41: LEFTIES! Playing WITH and AGAINST Them!

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Welcome to 4.0 to Tip or strategy. Joined by Mir Chu. our senior pro there in Aspen, Colorado this summer. How are you bud? I'm doing great. It's nice to be back in Aspen after a brief sojourn in South Florida. Happy to be back. I bet you the temperatures are twenty degrees less and much less humid. Yes, the humidity is definitely less.

That being said, it's interesting when it gets warm here, when the temperature is seventy, it feels like eighty in Florida. It's just kinda interesting. But yes, the humidity is definitely much less. It's walking into a wet blanket. Today we are talking about lefties, Mircho. It's really strange, I would say, that in Rec you face lefties somewhat often and in that

three five ish to four two five ish area. Very often those lefties are not stacking, even though we think they should be. But in tournaments, Weirdly, you seem to face lefties a lot. And I think it's because when people figure out the lefty righty combo, it can be a pretty lethal

Pairing. It definitely can if it's done properly. And at the higher levels, you can obviously see that it's done properly. Good example of A nice lefty righty combo these days is CJ Klinger and JW Johnson on the men's side. Jade Kaomoto. who is a excellent lefty female pro with anyone that she plays with. She has a bunch of different partners, including her sister Jackie, but at the highest levels you will see that they will

stack the bulk of the time and they provide some interesting challenges to their opponents. So we're gonna talk about both playing with a lefty and how do you play against a lefty. All right, so Let's really begin this. You are playing with a lefty. So you are either a lefty or you're playing with a lefty. And first things first, expectations is whether we should stack or not stack. And the arguments for stacking are

Pretty big. The penalty for not stacking is that you end up having two backhands in the middle. Typically backhands are not everyone's number one shot. But they can also really put you in a very compromised position, especially if the ball is down by your left foot and you've got to cross over with that paddle. It's really hard to do. And what you've done now is just given them this opportunity to hit over the lowest part of the net.

To then towards your feet, which for both players is one of the hardest shots to field in pickleball. If you're playing against that, it's really easy to ring up point after point. If you ever find yourself in a rec game and you're a lefty, you're playing with a lefty, and you guys are switched, so the lefty's on the left hand side and the righty's on the right hand side, and you keep losing points.

Try to switch back. At the very least on serve. It's really interesting because I really feel that the disadvantage of having two backhands in the middle, and it's not just the backhands, it's just How to read the balls and how to know which player is taking which ball. There are so many deficits to having two backhands in the middle that I feel that the deficits are greater than the advantages of having two forehands in the middle.

Bottom line, if you're deciding whether or not to stack or whether to stack, I recommend stacking as much as possible. You can do a half stack where you are stacking only on serve, so the lefty will be on the right hand side and the righty will be on the left hand side. But I think it's critical that you switch as much as possible when returning.

So you do not have the unstacking situation where the lefty is on the left hand side and the righty is on the right hand side and thus you have the backhands in the middle because of the deficits that are involved. So this is really interesting'cause this came up a lot in this last week or so. I was warming up on court and there was a group of kind of three, five, four-o players playing right in front of me, and they had a lefty-righty combo. And

They started the game, 0-0-2, the lefty served. They got the first point. And then they didn't get another point, Mircha. They were switched and the other team just kept pulverizing it in the middle. And after the game, I said, and I think they got one more serve after that. And I said it I understand why you may not have had the mechanics.

To do the switch on return because there are some mechanics you have to deal with. It's a really a learned practice to unwind the stack when you're receiving serve. But I didn't get it on serve. It's the easiest thing ever. You just stand to the one side of your partner. If you're the righty player and you're serving right side to left side, the your partner just stands.

You're right. And if you're the other way, you're in the normal position. There was no reason on serve not to be stacking. I just think they didn't identify, oh wait, that's why we're losing all these points. The other team just keeps railing it in the middle. And I do think that recognition of what's hurting you is something that really starts coming into your game 425, 4.5. And you start going, oh, wait a second. This is the thing that isn't working for us.

Michael, you absolutely hit the nail on the head. The biggest emphasis that I think you can have in strategy is figuring out. what is hurting you and changing that. So figure out what is hurting you on the other side of the net and don't give your opponents that. And when you are unstacked as a righty lefty and you have the backhands in the middle, you're giving your opponents what they want.

So you really need to have that recognition in order to change that. And that's where stacking comes into play. But you do have to recognize that and Conversely, you also have to recognize when you are playing against the righty lefty that they are unstacked and to keep them unstacked.

Have you played with a lot of lefties, Michael? I'm not great at it, if I'm being honest. I prefer playing with righties because I don't think I've rounded my skill set enough, especially when you're at the net, it's a different instinct to let some balls go that you would typically be hitting and vice versa. Grabbing some balls that you may not. And then also the mechanics of unwinding the stack on return is really something that uh needs to be repped and it's a

good time to say this. I have a new partner for the APP tournament in Newport who we just played together for the first time yesterday and we played very well together. But I said we're gonna have to stack and start getting the rhythm and mechanic And he's never done it before.

So I said, We've just gotta do it over and over again. So it becomes smooth and we don't have to worry about it'cause we're gonna probably end up stacking in this tournament. He didn't have a lot of experience with it. So To say that I have right I haven't played really well with lefties yet, but I have played with them if that may.

It's a skill. So you have to practice it like anything else. There's a lot of communication involved. I've been fortunate enough to play with lefties since the beginning. My first partners for mix was Julie Johnson, who's a lefty. And on the male side it was Dan Gernot, who's a lefty when I first started playing senior pro, I was playing with lefty.

That was all I had. And there were times where we were unstacked and we were new. And so I didn't realize what the disadvantages were, but now I clearly have identified. So let's talk about how important it is. to communicate with your lefty partner if you're a righty and vice versa. You have those two forehands in the middle. That is an advantage because there are times that you can be more offensive than a traditional righty righty.

scenario. You really need to figure out and communicate whose ball It is in the middle on certain shots, especially dividing it up into the different areas of the court, where you have who's taking what dinks, who's taking the transition zone, who is taking the balls from the baseline. Let's go through that. So you're playing with a lefty partner. Your lefty partner is the first server. So what do you talk about when you're about to get a third or a fifth?

I think the first thing to do before even that happens is identifying who the alpha is going to be on the court. Especially in those three scenarios you just said. This is a weird spot where you have to hang your ego on the door a little bit, don't you think? It's one of those things where you go, look, I've everyone thinks they've got the greatest drive and everyone thinks their backhand is just as good as their forehand. It's a very strange thing when people go

How do you want to take your third? And they're like, Oh, my backhand's just as good. I'm like, No, it's not. You think it is? It's totally not. Your forehand's better. In ev every single time. It's been better. But in the lefty righty thing, at least maybe starting at the baseline from what you just said, they've taken the first serve. It's been returned. Who is going to get that third is, I don't know, you tell me in the order of importance. Is it respecting the actual?

Which is the balls coming back to the biggest. Towards the forehand of whatever person, or is it who has the better forehand in that scenario? I think you start with respecting the X, if you will. And what that means is that if the left hand players serving on the right side and they're serving to the opponent right side. and that ball is returned cross court or cross court middle, then that would be the lefties ball.

And then vice versa. The right-handed player is serving from the left side when the balls are turned cross-court or cross-court middle. So that would be the right-hand player. Now you mentioned about the alpha player. The reason that I split it up in the different parts of the court is because people have different skills in different parts of the court. So the alpha might be one player when they're at the baseline because someone's got a bigger four hand drive or a better

forehand drop, for example. And when you're at the kitchen dinking, someone might have a bigger forehand volley or a better backhand volley or vice versa, et cetera. So I think the quote alpha doesn't necessarily have to be one player for all three levels of the court. There's some people that are better resetters.

The transition zone is a little bit different because then you really need to respect the X a little bit more because the ball is often coming very quickly because your opponents are attacking you in that scenario. So when you're dropping cross court, you wanna follow the ball. So the simplest way to think about it is

Just follow the ball and don't turn your hips or shoulders straight ahead towards the net. If you are hitting the ball towards your right, you want to slightly angle your shoulders and your hips and just follow the ball that way. That way you can track it a little bit better and you can decide on who's taking the balls a little bit easier that way. But I think it's really important to communicate the alpha, the different zones of the court rather than just

an overall alpha player. Yeah, I think that makes tons of sense. I want to clarify something with the serve and return respecting the X part. So if it's zero zero two, the lefty serves first. If the other team returns to the righty, so the person playing on the left side across Them. Are we suggesting this is where the X versus better forehand could come in? If I've got a pretty open look on that ball, if I'm on the left.

Are we suggesting that it's better if I take that shot versus the lefty step in in front of me and take that drive? Assuming that our drives are somewhat equal. All things being equal, I would suggest that the righty who's on the left side take that ball and ideally drive it straight ahead. And that way the lefty can put pressure in the middle. That being said, there are other factors involved like who's got a bigger drive, who's got a better drop, who is more mobile.

These are all things you wanna consider. The biggest thing is to communicate and realize why you're doing what. Meaning that sometimes it helps, at least it helps for me, like m mentally or at least how approaching who's taking what ball. It helps me to understand why that's the case.

An example might be returns. Like if you're returning to one player because even though they might be the better player, like you're returning there because you want to keep that person back from attacking then or charging because they have a Long wingspan or they're really fast. So It helps me to understand why. So if I'm taking a ball and I'm taking the third or the fifth, like it helps me to understand why. So

That's really important, I feel, to communicate with your partner. And if they're a little bit faster than you, if they have a bigger forehand, just say, hey, And perhaps maybe you have a more consistent drive or drop to say, Hey, I'm gonna take the third if it goes to this spot and you go crash, especially if it's a short return. So I really find it helpful for myself.

I don't know how you feel about this, but about understanding why each player has a certain role. Yeah, for sure. And you mentioned something at the beginning of this, which is I don't know that there's a greater importance on anything. Other than communication in this case, especially if you're new partners, because we'll talk a little bit about what it's like to face brand new. Lefty righty partners.

Especially in the transition zone. We've talked baseline, we will talk net in a second, but in the transition zone it's pretty common for the other team against a lefty, righty team, to try to crank it in the middle as much as they can. Certainly at the beginning, we're relying on that team not having great communication and those guys not knowing which forehand

To take, right? So that's something that has to be really clearly defined. In rec games, it's very often not defined because they just don't have the rep. In tournaments, especially if they're a partnership that's been playing for a while, those things are defined and they are much better.

at handling those middle balls that could be really communication errors otherwise, don't you think? I would agree with you. A dynamic still occurs and quite commonly. So the biggest advice I have is that the more you play with lefties, the more communication you have and the more you communicate in between points and ideally in between games, especially if you have a partner, about who's going to take which ball in general, and the more practice you have,

more defined the rules become. So in a standard right hand player, right hand player, if I'm playing the right side. I've been making a lot of hay lately, and don't tell my opponents this, but we talked about this at our camp. Is there's not a lot of reason to not sit on a backhand counter.

If you're on the right hand side, unless they really start picking on your right shoulder and they've really recognized that you can be hurt there and you're not sliding over, whatever, it's really easy to stay in this backhand shield and counter pretty much everything that comes at you.

It's great. It makes you feel like you're Colin Johns or whatever over there. The really cool thing about playing with a lefty is you can do the same thing now on the left hand side, and they can do it on the right. Because now you have somebody protecting that shoulder. So if I'm on the left and the ball's right in front of me, I can sit backhand because I know that my lefty partner is covering my right shoulder. Does that make sense? He's covering the middle.

And then I can do the same thing to him. I can just sit on that forehand. Makes it really difficult for the other team to speed up at body without a great response from us. Yeah, exactly. And one thing that you also want to keep in mind is that in that scenario, the person that's covering the middle really needs to scoot over and cover the middle.

So if you're a lefty and you're on the right side and your partner is getting the ball, you have to shift your shoulders a little bit that way towards basically the right side of your opponent's court. start and scoot a little bit towards the middle because if the ball is going to your right shoulder, it's fast, it's going out.

You want to be there to cover the chicken wing style. And the closer you are, the easier it is. Like I know when I'm playing with Julie Johnson, I know if the ball's directly in front of her, she is sitting backhand shield and I'm covering the middle. So anything to her left.

I'm covering. I tell her, I said, don't even worry about your forehand. And that's an excellent point that you've raised, but you have to shift over. Are you shifting as a team, depending on where that ball is? So if it's in front of me, Julie's now covering the middle with her forehand and you're in backhand shield. Now it's back over in front of her. Now you're covering the forehand and she's in that backhand.

Is it pretty much back and forth like that to make sure that you guys are covered for a speed up? It is a little bit, but it but you also have to shift over in shift over individually, especially if your partner is getting multiple balls. So for example, if Julie is getting attacked from straight ahead, the guy hits a bunch of two or three balls attacks. Like I'm shifting more and more middle to help cover that.

fast middle ball because when things go fast they generally funnel in the middle and if Fast going to my left side. as a right hand player, I don't have to worry about it as much because it's most likely going out. I can't tell you how often people will get beaten down the middle. Again, when the ball starts going quickly, I often see players

that will not shift to cover that gap. They're just waiting to see what happens and they get beaten down the middle and they don't realize they they almost never get beaten to the outside because those balls are going out.

Yeah, for sure. This literally happened last night with my partner and we did great. I s I said we talk about on the show a lot, where in the middle of a firefight, the ball ends up going towards the middle, and we were doing a really good job of closing that gap. He's got a lovely backhand counter and I've got a pretty quick forehand. So we did a very nice job when he was on the right, I was on the left.

We're still trying to figure it out. So we've been playing straight up a little bit back and forth, but also the let's stack on you on the right side, me on the right side, blah, blah, blah. All relevant to what we're talking about today. And the dynamic of That particular thing, which you mentioned a million shows ago, which is when things get heated, the ball ends up funneling to the middle, I would say is true like ninety-nine percent of the time.

Yeah, and the ball is soft, so when you're dinking, you can really consider respecting the X a little bit more in the righty lefty scenario. So if the ball is going cross court. and it's cross court middle from the right side, then the lefty would be taking that forehand and then vice versa on the other side.

And then if the ball is floating a little bit higher, the advantage of having a righty-lefty combo. So if I'm on the left and I'm a righty and I'm dinking cross-court, if there is a ball in that

left handed p players attackable airspace. So if for example, if Julie has a forehand that she can take and the ball is coming cross court towards me from the left side player If she can take that forehand and attack it, it's really a very lethal weapon because she can do a bunch of things with If she attacks the left side player with her forehand and kind of targets that midsection, it's very difficult.

to counter that because that person has just dinked and they've just gotten the ball over the net so they're not quite as prepared and you basically have a great angle as a lefty to take that ball right back into them. So it's that inside in if you will. And then the inside out shot is also very tricky if

you are not hitting it cross court middle. So if you're a lefty and you have an attackable ball that's floated kind of in the middle and you take that inside out cross body at the torso of the right side player. it's also very difficult to defend as an opponent. And one person that really did that amazingly was Dan Granat. He would take a ball out of the air and hit that inside out forehand volley and he would get people every single time.

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Mircha, we've talked about playing with a lefty. Let's talk about playing against a lefty. So just take everything we just said and do the opposite. No. There are things to recognize, as we've mentioned a few times on the show. For instance, if for whatever reason they don't unstack, so they've got the lefty on the left. And the righty on the right. Or if they're a brand new partnership and they haven't figured out the communication and who's the alpha.

So those are the first two things off the top of my head that we can take real advantage of right out of the gate. Yeah, first of all, you have to recognize you're playing against the lefty and a righty. It's incredible how often I see players Five points a game, dude. I give'em five points a game by speeding up to the middle or something. And just eat it. Because I go, Oh God, he's a lefty. I forgot it again. Exactly. Or or you get the lob in the middle and

I hear it's eight all. He's a lefty. I was like, yeah. I I noticed that when they went out to warm up that it was a lefty righty combo. Yes, number one, you have to recognize that you're playing against lefty righty combo. Number two, you have to recognize that they are stacking or unstacking. And if they are not stacking, then you have to recognize that, especially right before the point, it's really helpful to tell your partner if they have not realized that, hey, they're unstacked.

And I'll just say middle and I might say Me too. I go middle. I just keep hammering that. Exactly. And I will say it in the middle of the point. Pardon the pond. I will literally I'll hit a drop and I'll say middle. Yeah. And and I'll be in the mid court and I'll say middle, particularly if my partner has been continuously dinking to the outside, even though

they have a righty lefty unstacked where you're wanna target the middle. But if they are stacked appropriately when you're up at the kitchen, most often people have

slightly weaker bank hands that they do have forehands and one of the advantage that we discussed of having the lefty righty combos they have two forehands in the middle. A pretty simple strategy to start off with is when you're dinking, you dink to the outside. And if they're unstacked, Then you dink to the middle and you have to recognize both of those scenarios and that is really a good place to start.

My first PPA tournament, Mircha, was at Newport. It was I don't know, whatever it was, four years ago or something. We faced in the finals. A lefty lefty combo. And can you imagine having to just flip your brain over after playing pretty much righties 99% of the time your life that every shot you hit was going the wrong way? Like you just kept speeding up to the wrong wing and they were just pulverizing us. So we eventually got used to it, but did not win. We were not victorious in that that

It takes time and in that scenario you have to go back to the basics and figure out the two things that we emphasize with the strategy. Number one, what's hurting you? So who's the better player? And of the better player, what's the better shot? Is it a

forehand flick that every time that they get a ball to the forehand they crush it or a really big forehand volley or a forehand drive, or is it a backhand flick or shield or whatever it might be? So you really have to go the basics and then the other thing is what's the safe spot or what is the weak wing on the other side. Who's the weaker player and what's the weaker wing of the weaker player? And you try to stick to that as much as possible.

And don't forget, like we talked about earlier in the show, that it might be different. There's some people you want it return to be at the baseline because they're forehand might be weaker at the baseline, they m make more airs, yet when they're up at the kitchen, it's their backhand that's the stronger side, or maybe it's their backhand that's the weaker side. So you really have to recognize

What level of the court they're at and which wing is stronger or weaker. I was just gonna say I play against a guy pretty regularly. He's a Our standard lefty dudes He has such an advantage being a lefty'cause he mostly plays against righty. So he has all that strategy inherent and he's so used to people going outside on him.

To go to his backhand, because there's obviously his forehand's in the middle. He's on the right hand side. And he's so used to that it turns out that his forehand is his weaker shot. We end up strategizing. And I'm like, if you chicken wing him on his forehand side. Or just aim towards his left foot. It ends up being better because he's so good at resetting the ball. He's so used to everybody going to that outside that he's got that shot completely down.

So it ends up his forehand is a bit of his weaker wing. Yeah, and that's great recognition. And that's really what we're looking at. There are players that are better at resetting with their backhands. in the transition zone because they often get targeted in the backhands. So that's what they're used to. And when you go to the forehands, it's a little bit more difficult. One of the best spots

to attack when you're speeding up, either off the bounce or in the air, when you're attacking your opponents is paddle side body. So you're trying to chicken wing them. One of the things that happens is that when you're directly across from the lefty, it's a little bit

odd because you're you're used to the targeting the other side because the person's a righty, but if you recognize that, you can really improve your success at attacking by attacking the left side body of a left So keep that in mind. One of the things that I've noticed that is really effective when I'm playing the right side and I have a

speed up with my backhand in the air. If I go inside out, I'm basically chicken winging the left handed player because I'm going into their body from the right side. So I'm going cross court towards their body. And it's hard for them to have a backhand or forehand shield'cause I'm going right into their body. So that's one of the ways that you can attack. I also really like in that scenario, let's say you're in a

cross-court dinking battle. I love just looping a ball down the line, whether I'm on the forehand or the backhand. Cause you've basically then you're lobbing over each of the player's backhand side. And I don't even know how to describe it on the pod, but there's a move where as the left-hand player, you're in this backhand slice dink rally, right? Going cross court, hitting these backhand slices. There's a move where you can

step back, ball's coming in at me. I can step back and flip my paddle over and end up hitting a a looping almost forehand where the paddle's kind of inside out over the right hand shoulder of the left hand player. It really works well against lefties. I don't know what it's called, but it's like this very fancy, funky paddle move. But if you can work on just a looping lob down the line against lefties.

Whatever player you want, it ends up working really well. Yeah, that's a really good point. While we're on the lobs, let's go back to the unstacked version that we talked about. So we talked about going middle, and it's not just dink. It's not just drive. It's also lobs. So if your opponents are righty lefty and they're unstacked with those backhands in the middle, you can really test them in a lot of different ways.

You can dink and you can dink to either players inside foot. You can speed up down the middle. That's often very confusing for your opponents to cover when they're unstacked. And lastly, you have license to lob because it's over both their backhands. So those are all the different ways that you can attack your opponents if they're unstacked.

But to summarize, playing with You have to focus on communication. You have to establish who's going to be the alpha in which part of the court, the baseline, the transition zone, and the net. And you should always be stacking because being unstacked. is a huge disadvantage when someone recognizes.

Playing against lefties. You've got to first recognize you got a lefty on the other side of the court. You've got to recognize if they are stacked and unstacked and take advantage of it if they're not. You've got to really watch the middle because you've got two. Lethal forehands in the middle, typically on the outside, whether you're dinking or speeding up or trying to lob over their shoulder, those are places that you can target pretty easily.

Did does that summarize most of it? You did a great job doing that. One thing I do wanna add is that when you are serving, do not forget that you can influence the stacking and unstacking situation. One of my favorite serves when I am serving from the left side and I'm serving to the left-handed player who is unstacked. He or she is on the left side, I will hit a short inside out slice serve, short, soft.

Yeah, I love that. It's like you're trying to curl the ball off the court, basically, and you're forcing them to go really wide outside the court just to field it. Yeah. So that will basically bring them up. And if they want to switch or unstack, it's very cumbersome because they basically have to take a forty-five degree angle. They have to go come up, get that return, then go straight across.

and they might clank or basically bump into each other almost. That's one way that you can influence the stacking and unstacking situation. And when you are serving from the right side. So when I'm serving from the right side, I think of that little top spin short cross court serve that does the same thing. So think about how you're serving because you can get a lot of free points.

So I want people to try that when they're playing rec games and practicing. Try those short angle serves on either side, especially when they're on stack. and see what happens. You'll be surprised what advantages you're gonna get. Alright guys, you've now just listened to another episode of 4.0 to Pro. Get out there, do some stacking. And this is, by the way, even if you have a regular doubles partner, if you guys have aspirations for playing in tournaments, it's worth starting to get reps.

in stacking and unstacking. Mircha, as always, thank you for your time. Go enjoy some pickleball courts. That's exactly what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna jump out there and play some pickleball here in Aspen, enjoy the views of the mountains, and have some fun out here. 4.0 to Pro. Find us on Instagram at four. But don't forget to have a lot of fun.