[00:00:05.420] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. I'm your host of the podcast, Tony Roig. Hope you're having a great week. This is actually episode number 234 of the podcast, not including special episodes. So this is regular episode 234. Counting Special episode is probably episode 280, something like that. And I think that makes us maybe the longest running and or the highest number of episode podcast in pickleball. If someone else has information other than that, happy to receive it because I don't think that's the case. Or I think that is the case. I should say that we are the longest running podcast in Pickleball, and it's awesome to be able to bring this podcast to you. I was reminded about the episode numbers in a podcast I was listening to on a different subject recently, and they start the podcast off by saying episode number this and that. So I thought that would be a good thing to do here. So I'm going to try and remember to do that in the future. This episode, what I want to talk about is a couple of things. We're going to talk about open play.

[00:01:10.400] - Tony Roig
We're going to talk about the state of play, if you will, in terms of how players are interacting with each other. And this arose from our state of play event that we had a couple of weeks back. And then I'm going to share with you a personal story about progress and sometimes taking a step back in terms of your journey as a pickleball player, and I'll just share a personal story that happened to me that perhaps will help you understand how these things work. I had the pleasure of having a great conversation with a young pro player, Richard Levernees, recently. A couple of days ago, and I shared that with him about the taking a step back on everything, and he shared with me an interesting perspective that I'll share with you during that part of the podcast. As we dive into the podcast, I have one favor to ask, if I may, of you, which is if you know a player who... And just take a moment, right? You have a friend of yours who's playing and maybe not enjoying the sport as much as they could if they felt better about their understanding of the pickleball.

[00:02:17.870] - Tony Roig
Share with them our upcoming event, if you would, which is coming up in March. The easiest way for them to sign up for that would be to join Join us for the... Join our email list, and they'll get information about it. It's a super reasonably priced event for a three-day, three plus one boot camp, four-day total, but three plus one boot camp, where we're going to be covering error reduction, becoming more consistent, understanding the control that you do have while you're playing out there and how you can use that control to reduce the errors that you make when you play. So again, if you know a player who could benefit from that, the favor that ask is that you take a moment, think about that player and share with them the upcoming event, or the easiest thing is just tell them, join our email list, and they'll get an email notifying them of the upcoming event. All right, let's dive into the open play, and I'm going to read you an email that was sent by Jeff, and I ask Jeff for permission to use his name, and he said it was fine, and the email.

[00:03:18.380] - Tony Roig
It arose from the state of play, and he asked me to talk about what's happening with play in general and talk through it in the podcast. The email reads like this. In the first year, I played. It was all open play. Everyone played with everyone. There was a lot of joy and fun. The second year, as players' advancement and ability started sorting out. People started being more selective about who they played with. It was still fun, but there was a loss and not being able to play with others I'd previously enjoyed playing with. In the third year, the smaller group of better players wouldn't play with anyone below them. They would start a challenge court. This was not a problem until people were waiting for courts and they wouldn't get off. Sadly, it almost came to fisticuffs with some guys a couple of times. This seriously diminished pleasure in the game. Then he talks about a new facility opening, and that helped a little bit with the pressure. But then at the end, he says, But I'm still experiencing a sense of loss from when I first started playing, thanks, Jeff. It got me thinking about it.

[00:04:20.270] - Tony Roig
What I want to do is share with you a couple of things that I think we can do as players, exercising our control, our agency. If you're When you listen to the podcast, that's a really big theme that runs through a lot of our episodes, is the idea that we actually have more control over things than we may think. That is we have control of everything. I don't have a solution for players segregating into groups or splitting themselves into different groups to play. That's happened here locally in our community, and I think it's just part of how humans are wired and things like that. So I don't have... I wish I had an overall solution. I do not. But I can offer you a couple of things that you can do to help maybe ameliorate that, I think that's the right use of the term, in your own communities. And one has to do with you bringing players into your group. The other one has to do with you visiting other groups. So the The first idea was basically keep an open eye for players out there who... This is where you're looking at players who are quote, unquote, below you.

[00:05:38.750] - Tony Roig
So they're playing in the courts that aren't your courts. Spend a moment, walk around, look around there, and See if you see players who are genuinely working at their game. And this is not a criticism of any player. It's not. There's perfectly fine for, and let's just use two numbers. Let's say you have courts in your facility to 3: 0, and some that are 3: 5, and you're playing on the 3: 5 courts. So you go You look over to the 3: 0 courts, you're checking them out. Some of them are having a good time. They're just bopping the bottle around. No problem. But I'm going to bet you that there's players there who are working on their game and who you see and you recognize. We talk about it being like a language, right? So You look at them and you're like, that player is starting to speak pickleball, right? And they're working at speaking pickleball. Maybe they still have some flaws in their language, but you see them working through the game. Then I would say it's on you to do whatever you to help them come into your group to play. In other words, opening up your group to other players is the idea here.

[00:06:36.690] - Tony Roig
Does it solve everything? No. But it allows some movement by players who may otherwise feel left out or not feel welcome in your courts. It can be difficult for the, quote, unquote, lower-level players to be accepted by the, quote, unquote, higher-level players. I'm using a lot of quotes because I've traveled enough and I've played on enough courts to know that there are, right now, based on my experience, right now, there are at all facilities all across the country, there are players playing on the lower courts who should be playing on the higher courts and players on the higher courts who should be playing on the lower courts based on their ability. I've seen it. I've been places where I go to the beginner courts It's beginner courts, and a couple of players there, I'm looking at them, they're better than the players on the intermediate courts or advanced courts and vice versa. I've been in other facilities where they don't have the courts segregated that way, but groups naturally form. And the second one, I'm spoiling the second one a little bit here or giving you a little bit of a sneak peek on it.

[00:07:43.220] - Tony Roig
What I do when I go into those facilities is I will play with the, quote, unquote, lower players, the ones that aren't being allowed in the other courts. And in those situations, what I've noticed is, and this was locally, where the players on those courts were great players relative to the other players, were fine and could have played with them. So I actually I went over to the other courts and I told the other group, I was like, Guys, what is going on here? Why are you guys not letting those guys play on these courts? Because they're at least as good as you guys. Now, I understand that most of us listening to this may not have the position in the community to do that. I'm a content creator. I'm a senior pro player, so maybe I have some weight to throw around. But what you can do is you can be the one to... Now we're going to talk about you injecting yourself in with the, quote unquote, lower level players. Take some time and go and play with those players. Play down if you want to think about it that way. I don't, but that's fine.

[00:08:37.300] - Tony Roig
It's a good way of a shortcut way of thinking about it. Play down. And what you do there is you play in a way that you work on your game. I highly recommend working on your soft game then. Say, again, you're a three, five, and you're going to go play in the three-oh courts. Don't blow them off the court. There's no sense in that. They're not going to feel good. There's no, the quote win for you doesn't really mean anything there because what's the point of trying to just blow them off the court? Instead, work on some parts of the game that maybe you're not as comfortable with. Say your back-hand dinking isn't that great. Insert yourself in back-hand dinking situations, in back-hand, third-shot situations. Work on areas of the game that perhaps you're not as comfortable with. Work in the transition zone. Stick yourself in the transition zone for one or two shots extra that you can get in there. So you can do it both ways. One is to identify players who you can then be their mentor, if you will, and invite them up into your group to play. And you can personally go into the, quote, unquote, lower-level courts and participate with those players and engage with them.

[00:09:44.900] - Tony Roig
Improve the social, broaden the social experience for everybody, yourself and them. And also perhaps they'll see something that is interesting. They'll be motivated to keep working because they'll say, wow, that's a really interesting way of playing I hadn't seen before. Those are two things you can do to keep more of the social open play aspects of our game alive. And one last piece that you can do, which is you can become an organizer. It takes some work. I will tell you that our friends at Pickleheads pickeled. Com, and I'll put a link in the show notes, but the pickleheads. Com folks have created some tools that help you do that more easily. They're free, so they basically help you figure out how you want to run it, and they have Ron Robbins in their formats and things like that. But you can organize. And so now you, as the hub, you get to decide who comes to your play. And I can tell you here, there's a few local players who do a good job of that, right? More than a few, I shouldn't say a few. There are several local players who do a really good job of that, of creating inclusive groups, of bringing players of different levels together, players who would not otherwise naturally play together, play together because of the force of these organizers.

[00:10:57.680] - Tony Roig
So that's a third way that you can help improve that. But other than those three tips, I don't really have an overall solution to this. I wish the world was a better place and we could all sing Kumbaya together sometimes, but that's just not how we are wired. The fact that that's not how we're wired and that's not how we do things naturally shouldn't stop us from trying to take these steps to help improve that process. So hopefully that helps you with that. All right, now I'm going to share with you, we're going to pivot. We're going to pivot to It's a personal story, and it's a small story, but I think it's helpful to see how your mental journey process ebbs and flows. So I went to play this last weekend, very social setting, just a social group. I was joining them to play a few games, and I caught myself two things that I caught myself afterward. One was I was getting on myself when I hit balls into the net. Now, I don't mind noticing when I hit a ball into the net. I don't mind making adjustments. That's fine. It's the way I was addressing myself, which was getting angry with myself when I hit the ball into the net.

[00:12:08.810] - Tony Roig
Unnecessary, unhelpful in that format, right? Also not fair to me because this is social play, not like get down, dick it down low and play competitive and get all jacked up and things like that. Very social play. And I was approaching it that way, but except I wanted to make all the shots. It doesn't make any sense at all. So that was one thing that I did. And the other thing that I noticed was my feelings were different based on the score. And you've heard me talk about a lot, right? When losses doesn't matter, results don't matter. I agree. That's 100 % how I feel about it, and that's how we should proceed. That doesn't mean that my lizard brain doesn't... My lizard brain is still back there, still activating. And so when the score was in our favor heavily, I was relaxed. Everything's fine. When we were in a tight game or we were behind, now all of a sudden my demeanor changes, my interaction with the game changes, which is not how I want to carry myself, not the way that I want to react to what's going on on the court. In this conversation I had with the young pro Richard Leverny, as I mentioned earlier, we were talking about basically the idea is approach every rally the same way.

[00:13:25.190] - Tony Roig
That's how it should be in an all things being equal world. Basically, you just approach every rally the same way. Whether you won the last rally, lost the last rally, no matter what the score is, you're always even keel doing the same thing. And what he shared with me, it was interesting because he's had the similar experience with his... He's on a mental journey as well. He's younger than I am, also hasn't been at it as long, but he's made tremendous progress. He's a student of the mental side of things. In fact, the podcast I mentioned earlier with the episode numbers was a podcast that he recommended to me during our conversation that I started listening to. It has to do with stoicism. It's called Stoicism on Fire. If you want to check it out, it's a great little podcast. I'm only into episode, I think I'm on episode three right now. I started at the beginning. But it's basically about stoicism and that philosophy, which has a lot of parallels with what we talk about in this podcast. But in any event, the way he framed that was basically like, when that happens, basically we lose our center, right?

[00:14:26.000] - Tony Roig
So we're not centered anymore when we start going awry. And what happens is once you start getting off center, if you don't come back to the center, then you just keep going. You keep going down that path and it gets negative. And what I would say, I think to minimize the chances of that happening next time will be some pre-game preparation. And if you haven't checked it out yet, check out our Bookmark episode. It's one of the special episodes. It was a couple of weeks, two or three weeks ago, so it's in the recent feed still. The reason it's a Bookmark episode called Prepare to Play, it's mental warmup, Prepare to Play, I think. Is because the idea is it's a practice. To get the most out of it, you should do it before every time that you play. To minimize and perhaps even avoid these Getting off the path or not acting in the way that you want to act, given how you objectively understand the sport and your relationship to it from a mental standpoint. So what I've told myself is that the next time before I go play, I am going to listen to the Bookmark episode, check it out, and make sure that I'm centered, that I'm centered better as I move forward.

[00:15:46.310] - Tony Roig
That said, when these things happen, there's no reason to beat yourself up about it. You observe it, you see it, you react to it in a constructive, positive way, meaning I'm going to take a step positive in the future, which is prepare to play better next time so that I minimize the chances of a repeat. But that's just part of human life. You take a step forward, another step forward, another step forward, then a half step back or a step to the side, then hopefully another step forward and then a step back like that. That's just how the human experience is. Anyway, so hopefully sharing that with you will help you when you have those situations where you invariably take a step back in your journey because that will happen to you. It's just human nature. Anyway, that's this week's podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. I guess I do have a second favor to ask you. If you have a minute to rate a review, that really helps us out. As always, please share the podcast with your friends because if you enjoy the podcast, if it helps you, it probably will help them out as well.

[00:16:42.840] - Tony Roig
I hope you have a great weekend and next week, and I will see you during the next episode of Fertile Ball Therapy. Be well.