
(07:53):
If you want to see the full breakdown,it's on the In2Pickle channel on YouTube.
Just type in In2Pickle,I am the number 2 pickle.
Forehand in the middle.
You should come across the video.
But the easiest way of showing the flaw ina four-hand in the middle is,
I am a left-handed player.
Let's say you're a right-handed player,and I'm on the right, you're on the left.
(08:14):
Four-hands are in the middle.Who takes the ball?
Me or you?
They're both four-hands.
That doesn't answer the question.
Our concept, respect the X, you shouldstill look at it because you need to
understand the Y, butwe'll explain to you why.
When we talk about respect the X, weexplain to you, Here's why it works.
Because of this, this is, here's howyou break it, here, here, and here.
We have a whole course coming out insideour academy that's going to basically
(08:37):
break it down into all of its subparts.But respect the X works.
And it works because it can pass the blackbox test, whereas Four
in the middle can't.
Four in the middle ends up being a ferry.
And the same thing I heard recently aboutthis conversation about third shot drop,
sorry, third shot drive, fifth shot drop.
(08:59):
And the conversation basicallywent something like this.
So what happened was, back inthe day, it was third shot drop.
You dropped the third.
That's why it has the namethird shot drop, right?
That was the strategy.
And then, pros started doing athird shot drive, fifth shot drop.
Now, there's a reason why they did that.
I'll explain in a second.
But that became a strategythat the pros started using.
(09:21):
But what happened was when the prosstarted doing it, amateurs started saying,
Okay, I need to third shotdrive, fifth shot drop.
Now, they were doing that oftentimeswithout considering the reason to do
a third shot drive, fifth shot drop.They were just doing it.
Doing it like that is just a fairy,basically, because it doesn't
have any substance to it.
(09:43):
It's just following a thing.
I don't know why I'm doing it, but I'mdoing it because that's what I heard.
And then the folks that I heard talkingabout this, we're talking about then
the game's evolving to nowthey're driving on the seventh,
driving on the ninth, what's going on?
And so it becomes very confusing becauseAs soon as the pros do something,
then the amateur ranks are going,Wait a minute, they're doing that.
(10:06):
I don't understand why they're doing that.So I guess I got to start doing that.
Everybody starts chasing it.
And what happens is, going back to thethird shot, drive, fifth shot, drop, is
Let's assume that you were a player at thetime who had a great third shot drop, and
you could still third shot drop verywell, and it was working for you.
But all of a sudden it becomesthird shot, drive, fifth shot, drop.
Players migrated from theirapproach, which was working.
(10:29):
And I'm not saying don't grow as a player,but this particular strategy wasn't
necessary for thembecause they were able to drop the third.
The reason the pros started driving thethird and dropping the fifth was because
they were having, at the time, difficultydropping those thirds
because the returners had gotten betterat hitting returns that
(10:51):
were difficult to drop.
The best example I can give you isthere was a hard slice, low slice
that started getting developed.
I actually played against one ofthe players who started with that.
Abby is her name, reallygood player back in the day.
And she had this slice, low, hard returnto serve, very difficult to hit a third
(11:13):
from because it had so much action.It was so hard.
It was coming in so much pacethat you couldn't really drop it.
So the way you dealt withthat was you drove that one.
Now, the drive wasn't intended to doanything other than just keep
the ball alive, obviously.
So the drive itself wasjust keep the ball alive.
And then when you got the volley back,the volley wouldn't have as much action
(11:33):
because it would just be like a punchvolley and it wouldn't
have as much spin on it.
That's why you could then drop the fifthbetter than you could have dropped
that third in that situation.But it was very situational.
It wasn't like something thatyou should apply all the time.
It wasn't a fairy that you...Or it was a fairy.
It wasn't like a thing that you just did.
But players started doing it, and theystarted just saying, Okay, third
(11:54):
shot, drive, fifth shot, drop.
It was a thing you did all the time,which, again, doesn't make any sense if
you understand the purpose of the thirdshot drive, fifth shot drop technique.
And so this idea of chasing theseconcepts, chasing these fairies, if you
will, what happens is you end up lost.
You end up like,you'll We'll hear about the side spin on
(12:16):
the dink, and all of a sudden it's like,Hey, I guess I got a side spin on the
dink, because that's the ferry, that'sthe current thing, whatever we're hearing.
And what I would suggest to you iswhen you are presented with this type of
information, pauseand ask yourself, Why am I doing this?
And the better you understand theframework of pickleball, and that's the
(12:40):
framework of pickleball is how the game isconstructed, the non-volley zone, the two
bounce rule, how they interplay,advantage, disadvantage, your objectives,
all that comes under framework.
And it's how we teach everything insideeverything we do at Better pickleball.
And the academy and our TPS, everything isbuilt around this idea of framework first,
and then under that, you haveobjectives and strategies and shots.
(13:00):
If you can understand framework,then you're able to say,
Okay, what is it again you want me to do?
You want me to sidespin my dinks?
Okay, why do you wantme to sidespin my dinks?
What does that do for me?
And then, Okay, cool.
All right, so it's going to put some sideaction on the ball and potentially make it
a little bit more difficult, tiny bitmore difficult for my opponent to react
(13:24):
to the ball because of the sidespin on it.
How much sidespin can I realistically puton it before I start floating the ball?
Okay.
And then the next question I would ask is,what do you think my percentage of
errors will be when I started doing that?
So let's say I currently dink at a...
I'm just going to use round numbers.
I dink at a 15 % error ratewith my current dinking.
(13:47):
And so you think when I add sidespend, I'll go from 15 % to what?
Because I guarantee you it'snot going to be 15 to 15.
It'll probably be 15 to 20 or 25, and theadvantage of it is going to be nominal.
And how often am I going to use that?How long does it take me to learn it?
So you start asking these questions,and then you start saying...
Then you conclude, No, I don't want todo that right now, or ever, probably.
(14:09):
I don't want to do it.
So basically, that'sthe better way to do it.
And same thing with these very dogmaticstatements like, Four hand in the middle.
It sounds great.Good sound bite.
Sounds fantastic.Four words, easy to remember.
And it said with such confidence thatyou're like, Okay, that must be the rule.
Why?Why Why is it four hand in the middle?
(14:31):
Now, I will tell you this.
Sometimes the answer is the fourhand in the middle is the best shot.
But that's like saying,a lob off my back hand is the best shot.
Not always, but sometimes when I'm introuble I'll pull wide and I have a
good lob, I'm going to hit that, right?
But it's not like all of a sudden the rulebecomes like lob off the back hand because
(14:51):
it happens to be the right shot there.
Or you could take any shot you see andthen make it into a rule
and call it that, right?
A rule should be a rule only when it canbe used prospectively, meaning you can use
it at the beginning to make a decision asto what to do, not retroactively to,
Oh, the forehand was a good shot there.
(15:14):
Let me...
Then four hand in themiddle makes sense, right?
That's retroactively.We can get it in that 20, 20 hindsight.
So whenever you're presented with thesethings, even respect the X, right?
I'm not telling you to hearthe three words, not four.
Respect the X, and then Okay, that's whatI'm going to do because I heard
it and the other players said it.
No.
(15:34):
You hear about it and yousay, Oh, respect the X.
Sounds interesting.Let me think about it.
Let me look into it.Let me study it.
Let me learn about it.
As you work on that, you'll improve yourunderstanding of a pickleball,
of the framework of pickleball.
You'll go deeper in thesport of pickleball.
And as you go deeper in the sport ofpickleball, your
overall knowledge base will improve.
(15:56):
As your overall knowledge base improves,it basically feeds on itself, right?
So when you hear about a cool rule likerespect the X or forehand in the middle,
when it's proposed to you that you shouldsidespin your dings or do something like
that, when it's said to you that youshould drive your third and
drop your fifth, always ask why.
(16:17):
What's the reason for that?Why do I want to do that?
What's the advantage of doingthat versus something else?
And also consider the potential downsidesof adopting that into your game.
And one last note on this that I'll leaveyou with is
you have to ask yourself, how important isthat thing, whatever it is, relative to
(16:38):
anything else that you'recurrently focused on?
Because that's anotherpotential trap that we fall into, which is
always changing the thing we're workingon, never actually improving in any of
them because we keep onreplacing with something else.
That's a podcast for another day.
I believe we already did an episode onthat, but I'll hit it another day because
it's such an important concept to juststicking to
whatever it is that is your highestpriority at the time and not just chasing
(17:00):
the latest side spin thing that you hearon TikTok or YouTube or wherever it is
that you're getting this information from.
Anyway, so that's this week's podcast.
I hope you enjoyed the idea ofbeing mindful of your journey of
asking questions about thingsthat sound too simple to be true.
(17:22):
And the better you understand those, thebetter you continue to grow, the easier
it'll become to filter outthis information in the future.
If you're interested in checking out ouronline clinic,
whether it's this month, next month,whenever works for you, please join
us for one of these online clinics.I think you'll really enjoy it.
We have sometimes between 40 and 100players come into these, and
(17:48):
they all have a good time.
We let you all have some time towork through some problems together.
It's a really interesting experience and agreat way to learn the sport of pickleball
and meet other players who, like you, arekeenly interested in their pickleball and
improvement and in continuing to grow inthis wonderful sport that we all love.
If you have a minute to rate and reviewthe podcast, really appreciate that on
(18:09):
whatever platform you're listening to.
If you're on YouTube, makesure you like and subscribe if you can.
And as always, please consider sharingthis podcast with your friends, because if
you enjoy the podcast,they probably will, too.
If any of your friends tellsyou, SideSpan your Dinks,
send them a copy, send them a link to thispodcast so they can hear maybe
why not to do that.
I hope you have a great week, and I toseeing you on the next
(18:31):
episode of Pickleball Therapy.You are.
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy,the podcast dedicated to
your pickleball improvement.
I hope you're having a great week.
I'm your host of thisweekly podcast, Tony Roig.
It's a pleasure to be with you.
We are in our new space inside our studio.
We've dedicated this part ofthe studio to the podcast.
Shout out to Kylene for helping us deck itout with all this awesome stuff behind us,
(00:25):
including this great bowl of ice cream asa constant reminder
of what is probably our most significantcontribution to the sport of pickleball,
the idea of having a bowl of icecream every time that you play.
This week, I'm going to betalking about chasing fairies.
And by chasing fairies, you'll see it'sbasically chasing
concepts or ideas that don't reallypan out at the end of the day.
(00:50):
And so maybe taking a different approachthat will be more productive
for you as you move forward.
Before we do that, a couple ofhousekeeping ones as a shout-out, and then
the other one, I want to give you anupdate on a course that's coming up.
So first of all, the shout-out this weekis going to be to our YouTube community.
I appreciate you allchecking us out on YouTube.
(01:12):
If you haven't checked it out onYouTube, take a look at it on there.
It's pickleball Therapy on YouTube,just the same name as this.
You get to check out the studio upgradesand let me know in the comments what you
think about the studio and how you likethe bowl of ice cream and
everything behind us here.
Alan, always appreciate your comments.
Alan is basically consistent.
(01:33):
Alan, not basically, is consistent.
Every week, he has a comment, and we havethese conversations in the community
here on the YouTube channel.
It's really a great way of keeping thefire alive, if you will, in terms
of what we're trying to do here.
Appreciate Craig for coming inand commenting from time to time.
Thank you, Craig.
(01:53):
Shaq, welcome to the podcast.
New listener.
We have Larry, again,another new listener.
Welcome to the podcast.
I appreciate you commenting and sharing.
Greg has been with us for a while, too,and Greg is usually pretty
consistent about commenting as well.
Thank you, Greg, for sharing your journey.
A lot of times, I would submit to you thatwhen you share of yourself,
(02:14):
when you're vulnerable and you sharewhat's going on, the good
and also the not-so-good.Not-so-good, not so good.
Not so good in a negative sense,just in we'd rather it be otherwise.
It's good in general because it helpsother players who may feel
alone in that situation.
It may feel like they're the only ones whoare going through whatever
that is to not feel so alone.
(02:37):
So I really appreciate yousharing that information.
I saw a couple othernew listeners in here.
I wanted to...Hello, Michelle.
Welcome to the podcast.
Kevin, thank you.
Welcome to the podcast.
Actually, I don't know if Kevinis welcome to the podcast.
I think Kevin, you've been around for awhile, so let me know in the comments.
I think you've been withus for a minute or two.
Matt, thank you very much for the comment.
(02:59):
It looks like Daran.
Daran is, I think, fairlynew to the podcast as well.
If you haven't checked iton YouTube, check it out.
If you haven't subscribed to it, asalways, please consider subscribing.
It really helps us reach other playerswith this content.
This content is not the sexiest, andactually the content we're going to talk
about in this podcast is the sexiest.
So one more bit of housekeeping is everymonth we have a live online training.
(03:26):
Think of it like a clinic, anonline clinic, if you will.
It's live.
We come into the Strategy Lab studio here.
We have a state-of-the-art studio.
It's without equal in our sport.
We come in here, we break down some gametape, we look at different concepts,
we answer some questions.
It's just a really goodway of learning pickleball.
(03:48):
And when you think about learningpickleball, the most
efficient use of my time with you as aplayer is for me to
transfer knowledge to you.
I think as players, sometimes we get lostin the idea of hitting balls, which
is nothing wrong with that, right?
Being on court, you need to beon court to learn pickleball.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, it's been really nice to see someother coaches chime in on this recently
(04:12):
out there in the social media ecosystem,talking about how our job as coaches
is to transmit knowledge to you.
We've been doing this for a long time,transmitting knowledge through words.
Sometimes we'll get pushback by playerswho are saying, You're talking too much.
Folks, I don't know.
This is how we're designed tocommunicate other than non-verbally.
But words are important because theyallow me to communicate with you.
(04:36):
Anyway, the online clinic is a reallyinteresting way to learn
more about pickleball.
It's a very comfortableenvironment to learn.
And also because when you're off-court,you get to really focus on the thing.
When you're on-court, you'reworried about doing the thing.
Those are two differentthings going on, three different mindsets.
Anyway, I'll put a link in the show notesand you can check out one of the
(05:00):
One of the online trainings you go on to,the next one, the one in June,
is going to be about dinks.We're going to go deep in dinks.
All right, so let's talk about this ideaof chasing fairies and what
we're talking about here.
When you're young, You have this idea ofthe tooth fairy and Santa Claus and things
like that, and that's perfectly fine tobe young and think about those things.
(05:22):
But as we get older, I think we stillhave a little bit carry-over with that.
And what happens, And it's very specificto pickleball,
is we start chasing these ideasthat are deemed to be sacrosanct or deemed
to be the way we're supposed to do stuffwithout understanding the why.
And then if we don't understand the why,then
(05:45):
First of all, I would submit to you, it'snot as fulfilling for you as a player,
because the more you understand the why,the more you're in the no, and the more
you're making decisions for yourself.
And the other thing is, oftentimes, if youdon't know the why, you end up chasing a
fairy that's not there.
A pot of gold at the endof a rainbow doesn't exist.
(06:05):
It appears to be a thing.
It's not a thing.
And a couple of examples that come to mindare, one is, I heard this from a good
friend and player here locally whoShe's got the pulse on what's going on out
there with pickleball and what playersare doing and hearing and all that.
And we were just talking about the game.
(06:25):
I was talking about the samething I mentioned about the dinks.
I was telling her that what I was seeingis we've advocated flat
dinking forever, basically.
Not saying you can spin your dinks.
I spend some time to spin my dinks.It's fine.
But flat dinking is a great way of dinkingif you don't have consistency with your
dinks, and you can do a lotof lifting with flat dinks.
(06:48):
And what we've been seeing isthe pros have migrated in that direction.
You're seeing more flat dinks from thepros because the pros are realizing that
they don't need to add the extra chance oferror from spinning the ball,
oftentimes in their dinks.
They can just flat dink it into a spot.
What's called sometimes a neutraldink, sometimes called a dead dink.
(07:08):
They will hit those all the time.
Anyway, so we were talking about that, andthen my friend said, Yeah, because
all the players want to spin it.
And then she said, Top spin, under spin.
And then she threw in side spin.
I was like, Side spin?
So I had to stop her.I'm like, Did I hear you correctly?
Side spinning dinks now is a thing?
And that's a fairy, folks.
I can't Think of a reason whyyou'd want to sidespin a dink.
(07:32):
And not even the pros sidespin theirdinks because there's no advantage to it.
But I will tell you this,that spin will definitely increase
your error rate for no gain.
So that's an example of a ferry.
It's something that wehear about and we chase.
Another example of a ferryis a forehand in the middle.
Forehand in the middle, it doesn't work.
I'll give you one quick takeaway here.
(07:53):
If you want to see the full breakdown,it's on the In2Pickle channel on YouTube.
Just type in In2Pickle,I am the number 2 pickle.
Forehand in the middle.
You should come across the video.
But the easiest way of showing the flaw ina four-hand in the middle is,
I am a left-handed player.
Let's say you're a right-handed player,and I'm on the right, you're on the left.
(08:14):
Four-hands are in the middle.Who takes the ball?
Me or you?
They're both four-hands.
That doesn't answer the question.
Our concept, respect the X, you shouldstill look at it because you need to
understand the Y, butwe'll explain to you why.
When we talk about respect the X, weexplain to you, Here's why it works.
Because of this, this is, here's howyou break it, here, here, and here.
We have a whole course coming out insideour academy that's going to basically
(08:37):
break it down into all of its subparts.But respect the X works.
And it works because it can pass the blackbox test, whereas Four
in the middle can't.
Four in the middle ends up being a ferry.
And the same thing I heard recently aboutthis conversation about third shot drop,
sorry, third shot drive, fifth shot drop.
(08:59):
And the conversation basicallywent something like this.
So what happened was, back inthe day, it was third shot drop.
You dropped the third.
That's why it has the namethird shot drop, right?
That was the strategy.
And then, pros started doing athird shot drive, fifth shot drop.
Now, there's a reason why they did that.
I'll explain in a second.
But that became a strategythat the pros started using.
(09:21):
But what happened was when the prosstarted doing it, amateurs started saying,
Okay, I need to third shotdrive, fifth shot drop.
Now, they were doing that oftentimeswithout considering the reason to do
a third shot drive, fifth shot drop.They were just doing it.
Doing it like that is just a fairy,basically, because it doesn't
have any substance to it.
(09:43):
It's just following a thing.
I don't know why I'm doing it, but I'mdoing it because that's what I heard.
And then the folks that I heard talkingabout this, we're talking about then
the game's evolving to nowthey're driving on the seventh,
driving on the ninth, what's going on?
And so it becomes very confusing becauseAs soon as the pros do something,
then the amateur ranks are going,Wait a minute, they're doing that.
(10:06):
I don't understand why they're doing that.So I guess I got to start doing that.
Everybody starts chasing it.
And what happens is, going back to thethird shot, drive, fifth shot, drop, is
Let's assume that you were a player at thetime who had a great third shot drop, and
you could still third shot drop verywell, and it was working for you.
But all of a sudden it becomesthird shot, drive, fifth shot, drop.
Players migrated from theirapproach, which was working.
(10:29):
And I'm not saying don't grow as a player,but this particular strategy wasn't
necessary for thembecause they were able to drop the third.
The reason the pros started driving thethird and dropping the fifth was because
they were having, at the time, difficultydropping those thirds
because the returners had gotten betterat hitting returns that
(10:51):
were difficult to drop.
The best example I can give you isthere was a hard slice, low slice
that started getting developed.
I actually played against one ofthe players who started with that.
Abby is her name, reallygood player back in the day.
And she had this slice, low, hard returnto serve, very difficult to hit a third
(11:13):
from because it had so much action.It was so hard.
It was coming in so much pacethat you couldn't really drop it.
So the way you dealt withthat was you drove that one.
Now, the drive wasn't intended to doanything other than just keep
the ball alive, obviously.
So the drive itself wasjust keep the ball alive.
And then when you got the volley back,the volley wouldn't have as much action
(11:33):
because it would just be like a punchvolley and it wouldn't
have as much spin on it.
That's why you could then drop the fifthbetter than you could have dropped
that third in that situation.But it was very situational.
It wasn't like something thatyou should apply all the time.
It wasn't a fairy that you...Or it was a fairy.
It wasn't like a thing that you just did.
But players started doing it, and theystarted just saying, Okay, third
(11:54):
shot, drive, fifth shot, drop.
It was a thing you did all the time,which, again, doesn't make any sense if
you understand the purpose of the thirdshot drive, fifth shot drop technique.
And so this idea of chasing theseconcepts, chasing these fairies, if you
will, what happens is you end up lost.
You end up like,you'll We'll hear about the side spin on
(12:16):
the dink, and all of a sudden it's like,Hey, I guess I got a side spin on the
dink, because that's the ferry, that'sthe current thing, whatever we're hearing.
And what I would suggest to you iswhen you are presented with this type of
information, pauseand ask yourself, Why am I doing this?
And the better you understand theframework of pickleball, and that's the
(12:40):
framework of pickleball is how the game isconstructed, the non-volley zone, the two
bounce rule, how they interplay,advantage, disadvantage, your objectives,
all that comes under framework.
And it's how we teach everything insideeverything we do at Better pickleball.
And the academy and our TPS, everything isbuilt around this idea of framework first,
and then under that, you haveobjectives and strategies and shots.
(13:00):
If you can understand framework,then you're able to say,
Okay, what is it again you want me to do?
You want me to sidespin my dinks?
Okay, why do you wantme to sidespin my dinks?
What does that do for me?
And then, Okay, cool.
All right, so it's going to put some sideaction on the ball and potentially make it
a little bit more difficult, tiny bitmore difficult for my opponent to react
(13:24):
to the ball because of the sidespin on it.
How much sidespin can I realistically puton it before I start floating the ball?
Okay.
And then the next question I would ask is,what do you think my percentage of
errors will be when I started doing that?
So let's say I currently dink at a...
I'm just going to use round numbers.
I dink at a 15 % error ratewith my current dinking.
(13:47):
And so you think when I add sidespend, I'll go from 15 % to what?
Because I guarantee you it'snot going to be 15 to 15.
It'll probably be 15 to 20 or 25, and theadvantage of it is going to be nominal.
And how often am I going to use that?How long does it take me to learn it?
So you start asking these questions,and then you start saying...
Then you conclude, No, I don't want todo that right now, or ever, probably.
(14:09):
I don't want to do it.
So basically, that'sthe better way to do it.
And same thing with these very dogmaticstatements like, Four hand in the middle.
It sounds great.Good sound bite.
Sounds fantastic.Four words, easy to remember.
And it said with such confidence thatyou're like, Okay, that must be the rule.
Why?Why Why is it four hand in the middle?
(14:31):
Now, I will tell you this.
Sometimes the answer is the fourhand in the middle is the best shot.
But that's like saying,a lob off my back hand is the best shot.
Not always, but sometimes when I'm introuble I'll pull wide and I have a
good lob, I'm going to hit that, right?
But it's not like all of a sudden the rulebecomes like lob off the back hand because
(14:51):
it happens to be the right shot there.
Or you could take any shot you see andthen make it into a rule
and call it that, right?
A rule should be a rule only when it canbe used prospectively, meaning you can use
it at the beginning to make a decision asto what to do, not retroactively to,
Oh, the forehand was a good shot there.
(15:14):
Let me...
Then four hand in themiddle makes sense, right?
That's retroactively.We can get it in that 20, 20 hindsight.
So whenever you're presented with thesethings, even respect the X, right?
I'm not telling you to hearthe three words, not four.
Respect the X, and then Okay, that's whatI'm going to do because I heard
it and the other players said it.
No.
(15:34):
You hear about it and yousay, Oh, respect the X.
Sounds interesting.Let me think about it.
Let me look into it.Let me study it.
Let me learn about it.
As you work on that, you'll improve yourunderstanding of a pickleball,
of the framework of pickleball.
You'll go deeper in thesport of pickleball.
And as you go deeper in the sport ofpickleball, your
overall knowledge base will improve.
(15:56):
As your overall knowledge base improves,it basically feeds on itself, right?
So when you hear about a cool rule likerespect the X or forehand in the middle,
when it's proposed to you that you shouldsidespin your dings or do something like
that, when it's said to you that youshould drive your third and
drop your fifth, always ask why.
(16:17):
What's the reason for that?Why do I want to do that?
What's the advantage of doingthat versus something else?
And also consider the potential downsidesof adopting that into your game.
And one last note on this that I'll leaveyou with is
you have to ask yourself, how important isthat thing, whatever it is, relative to
(16:38):
anything else that you'recurrently focused on?
Because that's anotherpotential trap that we fall into, which is
always changing the thing we're workingon, never actually improving in any of
them because we keep onreplacing with something else.
That's a podcast for another day.
I believe we already did an episode onthat, but I'll hit it another day because
it's such an important concept to juststicking to
whatever it is that is your highestpriority at the time and not just chasing
(17:00):
the latest side spin thing that you hearon TikTok or YouTube or wherever it is
that you're getting this information from.
Anyway, so that's this week's podcast.
I hope you enjoyed the idea ofbeing mindful of your journey of
asking questions about thingsthat sound too simple to be true.
(17:22):
And the better you understand those, thebetter you continue to grow, the easier
it'll become to filter outthis information in the future.
If you're interested in checking out ouronline clinic,
whether it's this month, next month,whenever works for you, please join
us for one of these online clinics.I think you'll really enjoy it.
We have sometimes between 40 and 100players come into these, and
(17:48):
they all have a good time.
We let you all have some time towork through some problems together.
It's a really interesting experience and agreat way to learn the sport of pickleball
and meet other players who, like you, arekeenly interested in their pickleball and
improvement and in continuing to grow inthis wonderful sport that we all love.
If you have a minute to rate and reviewthe podcast, really appreciate that on
(18:09):
whatever platform you're listening to.
If you're on YouTube, makesure you like and subscribe if you can.
And as always, please consider sharingthis podcast with your friends, because if
you enjoy the podcast,they probably will, too.
If any of your friends tellsyou, SideSpan your Dinks,
send them a copy, send them a link to thispodcast so they can hear maybe
why not to do that.
I hope you have a great week, and I toseeing you on the next
(18:31):
episode of Pickleball Therapy.You are.
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