Blog: Order On The Court — Zen & the Art of pickleball
Zen-like state leads to otherworldly court play
The Zen of Pickleball. Teaching the unexplainable.
The subject of this week’s blog, Order on the Court is not something you read about in sports training very often. But I do like to mix it up once in a while, and what better way than to write about the offbeat, the unusual, or the wonderfully weird in the world of pickleball.
And you have to agree, that after the five or six highly marketed pickleball stars, invariably in the U.S, who are highly packaged by major sponsors to seem more…interesting, a lot of what we read and watch about pickleball is, well, a little dull.
Not boring, exactly, but predictable, not really memorable, but, inoffensive. Kind of like your high school year book. Pictures of people, and players who are kinda memorable, but, easily forgotten.
When I started writing, somewhere between the end of the last Ice Age, and before we all stopped watching Zombie shows on television, the greatest sin imaginable for a writer was to be boring.
You might make an unintentional error in a news story you were working on as a reporter. Or as editor, miss an intentional punch line by a bored reporter on the crime beat, “The Big Six Motel cleaning staff were surprised to find one of their rooms was completely bare, after all furnishings were removed by a guest. Police are looking for thieves with tacky tastes.”
But boring, never.
I had to acknowledge the reporter’s originality on my news staff, after walking him out of the office, when he wrote a column, using the following key letters to start each paragraph.
P
U
B
L
I
S
H
E
R
S
U
C
K
S
So, here goes. Let me know how I do.
Once in a while, not often, but not that rare, I’ll be in an intense pickleball game and something unusual happens.It’s like I’ve entered this different dimension where time stands still. I experience this weirdly wonderful feeling gravity has shifted the court floor towards the net. And I’m sliding towards it almost levitating to the Non Volley Line.
The closest comparison would be the feeling you get wearing a pair of inline skates with the big roller wheels. Effortless forward motion.
I would dismiss it as the early onset of an oxygen deficit messing with the neurons in my brain, but it’s not a one-off event.
And I don’t want to jinx it because for that brief moment my play is other-worldly.
My serve works, my volleys are properly angled and aimed perfectly. My top spin drives become laser beams; the one handed backhand, honed by years on a tennis court, return deeply hit balls to the corner; razor sharp slices on both ground strokes an inch or two off the net.Suddenly footwork doesn’t matter, because my court positioning is perfect, and instead of mid court drops that catch net cords with regularity, drop into the kitchen like big yellow marbles.
This supernatural state doesn’t last long, and soon the court balance shifts away from the net, making me and my partner work hard to find any points we can get.
But it’s a real trip when it happens.
Which makes me wonder if other pickleball players also experience these moments of perfect bliss on the court.
When the chaos lifts and is replaced by a sensation of serenity and invincibility.
Sensation.
The feeling you get when you impact the ball in the sweet spot of the paddle. Starting at your grip and moving up your forearm to shoulder. In the NCCP world of teaching, Sensation is one of the five Technical Fundamentals. One of the easiest to remember categories because there are only three: Hit, Push, and Block.
Sensation is one of my favourites because it makes perfect sense. I can relate to it. And take comfort in knowing even the NCCP subscribes to the notion that pickleball instructors have to sometimes explain the unexplainable. The state of mind, the Zen of pickleball.
I close this week with a reminder to be careful out there. It’s chaos on the court, until, for those those exciting moments of play - when it’s not.