Hey guys I've been observing this trend in Southeast Florida where a lot of
players are leaving tennis for pickleball. Take a look at this. We got
four beautiful tennis courts, it's 8:30 a.m. in Florida. This is primetime for
tennis play and there's nobody playing while at the same time they just recently
built these pickleball courts and it's always jam-packed. In fact it's so packed
you sometimes can't even find a parking spot. You see all those heads bobbing up
and down those are pickleball players. And not only are players leaving tennis
for pickleball tennis courts are also being converted to pickleball courts at
a massive scale. This is taking place more and more here in Southeast Florida.
So this has me intrigued I'm gonna try to play this pickleball and see what
it's all about. Looks like all the pickleball rackets
are sold out. There are plenty of tennis rackets though. Ok let's get the dagger.
That sounds good.
In pickleball you're not allowed to step inside this line in an area called the
kitchen and you're not allowed to take balls out of the air when your foot is
over this line. You are however allowed to take the ball off the bounce and then
step in or even take balls off the bounce while being inside this area but
when it comes to volleys you got to stay out of the kitchen.
Guys this pickleball is a blast. I understand that a lot of tennis players
are picking up this game and I think what a lot of people find appealing
about pickleball that it's more forgiving on technique. You can pretty
much play everything with a continental grip and the strokes are a lot shorter
than tennis strokes. They're more compact so it's a lot more forgiving on
technique it's easier to keep the ball in play and most importantly the way
this ball is designed it has holes in it it's a plastic ball you can hit it
pretty hard without losing a lot of control. You see I can rip this thing and
it doesn't really fly that far. Now on the other hand the ball does not bounce
very high, so I'm six five and I don't really like to bend that much so when I
play pickleball it was difficult to handle some of the lower balls.
And of course because this court is so small you have to cover less ground and
especially if you're playing pickleball doubles you really don't have to
move that much and this is of course an advantage to some players that have
problems with mobility. So if you're a good tennis player you're gonna be able
to pick up this pickleball pretty easy but the big question is if you're
playing pickleball what is going to be the effect on your tennis game?
Unfortunately none of the other racket sports will help you to become a better
tennis player and that is because of the unique characteristics of the tennis
technique. See all the other racket sports have motions that are much
shorter and more abrupt compared to tennis and in tennis we really don't hit
shots like that. We might be occasionally bunting the ball or blocking it back but
in tennis the strokes are much longer there are more continuous and there's a
lot more torso rotation involved.
And what separates tennis from all the other racquet sports is this thing right
here. See the tennis ball will fly extremely fast so in order to be able to
control this thing you have to have accurate technique. See no other racquet
sport comes close to speed where you can do something like this, you know send
the ball over to the other side well over a hundred miles an hour. And that is
what a lot of novice tennis players have trouble with. They might be starting
playing with three or four balls and now the ball is flying pretty fast and it's
only possible to control it with proper technique. A good tennis player will also
develop exceptional feel for this ball. So that way we can hit the ball not only
hard but also soft, we can create multiple angles, hit the ball short and deep.
And this is why good tennis players can translate their tennis game into any
other racket sport with relative ease. And there's one story that's fascinating.
See in 2006 Las Vegas had an ATP 250 tournament and they also had a paddle
tennis tournament going on on the same site. And Gael Monfils entered the paddle
tennis tournament for fun and he faced the 19 time world paddle tennis
champion and Gael had never played paddle tennis in his life and he ended
up winning the match. So if Gael can beat the 19 time world champion without
ever having played paddle tennis before this clearly proves that tennis is the
king of all racquet sports. So I advise you not to quit tennis completely and
switch over to pickleball. Think of it this way if you continue to improve your
tennis game this might actually improve your pickleball game as well.