Welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your Pickleball improvement and your mental sanity. That's why it's called Pickleball Therapy. I am your host. My name is Tony Rogan. I am glad to be with you in this episode. Today, we take another step along our journey of understanding and of of mental strength, mental awareness, and, and health as we continue to grow as Pickleball players.

What we're gonna do today is we are going to shift gears a little bit. Last, last week, we, we went into goal setting, talked about some goal setting, setting expectations for yourself in 2024, and hopefully you found that episode helpful. If you didn't get a chance to check out that episode, recommend you go back and check it out.

It's a really good episode on framing goals in a more constructive way. This week, we're gonna shift a little bit of gears here. I gotten an email a while, a little while ago from Pickleball therapists. Therapists are players who have made a commitment to themselves and their mental health growth that, and they express that by becoming a therapist, Pickleball therapist.

If you want to know more, you can send me an email at therapy at better Pickleball dot com and I'll send you the information and you can decide if it's right for you. But one of our therapists sent a question about open play, how to deal with certain situations that arise in open play. And there's a practical component to this. We're gonna talk about sort of like a strategic practical piece,

and there's also a mental component to it. There's a part of it in terms of just framing how we feel about it and what happens when we play in these situations. So that's where we're gonna cover today. And specifically it has to do with when we're partnered with a quote unquote weaker player. And that happens, right? A player who may not be quite at the level of our level or the level of the game,

who's getting targeted mercilessly targeted by their opponents. That's my word, not, not John's. And I'll breach John's email in a second. Before we jump into the podcast, a couple of things coming up, coming up that, that actually one's already out that I wanted to tell you about is the, we have a partner play course in our academy that I think you'll find really helpful if you want to know more about how to constructively play with partners.

99% of you out there are playing Pickleball doubles. Primarily. That's your primary game. If you're playing doubles, you are playing a team sport. And, and as, as a team sport, there are aspects of the game that are really helpful to you to understand in terms of playing partner play and maximizing a partner play. Since that's what we're real with today.

I wanted to make sure you knew that we had an entire course dedicated to that subject. It's a, it's a very good course. It's gotten a lot of good feedback from players who have benefited from, from hearing the concepts that are in that course. So checked out at the Better Pickleball Academy, you'll go to better Pickleball dot com and I'll put a link in the show notes as well.

And if you have a minute, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast. If you enjoy the podcast, it helps us reach other players just like you who would benefit from hearing the words that you're hearing in this podcast. One other quick note here, if you're watching us on YouTube, we do have a YouTube channel. A lot of you know that or not,

but we have a YouTube channel. It's called the same thing, Pickleball Therapy. So you go to YouTube, you type in Pickleball therapy, you'll see my face on there. So you're welcome to watch, watch on YouTube as well if you want to. If you're on there, please subscribe to the channel. It helps us for each other players. And also let us know what you think about the,

this funky background that we're using in these few videos. I'm shooting these videos in front of a green screen, so just putting kind of a funky chill background and lemme know what you think down in the comments about it. Alright, let's jump into this idea of, or this, the question of how do we deal with certain situations, an open play.

And let me start by reading you the email from John, one of our therapists. He says, I think it would be worth talking about how when we play with a weaker partner, even though he or she gets targeted by many who just want to win the game, I don't reciprocate, but in fact try to do the opposite and hit any balls that come my way to the stronger my two opponents when I can,

I think some more discussion on that would be beneficial to all. So John, thanks for the question and thanks also for being mindful of when you're playing a a, a partner or against opponents who may be, you know, have a imbalance in their ability. One thing I would note here is be careful about over targeting the strong player too, right?

So you gotta kind of balance it out, you know, if you're playing with an imbalanced team, you wanna make sure that both of them get to play. You know, both players get to play. So sometimes what we can do is we can overcompensate the other way. And I've done it myself where, you know, you're like, you, you don't want up a player to feel bad,

so you end up hitting all the balls to the other player and then the player who is the weaker player doesn't get to play either. So kind of balance it out a little bit. But let's talk about some ideas when you're dealing in open play, when you're playing in an imbalanced situation and your partner's getting targeted. I'm gonna start with some practical advice I'll give you here.

Made some three different notes that I wanted to share with you in terms of practical advice, practical things that you can do to play in a situation where there's a heavy imbalance and your partner is getting target. Number one is avoid targeting yourself. Now, I just, we just talked about that a little bit and John mentioned that in, in his email that it's something he doesn't do.

It's, it's, it's, you know, it's easy to fall into that trap, right? Where, you know, you're in a game, the score gets a little tight, you know, seven, six or something like that, and you say, okay, I'm gonna just go to the, I'm gonna start targeting the weaker player. 'cause you know that that's easier point,

right? You, you kind of, you gotta do a little soul searching and think through a little bit in terms of what is it that you're trying to accomplish out there? What are you trying to do? You know, if you're trying to win the game then you know, target away. And I will say this, if you're playing in a competitive setting tournament,

you know, a route robin, where it's competitive, kind of a, everybody understands this is a competition, Moneyball, things like that, league targeting is perfectly fine, okay? So targeting in and of itself is not a bad thing. Targeting sometimes. Not only is this a a okay thing you should target, right? If it's strategically correct to do in a Competitive setting,

I will tell you that when I play tournaments, I will target and I will tell my partner or suggest my partner as our strategy that we target. We jokingly say sometimes you, when we're targeting one player over another in that kind of competitive setting, you know, the the saying is basically what we say is, is you know, if the, if the player who we're not targeting,

right, if the other, the stronger player hits anything other than the serve or return to serve, then we made a mistake. So again, targeting in that context is fine. This question deals specifically with open play. In an open play situation, we do not advise targeting. We think it's, you know, it's just not, it's not good for the game.

It's not good for anybody on the court. And it's frankly not good for the targeter, for the player doing the targeting because you're not getting the most out of that time that you have on the court. You know, we all have a limited number of games that we're gonna play in our lives. Let's make the most out of it. So avoid yourself,

avoid targeting yourself when you're in, in these situations. And then the other, another practical piece of advice is make it harder for your opponents to target your partner. There's a couple things you can do. The main thing is this, the main thing is you can hit shots to places that makes it harder for them to be targeted. And what I mean by that is,

is let's say you're, you're hitting your return of serve. If you hit your return of serve to a spot that is diagonal or cross court from the partner that you want to protect, you're making it easier for your opponents to hit to that player, right? Because players love hitting their third shots cross court diagonal, right? They love that shot. They like dinking diagonal too.

They like it more than digging straight. So if you can put balls in front of the quote unquote weaker player, right? The targeted player by in front of them, I mean, so that the ball has to be hit directly towards them, you're making it harder for your opponents to target that player with dinks and with dirt shots and things like that.

Now, they could speed the ball up to them potentially, and if the player doesn't know how to get outta the way, that's problematic. But it is a way to, to, to try and funnel balls in your direction by hitting balls diagonal to you. So putting balls that are cross court to you, inviting your opponents to hit balls into that spot that into diagonal spot.

Another thing that you can do is you can put yourself in the position that your opponents are trying to target. By position, I mean the place on the court, more often than not, players are enamored with the left side of the core up at the naali zone, right? So the, the odd side of the court up by the naali zone,

which is the right-handed backhand of the left, the player on the left, right-handed backhand, right? If there's a right-handed player, that's the preferred spot on the court for a lot of players at a lot of levels, they'll hit that spot mercilessly again and again and again. So if you want to protect somebody, you know, protect a player, what you do is you put yourself there.

Now that does require some knowledge of stacking, right? Because if you're in a situation where you would normally be on the right and your partner would be on the left and you want to protect that player, you're gonna need to get over to the left side to cover that area of the court that, that player's favor making it more uncomfortable for your opponents to then hit to the weaker player.

So those are a couple of things that you can, well, one is advice for you not to target. And then there's two things that advice there in terms of taking the ball off of your weaker players paddle sometimes or taking some stress off of them by hitting balls in front of them so that forcing the, the, your opponents to try and hit direct to the player,

straight to the player as opposed to diagonal. And then the other thing is putting yourself in the position that is favored by your opponents. The one that they, the place they wanna hit the ball. And then another piece of advice when you're playing with the weaker player to make the game more competitive is you would then take more chances when you have the ball in front of you.

So whenever you have a chance at the ball, you may need to be a little bit more aggressive, a little bit more, open up the game a little more for yourself, take more chances because you're only gonna get so many touches on the ball, you know that you're only gonna get, you know, to touch every one out of every five balls or six balls or four balls,

whatever it is. And so when you get that opportunity, you're probably going to have to try and do something with it if, you know, in order to give yourself the best chance hidden the rally. So that's another thing that you can do from a practical standpoint, from a mental standpoint, right? When you're in these situations, let's, lemme give you three tips in,

in that area. Number one is, is, is managing your expectations, right? You just need to manage the expectations when you're in these situations. Understand, you know, what's going on in the, in the, in the court, what's going on in the, in the, you know, in the game. And manage your expectations in that situation.

You know, understand that your, you're obviously at a disadvantage if your opponents decide to heavily target your partner and your partner is in fact, there's a, there's a significant imbalance on the court. Yeah, yeah. Not realistic to expect that you're gonna succeed in that game, right? And even if winning and losing isn't your main metric, right? As we talk about it in this podcast,

then you know, you, you, you at back of your mind, you're still like, you still wanna win. I get that. So you're gonna have to manage expectations when you're in the situations. Before I forget there, there's one more practical tip I'm gonna give you in a second. So let's get to two more mental, I'm gonna give you one more practical tip.

So, you know, magic expectations is, is is important. The other thing that you can do, and it this depends on the, in the context that you're in, right? The, the, the ecosystem that you play in your facility and the other players have a conversation with the other players not in the moment, right? They'll make it awkward for the players being targeted,

but if you're one of the better players in that facility, right? And that I assume you are, if you're, if your partners the one getting targeted in these situations, have a conversation with your, with your peers, right? With the other players that are at your level and have an understanding that you're not gonna freeze the player out, right?

You're not gonna not hit to that player, but that you're gonna play more a more balanced game, right? You're gonna try and direct some balls to the better players when they're opposite you and then give some balls to the weaker player to get them involved in the game, but not targeting the weaker player. That's a conversation you can have as long as the ecosystem supports it,

you know, you have, it's a friendly ecosystem, everybody understand each other, have that conversation, you know, off the court, you know, perhaps even before or after the session just to have a conversation about what to expect in terms of targeting. Because here's the thing, it, you know, what goes around comes around as they say, right?

So if you, if you're getting targeted this time, then you know, whoever's doing the targeting may be the, the victim next time, right? Of that kind of a play. So it, it helps everybody out, you know, and it helps the new player or the, the weaker player feel more confident and get better and that, listen,

at the end of the day, you know, we want to enjoy the game, but we also want to let other players enjoy the game as well. It also just from a selfish standpoint, you want other players to be able to get better because it helps you, right? You get more players to play against who are better and can push you.

So, you know, that's a more positive environment for everybody. And then the, the other thing that you need to be really conscientious of when you're playing in a, in a heavily imbalanced situation is, is being extra supportive. And what I mean by this is, generally speaking, the weaker player is gonna know that they're the weaker player, right?

They're gonna know that they're, you know, they're, it's kinda like the old Sesame Street thing where they have the, you have the four objects and then like, which doesn't fit in this situation. A lot of times a weaker player is aware that they don't exactly fit on the court in that situation. And so they're gonna be particularly sensitive potentially to any negative feedback that you per that,

that they may perceive. Even if you're not giving it to 'em, they may perceive negative feedback. So try and be extra careful with your, you know, your shoulders, your head moving and things like that when the mistakes happen because you expect them to happen, right? And one recommendation there would be to really make sure you turn towards your partner in that situation.

In other words, turn towards the middle after every rally, make eye contact, tap paddle, smile, whatever works for you. But do something to let them know that everything's gonna be a okay and not to, you know, and certainly, you know, to try and avoid the possibility that they're gonna think that you're upset or, you know, disappointed in them somehow.

Alright, so what, let give you one more, those are three mental sides. Lemme give you one more practical tip, which is this. When you're playing with a potentially weaker player, consider your position on the court to be more defensive. So I'm gonna use a baseball analogy slash metaphor here, which is think of yourself as being sort of like a center fielder.

And football would be like a safety, right? Where you're, you're taking a more neutral defensive kind of position because what you're, you expect is that the weaker player when they're put under stress is gonna result in some sort of a pop-up, or they're gonna try and hit an attack ball that's gonna get countered and things like that. Put yourself in a position where you can do the most to help defend against that situation.

And generally what I'll do in those situations is I will play towards the middle and then a little bit behind the non volley zone line. So maybe like a, a step or two off the non volley zone line. You know, whenever my partner hits the ball and I see something that looks a little bit suspect right? Coming off the paddle, I'll take a step back,

get myself nice and centered on the court and give myself a chance to work on my defense and trying to reset the ball after that. So those are, those are some things you can do when you're playing open play. At the end of the day, just remember that it's one game, right? Or a couple of games during a session that you're,

that you're, you know, in that situation, it's not the end of the world. There's, there's a lot of games to be played. You know, enjoy your moments on the court, enjoy your time on the court. In that situation, if you could have an understanding at your, at your facility in terms of how you're gonna deal with situations,

the better. But even if you don't, you know, those are a couple, the few things that you can do to give yourself the best chance to in those games and to help minimize the amount of targeting of your partner. So hopefully those tips will help you and open play. And as you know, and it's just another step along our understanding or thinking about the game,

our application of, of sound concepts, sound ideas, when we're out there playing this awesome sport of Pickleball. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, please share with your friends. If you know a player who's on the journey and would benefit from hearing these words, then if you enjoyed the words and they helped you, I'm gonna bet they're gonna help that.

As always, keep enjoying this gift. Keep enjoying this beautiful game that is Pickleball and I'll see you next time.