My First Pickleball Experience - Guest Article!

We're thrilled to announce that we have a guest writer for this article...

Control the 'T' Sports team member Alex Robertson recently tried out pickleball for the first time and was keen to write about his experience out on the court (spoiler alert, he loved it), let's dive in:

Allow me to introduce myself, I'm Alex Robertson and I work for Control the 'T' Sports! I'm a squash player through and through but I also love running and trying out as many other sports as possible.

I'm based in the United Kingdom, so unfortunately pickleball isn't much of a thing over here, however, having worked for Control the 'T' Sports for so long, I've been constantly learning more and more about pickleball and I've been hoping to try out the sport for some time now.

I was recently lucky enough to visit Canada to do some travelling and the first stop of my trip was Waterloo to see Jeff Warren and the team at the Control the 'T' Sports store (located in Greystone Racquet Club).

Jeff (founder of Control the 'T' Sports) knew I'd been wanting to play pickleball for some time and he was kind enough to set up a game of pickleball doubles with myself, him, my partner Tara, and Trevor Bechtel (another team member).

Jeff plays pickleball somewhat regularly so he's very familiar with how the game is played, which proved to be very helpful as he explained the rules to us clearly and concisely before we played.

Not only was this my first time playing pickleball, but it was also Tara and Trevor's first time too, so it was truly helpful to have Jeff show us all the ropes and explain the rules to us

If you're interested in trying out pickleball for the first time, I'd recommend trying to get on court with someone who already knows the game (just to speed up that learning curve a little).

Of course, I'm a regular reader of Sara McInnes' articles as she usually writes the Control the Kitchen Newsletter, and I'm aware that one of the reasons pickleball has taken off the way it has is because the sport is easy to pick up and get the hang of fast.

It was awesome to experience this firsthand and confirm the fact that anyone really can pick up a paddle and start playing!

All four of us are very different when it comes to our sporting backgrounds and standards, so initially, I was a little concerned that rallies may not flow particularly well, but I was gladly proven wrong.

As I mentioned, I'm a squash player, Trevor is a tennis player and coach, Tara is a runner and plays a bit of squash with me, and Jeff plays squash, tennis, and pickleball (amongst other things)!

We started with a good warm-up which was ideal for getting used to how the pickleball ball bounces and how the paddles played. 

Since the Control the 'T' Store has demos of many paddles, we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to use a paddle of our choice and also to try out all of the different paddle shapes, textures, and materials to see what we liked best.

Anyways, after this warm-up, we dived straight into matches, regularly switching partners and sides to get a real feel for the game.

The games and rallies flowed really well (although I think Jeff was definitely taking it a little easy on us) and we ended up playing 'one more game' a good few times before finally hanging up the paddles.

Overall, as cheesy as it may sound, 'fun' and 'addictive' are definitely the two words I'd use to describe my first experience of pickleball. It's also very satisfying to hit the ball in the sweet spot and there's no better feeling than having a quick-fire volleying battle up close to the net.

Pickleball is great because it doesn't take long to get the hang of things on the surface level, and then you can dive deeper and deeper into the game and how it's played after that.

The range of tactics and shots that you need to consider during rallies is extensive, to say the least. You can experiment with angles, spins, paces, and positions to find out what works and what doesn't, the mental aspect of the sport really is important.

Now, I wasn't at all reluctant to play and I knew that I would enjoy trying out pickleball, but I did have a few minor concerns before I stepped on court (concerns that may be shared by others who haven't tried out the sport yet).

First off, and I know this may anger some pickleballers, but before playing the sport for myself, one of my main concerns about playing the sport was that it might not be very physically taxing to play doubles pickleball.

You'll all be thrilled to know I was proven very wrong and we were all drenched with sweat when we finally came off the court!

Secondly, I originally thought that the rules seemed quite complex and I was worried that I'd struggle to remember them during match play, but I was also wrong about this! And, any time one of us made a minor error, Jeff let us know so we learned for the next time (another reason to play with someone who knows the game).

The final concern of mine before playing, and this is something that I'd asked Jeff about a few times, was that I didn't understand how players knew whether or not their feet were over the kitchen line if they had their eye on the ball during rallies.

I believe Jeff told me that 'you just kind of know', which I wasn't too convinced by. But, it turned out to be true, perhaps I was subconsciously using my peripheral vision in some way, but I seemed to be pretty aware of how close I was to the kitchen during rallies, which is great.

So, after all of my concerns were either addressed or proven wrong, I was able to thoroughly enjoy my first pickleball experience.

Usually, the newsletters written by Sara provide great tips and advice so you (the reader) can hopefully boost your game. However, having only played the sport once, I'm in no position to give out coaching tips to anyone, and for that, I apologise!

I can only hope that this newsletter gave you some positive feelings and reaffirmed your view that pickleball really is an awesome sport.

Plus, if you're reading this and haven't played pickleball before but you're considering trying it out, I would urge you to do so, you really won't regret it!

This article was taken from our 'Control the Kitchen' Newsletter, if you're interested in receiving more content like this, please feel free to sign up using the subscribe section located at the bottom left of this page (or underneath the article if you're on mobile), thanks!