Are you ready to have a banner year and start playing your best pickleball now?
Then let's take the advice of this three-time US Open Gold Medalist, coming up next.
Hey everybody it's CJ Johnson. A couple of months ago I had the
opportunity to sit down and do a live interview with Laura Fenton Kovanda,
three-time US Open Gold Medalist. And we talked about a variety of pickleball
subjects. Everything from the 20-2.5 player, husbands and wives playing
together and a little bit of everything in between. Now if you missed the entire
interview you can feel free to click on the link that's coming up above,it'll
take you to that interview. But one of the most fascinating questions or at
least what I think was the most fascinating question was what one thing,
could any player, at any level do to improve their pickleball game? Here's what Laura said.
I'm gonna go to a basic for a second because as you play
this game everybody knows you lose matches by making mistakes. Not by ripping winners.
You lose matches by making mistakes. Not by ripping winners.
You lose matches by making mistakes Not by ripping winners.
If you don't put your serve in the box.
If you don't return your serve in the court.
or you hit balls in the net.
Okay now we can get we could get into hitting topspin and slice. You know
hitting look aways. You know what I call a Willie up here at the chest. You know
there's all other fancy shots that you get better and better better. But if you
don't really cover the basics and I see this in every sport. It doesn't matter if
you're watching the NBA Finals.You're watching you know the NCAA football
championships and I love football and I love watching a play develop. But we
always say if we don't execute the basic fundamentals and sometimes we get away
from what it is we're trying to do. We go into a tournament and you go into
a big event and you get sidelined mentally not being able to focus and a
lot of times the coach has to come back and say let's go back to the basic
fundamentals. And how many times you go okay. Or you're having an off day. Go okay
I'm just gonna hit the ball in the court. I'm just gonna make the other team hit
another shot . So I'm just putting my serve in. I'm not trying to do anything
fancy, not hitting it hard, no spins, put it in. I put my next shot, my third shot
across the net and I keep the ball in play and it's amazing how many points I
win. I go and I'm not doing anything spectacular here.It's really learning. I
mean that's, that right there. Some days you're really on and you can hit every
angle you want but it really comes down to the basic fundamentals. And if you
execute it it becomes X's and O's. No matter who you're playing.
Chances are Laura's answer really didn't surprise you. If you play pickleball for any
length of time you know that consistency is one of the keys to getting better.
What you may not know is where to start and I happen to have a suggestion.
Coming up on the screen is a link to an article and a checklist.
It's a pickleball inventory and it's designed to help you to find out what
are your strong points and what are your weak points. Because chances are we know
some of them but we may not know all of them. Once you've had a chance to take
the inventory come back here, click on the playlist that's coming up
above and go into the drills section. It's filled with a variety of different
drills that can help you to improve some of your weakest
shots, get more consistent and ultimately win more pickleball points.
I'd love to know what part of your game needs the most improvement and if you're willing
to put it down in the comment section below I'll make sure that we do some
drills and focus on some of the things that you leave in the comments.
Because after all together we can
Train Smart, Live Bold, Age Well