Episode 1 - The Formality

Episode 1 of our brand new podcast for those who love pickleball but life be crazy!! So Abigail, how crazy was life for you this week??

• Slow down with no volleyball… nope- back to the crazy

• Six Parent Teacher conferences - by myself

• Played last night… terribly - both of us.

In today’s episode we are going to focus on the Serve and Return but in this podcast we are also going to get personal and thought it might be a good idea to get to know each other a bit more… in our Pre-episode we told the story of how we met… if you missed that, you can go back and check it out… Its a classic love story really involving breadsticks, sardines, a classic Keanu Reeves flick so Adam- Mr Producer, where do you want to go next?

Adam: So you guys met while attending Taylor U… tell us more about how long you dated for and did you immediately know you would one day get married and have 5 daughters?

Abby: Haha… no….

• Dating at Taylor-what that looked like

• How long before we started talking marriage

• Matt to CA

• Engagement Story

Our PB focus today is on the Serve and Return. We’d call this the first stage of a pickleball point. Joe Baker is kind of the Godfather of PB instruction- divided a pickleball point into 4 stages so over the next few episodes we’re going to break down each one.

So Stage 1: The serve and return… the formality that every rally starts with. Lets start with the Serve… Abby, what say you.. What tips tricks and strategies are you thinking about with the serve?

• Get it in and over

• Deep

• Stay back (behind baseline typically)

• Target weakness (backhand)

• Wide or up the T

So what about the second part of this first stage of a Pickleball point. What about the return, what are we focusing on with that?

A lot of the same things we thought about with the serve we are thinking about with the return:

• Get it in and over

• Deeper the better

• Opposite of Stay Back- Move in

• Some loft will allow you to move in easier

• Target weakness

• T is good- they might fight over it.

Next time we’ll be talking about the second stage– The struggle to the line.