[00:00:04.940] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. It's the podcast with you in mind. I'm your host of this weekly podcast, Tony Roig. It's a pleasure to be with you in our new podcast studio environment. Again, really excited about having this environment. It charges me up when I come in here to record this week's podcast. I think you're really going to enjoy the concept. We're going to play on the concept from last week. And I think it's really going to help us frame out better our interaction with the sport, which is always what we're trying to do with this mental part of the sport, in addition to playing better. But as I always say, when you feel better about the sport, you're going to play better. Period. End of story. A couple of housekeeping notes before we dive into that. If you're in Florida or can make it to Florida the end of July, I have a camp here. It's indoor at a beautiful facility that just opened up. The courts are spectacular. It's limited to only 16 players. So if you want to join me for this two-day camp, I would recommend acting fairly quickly because these spots generally fill up pretty quick.

[00:01:13.620] - Tony Roig
So you can find I got information at betterpickleball.com under Camps for that one. And then the other note is if you can't make it to the camp but still want some training, join me for our strategy clinic coming up on June. I believe it's the 25th, but you can double-check that when you go to the website. It's our strategy clinic. It's a live event. I'm going to be discussing the soft game and dinks in particular, how to hit them better, where to hit them, things like that. Some dink concepts that really help you in Europe at the Nonvolley Zone trying to solve that part of the game. So check that out. And we try and make these very reasonable in terms of price. And also, obviously, you can watch them from your house. About as convenient as we can make them. Can make them more convenient than that coming into your living room. So check those two things out. I have a shout out this week, but instead of doing the shout out, it's actually a question that was asked by Larry. So I'll go ahead and do that in the RIF. So we're going to get to that one in a second.

[00:02:15.800] - Tony Roig
All right, so let's dive into the topic for this week, the main topic for this week. And it has to do with diminishing ourselves. Last week, we talked about the potential for diminishing our friends whenever we behave in a way that that diminishes what it is that they accomplish, right? When basically we react to their big comeback or their victory in a way that focuses on us, it diminishes them. But then this weekend, there was the French Open, and I came to pickleball from tennis, so I retained some allegiance, some love for the sport of tennis. And so it was following the French Open this weekend and saw the final on Saturday. And by now, you may have I've already heard. I shouldn't say probably because it doesn't necessarily have to be in your ecosystem. But Irina Sebelenka, who was the number one seed, lost to Coco Gauff, the American player, the number two seed. And after the match, Sebelenka made it all about herself, meaning essentially, Coco Gauff didn't beat her, didn't win. Sebelenka made too many mistakes, and the conditions were bad. And excuse upon excuse, never acknowledging any work by Koko Gauff.

[00:03:30.520] - Tony Roig
What's interesting, when you think about it objectively, ignores the fact that Coco Gauff is number two seed, ignores the fact that Coco Gauff made it to the finals of the French Open, which in and of itself is amazing, ignores the fact that Coco Gauff pushed Sabalenka in that match to make mistakes, pushed her so that she had to play harder, meaning she had to go for more because of the way Coco Gauff was playing. And so what could have been a nice post-match interview where there's a positive taken away, Because as we've talked about on this podcast many, many times, we play a sport, it's the same as tennis, where you have a winner and you have a loser, and that's just what we sign up for. And so when you contrast Savilenka's approach with the approach of Yannick Sinner, who lost in the men's match, it's night and day. Yannick Sinner was the number one seed. Carlos Alcaraz was the number two seed. There, just like in the Savilenka match, the number two seed, Alcaraz, one. But Center actually had three match points early on in the match and couldn't convert any of them.

[00:04:35.160] - Tony Roig
So he had three points where he could have ended the match in his favor and won the French Open, couldn't convert them. Carlos Alcaraz came back and in five sets, one. It's already Most of the folks who know about tennis, they already consider it a classic, and I think it is. The level of play was incredible. So what Sinder did was he leaned into that. He basically acknowledged Alvarez's win and congratulated Carlos for his win, talked about how great it was to be a part of a historic match like that and what an incredible level of tennis was being played. Just very positive about the whole experience. And so it got me thinking. This whole thing got me thinking about the additional consequence of making it about ourselves in those kinds of situations, in acting like Arena Sabalenka, where it's all about what we did wrong, as opposed to acting like Yannick Sinner, where it's about what your opponent did and just recognizing the fact that you played a tough match. You were in a good match the whole time. So one aspect of it was what we talked about last week, which is about diminishing your It makes sense.

[00:05:45.210] - Tony Roig
If you didn't check that one out, highly recommend you check it out. But the other aspect of it is actually how you diminish yourself with that conduct. And there's two different ways, and I'm going to talk about both of them. One's pretty evident, right? One as the direct diminution of yourself. So if you think about, again, going back to Arena Savilenka, great athlete, obviously, number one in the world, number one seed in the tournament, very accomplished tennis player. But her image is taking a hit, right? And rightfully so. It's taking a hit because of her trying to basically detract from her opponent's victory and make it about herself and her mistakes. It's There's a direct diminution that's happening there. But beyond that, there's also an indirect diminution, and this is the one I want to spend a few minutes on, which is this. Let me switch it to pickleball now. So let's go to just a standard example in these is going to be you're up 10 something, call it 10,9, 10,8. You can't close it out, right? Or you miss a shot, something like that. And then your opponents win 12,10. So it's the comeback.

[00:06:57.730] - Tony Roig
So you're up 10,8, 10,7,8. 7, 10, 9, something like that. And then you don't get to 11, they tie it and they get to 12, and so they win 12, 10. And in those situations, what is not uncommon, it's actually common, I guess, is players on the losing side of that, players who got stuck at 10, make it about themselves. It's all about, I missed that shot. I screwed up. Sorry, I messed up. That was on me. Things like that. Removing or or diminishing the effort of the opponent, which is, as I said last week, your friend, to get to 12, right? To battle the tenacity, the not making an error, then giving the game away, and things like that. The willingness to continue to battle, which all should be celebrated. And the event itself should be celebrated, right? Which I'm going to talk about in a second. This is where you get indirect because it's a 12: 10 match. Listen, 12: 10 is your game. 12: 10 games are awesome. Think about this. Think about if you could make Every game between now and the end of your pickleball career, 12, 10 or higher.

[00:08:06.780] - Tony Roig
Wouldn't that be awesome? Every game would be 12, 10, 13, 11, 14, 12, 15, 13. You name it, right? But the lowest would be 12, 10. I got to tell you something, you're playing a really awesome pickleball contest. They're about as evenly matched as you can think about. Everybody's battling. And the difference between the winner and the loser is a shot here, two inches or an inch there on an outball. Something silly, something silly, right? Something very small. Compared that to you winning 11-3, how does that feel compared to winning 12-10? And losing 11-3 as opposed to losing 12-10? I mean, those are entirely different experiences. So the experience itself of finishing a game at 12: 10 is an awesome experience, whether you win it or whether you lose it. Now, again, going back to the bowl of ice cream, if you win it, you get some sprinkles. That's great. But losing 12: 10 is awesome. I mean, that's a great battle by you. And so when we think about that, when we think about how we react when we're on the loser side, because we're on the winner side, it's always easy. When you win 12: 10, then you're always like, Hey, I won.

[00:09:16.020] - Tony Roig
But when you lose, that's when you get tested. That's when you have the possibility of doing a sabalenka, or an arena sabalenka, which is make it about yourself and diminish your friends and your opponents by doing so. But beyond that, You diminish the experience itself. You diminish the event, the game that you just experienced. That was 12: 10. You've taken it down a notch. You've made it less important, less meaningful by making it about yourself, by making it about a shot you missed rather than an entire event, an entire experience that happened. You also, by doing that, when you reduce the event, you reduce yourself, again, but this time, indirectly. It's not just the direct, not the best way to act, not the best look for you if you're going to make it about yourself, the same way that it doesn't look good for Savilenka to make it about the wind or whatever it is that she wanted to complain about for her loss, as opposed to recognizing that her opponent won and beat her. It's not just the direct impact of it, a diminution of yourself. It's the indirect one, because what you're doing is you're bringing down the entire event.

[00:10:31.820] - Tony Roig
And if you take it to its logical extreme, you'll see what I mean. So let me go back to Arena Sebalenka for a second. The only reason that we even talk about Arena Sebalenka is because she's the number one player in a sport that has traction. So in a sport that people generally care about. Tennis is not... They do. Tennis is a sport that's popular. Players and people in general follow the sport. So knowing who the number one player in tennis is interesting and being the number one player in tennis has its thing. So that gets her a certain position, a certain cache, if you will. Now, if you tear down tennis, let's say tennis becomes irrelevant, in a hypothetical, your tennis is irrelevant, then what does it matter if you're number one in tennis? It doesn't matter. So what Irina Sibelinka is doing that, she doesn't realize because she's young, she doesn't realize, is she's tearing down the very house upon which her value as a player, that part of her life being number one in tennis, has value because of the house that it's built upon. And when she tears down the house, she tears herself down with it.

[00:11:45.260] - Tony Roig
And it's the same thing for you in your local community, in your local facility. If you have a really good group of players that enjoy playing with each other, you have really competitive games, and let's say it's all 12: 10 again. Every match is 12: 10. Every game is 12: 10. If you tear down those games, you tear down the fabric of what it is that you and your friends have built in your group that you play with or the facility open play. You bring it down a notch, and then you bring it down a notch. And And every time you do that, you reduce its importance. You reduce yourself as a member of that fabric, a piece of that fabric. So when you think about your behavior, think about this context of yourself inside of a bigger framework. I meant to do it last week, and I'll go ahead and do it this week. Credit to one of, I would say, my strongest mentor in the mental game, Coach Peter Scales, who developed a Compete, Learn, Honor philosophy. And his philosophy is compete, learn, honor, with honor being the principle, the tenet of the philosophy.

[00:12:58.300] - Tony Roig
And that, I The idea of honoring is the idea that the game itself is bigger than any one of us. And so when we act in a way that tears down the game, we're not honoring the game. And the extension of that is that we're not honoring ourselves as members of that community, of that game, as a part of that world. And so I think it's a really helpful way of thinking about it. I highly recommend Coach Pete's book for you if you haven't read it. Even if you have read it, he's developed a playbook which is specific to pickleball, and it has very hands-on ideas in there, very hands-on items that you can work on to continue to work on your mental game, on your mental interaction with the sport of pickleball, specifically. I'll put a link in the show notes. And there's a code, I believe. I'll put all the instructions in the show notes below this show, and you can go there and get that. And I believe it's a very significant discount. So again, the details will be there. I don't remember them off top of my head, but take advantage of that.

[00:14:06.780] - Tony Roig
Coach Peter's ideas are super helpful in this idea of where we How we interact with the sport that we're a part of and how it impacts us through this ripple effect is really helpful, I think. So think about when you're behaving in the way you're behaving. Think about how it carries, I should say, how it impacts your opponents, how it impacts the game itself, and how it impacts you. Because what I would suggest to you is that if after a 10-something loss, where you end up losing 10-12, then if you behave in a way that's about you, you diminish your opponents, you diminish the event itself, the game itself, and you, by extension, diminish yourself and your partner in that process. Keep that in mind in terms of how you decide to interact with with your events. Hopefully, we can move away from the Savilenka responses and move more towards center responses in our responses to losses, which will happen if you're playing at level. There's no way to avoid it. All right, let me dive into the RIF. Let me Let me pull up the question here. Larry asked a question on the YouTube, and I appreciate Larry asking the question.

[00:15:23.060] - Tony Roig
And we were talking about last time it was about chasing fairies. Oh, yeah, the diminishing one was actually not last week, it was the week before. So 2: 46 was diminishing. Last week was chasing fairies. So Larry said, great concept. It makes so much more sense. Thank you, Larry, for that. And then he asked this question, and I think this is the question that's going to apply to a lot of you listening. Do you have any thoughts on how attitudes of the people you play with effect to your play? I play rec level in Florida and New Jersey, and I seem to play better in New Jersey, and I think, and then he puts in parentheses, at least that's how I feel, it's friendlier in New Jersey, and I'm less anxious, so I perform better. Competition is about the same. Competition is about the same, so between New Jersey and Florida. But the caveat is that I am friendlier socially with the Florida group and not the New Jersey crowd. It's interesting, Larry. So there's two things that maybe cut against each other a little bit, meaning It sounds like you're friendlier with the Florida folks and feel more pressure.

[00:16:18.280] - Tony Roig
So is it that, or is it that the group in New Jersey is friendlier? So it sounds like the group is friendly in New Jersey, but you have closer contacts here in Florida. And those probably are compounding for you. So let's deal with one at a time. I agree with the idea that when you're playing in a group that is a weird vibe, you're not going to play well. And that's happened to me locally. There's actually groups. There's been a couple of groups that I have shied away from playing with, not because the level of play is fine, they can hit the ball very well and they know the game, but it's just a weird vibe. You The vibe's off for me, right? Let me be clear, it doesn't mean they're doing anything wrong, right? They're entitled to live their life the way they want to live it. It's just not the vibe that I relate to. So I don't go there. And I notice that when I go there, I'm not really focused on the game. I'm not really into it, and I don't play as well as I can otherwise. The flip side is when I play with my friends, like I'm playing tomorrow in a group, and I expect to see several of my friends there, and it's going to be more relaxed, I'll joke around I'll be more relaxed, and I'll play way, way, way better in that environment.

[00:17:34.260] - Tony Roig
So I do think that... I actually think I'm pretty confident that how you feel in the group, the vibe that you're getting from the group is definitely going to impact your play. Now, the compounding there may be that if you feel closer to your Florida friends, meaning you're closer to them, then you are in New Jersey, then perhaps you're internalizing what you believe their opinion of you is based on your performance on the court. In other words, if you don't perform on the court, then you feel more let down in terms of your friends judging you, potentially, negatively because of your performance on the court. I would submit to you there, the best thing I can tell you there, and I believe we did a podcast on this. I don't have the number off top of my head, but the idea is that no one has bandwidth for that. Most players don't have bandwidth for that. As long as you're roughly at level with the other players, the fact that you had a rough day or whatever, most players are in one ear, out the other, they're not paying attention to it. They have their own journey.

[00:18:48.480] - Tony Roig
My guess is there's friends of yours in Florida who are just as stressed as you are about performing well in front of their group. So I would discount that some. The only caveat I would make there is just be mindful of... Try not to make a deal of it. And what I mean by that is the example I always give is pop-up. So players, when they pop the ball up, everybody believes that the music stops, everybody stops playing, right? All the lights are on that player and the pop-up and everyone's watching and it's, Oh, my God, that player popped the ball up. What an awful player, which is not the case. And the Same as what you're talking about in that situation, other players aren't keeping track of that stuff, for the most part. I mean, there are exceptions, but for the most part. But they will if you make a deal of it. So if you pop it up and then you say, Man, I always pop the ball up. Then your friends are going to think, What? You always pop the ball up. So it's the same thing here. If you have a bad day, just go about your business, add everybody, play your games the best you can, and then And carry on.

[00:20:01.470] - Tony Roig
Just carry on, carry on, carrying on with your game. But yeah, I can definitely see how those would impact your play. I think you have more control over the second one. The vibe is just a vibe thing, and that's You can work on that in terms of shutting it out, potentially. But the others are judging me thing, I think that one you can work with more directly by understanding that they probably are not for the most part, because remember that they have their their own problems that they're dealing with. All right. It's one more thing. It reminds me of when you're given the speech, they say, imagine everybody doesn't have clothes on. Same thing. They have their own problems. You have your problems, they have their problems. They're probably They're getting their problems. Anyway, so that's this week's podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. I got to be honest with everybody, I haven't heard. There's no other shoutouts. Alan on YouTube is always on there. There's one or two others. But on the Apple side and the Spotify side, it's pretty silent. So if you listen to the podcast and have a moment to rate and review, it really would appreciate it.

[00:21:04.720] - Tony Roig
As I always say, it helps us reach other players like you who may benefit from this podcast. And as always, if you enjoyed the podcast, please consider sharing it with your friends, because if you enjoyed the podcast, they probably will, too. I hope to see some of you at the end of July at camp in Florida, and maybe the rest of you at the end of June to learn more about Dinking in our strategy clinic. Everything available at betterpickleball. Com. Be well, have a great week, and I'll see you next time.