58: Right Side Play (Revisited)

Welcome to four point. Focuses on a single shot. In Long Beach, California.

Happy holidays, bud. How are ya? Hey, happy holidays, Merry Christmas, happy holidays. Ho ho ho. All the things. It's uh one of the best times of the year, especially being here in South Florida. Although I am going up to DC tomorrow to enjoy a little chilly weather. It's in the 40s. and low fifties, so I'm gonna have to find some long johns or some equivalent thereof scarily. It'll be better up there anyway. Yeah. I do feel like we miss out a little bit when it's in this warm weather.

On the vibe. And like I think New York City in November and December is magical. So today, Mircha, we're gonna talk about, we're gonna revisit.

Right side play. We did a show, episode thirty-six, and I think it was like July, talking all about the right side. And I think we followed it up with left side.

If you haven't listened to those episodes yet, go back and listen to that. And then we're gonna kind of build on that a bit today and talk about some specific scenarios where you might choose to play right side or left side. Or you might be playing straight up and your game might emerge with Like, oh, my forehand's feeling pretty spicy today or my backhand counter, so

Let me try to play over here a little bit today. Whatever it is. We're gonna talk about different scenarios and and different pairings, including Colin Johns versus Gabe Tardio, Ben Ben John's last couple partners, and how they differ. So I think that is a very solid type show. And uh yeah, why don't we start a little bit with the spacing? I think there's something to taking your ego away and allowing that left side player more space to do what they need to do.

So let's not think about that the middle line that splits the court. as our fifty fifty spot, but rather it's fine for serve, but after that, let's let the person who's the the dominant player has the the better strategy take over the court and then you give them space and defer You know this kind of brings to mind the the basic tenets.

of what we've been talking about as the fundamentals of the pickleball strategy and game in general, which are the footwork and communication with your partner. And the reason that I bring that up is because you have to recognize you and your partner's skill set during not just the tournament scenario but rec games as well. So if you have a left side player that is mobile and knows how to

play the left side, meaning that they know that those balls in the middle are generally theirs. And we're talking about a right hander with an Fellow right-hander that really allows you, if you're playing the right side, to let those balls in the middle go more than you would if.

your partner who is playing the left side on that particular point or that particular game, if they're not as mobile and they're just not taking that middle ball, then you have to take up a little bit more space. That's where it's the it's the dance that you have to figure out with your partner how much space is your partner. And that's usually the left side player that dictates that how much space they're going to take.

I played a rec game, shout out to Victor at Los Cab, and as we were warming up, I could tell he had a really wicked backhand counter. It was just great and it was powerful. snap and he was really executing it well. So our first game He was like, you know, what side do you want? I was like, why don't you take right side?'Cause your backhand counter's awesome. And as it turned out, my drive got humming. So my I had a forehand drive. So

We had a really nice complimentary middle game going. And I think one of the biggest things we can continue to reiterate is that if you could just hang your ego at the door when it comes to playing pickleball. if you don't need to take every ball and you can let that person, like in in your case, if you and I play, I'm gonna put you on the left to dictate that strategy.

And I'm gonna be fine with it. I'm not gonna worry at all about it because it's gonna be the better pairing w with a higher percentage of winning points and then winning games. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean for me, I just want my partner and myself to maximize our skills and minimize our weaknesses to the best of our ability. And for example when I've been playing men's senior pro over the past

year and a half primarily with Jose Terisi. He's a very creative player. He's very comfortable on the left. I'm comfortable on the right. I have zero problem with him taking the bulk of of the balls. Especially in the middle, when I know that I can do my job and he does his job to allow me to do mine and vice versa. That's the communication that you need to develop.

Now if even if you don't have a regular partner, it's just so helpful just to jump on the court and say, Hey, which side do you like to play? Or are you more comfortable playing? Most people say I'm fine on both sides. And as you go on to play, you can clearly see that there are some skills that are more adept to playing one side or the other. And you can say, hey, let's try half stacking or let's try switching for

you know, a few points or whatever if the game isn't going well. And if you communicate that, then you can really build something. And to kind of piggyback on that, like one of the things you mentioned, so if someone has a really good backhand counter

And again, we're primarily talking about right handed players that are that are partners. If someone has a really good backhand counter and maybe they don't move as well to their their right side, that's a great player to put on the right side because

Yeah. A lot of times the right side player gets attacked and the left side player creates a little bit more. Now, if someone has a really good speed of off the bounce. particularly from the middle, obviously they might gravitate a little bit more to the left side. But you know, I feel that one of my strengths is is

the speed up off the bounce with my forehand. So I love playing the right side because once I get a ball that bounces, that I'm comfortable dinking or hitting an aggressive dink or speeding up. It's generally going to be either an aggressive dink or a speed up. And when I'm playing with Jose, Jose knows that. he's aware that I'm speeding up to certain spots to help him get the ball in the middle. You're trying to create that triangle or V like we talked about. So if I get

a fluffy ball, so an easy, controllable, dead dink that I can speed up. I'm going to pick certain spots that he knows it's typically straight ahead. Now it can be straight ahead a little bit to the right hip. It might be midsection. It might be their backhands stretching them out, but he knows that those are generally the spots that I'm gonna try to hit and that helps him get ready for the next one. I just heard a tip recently that I hadn't heard before, but it makes so much sense.

It might have been from Tanner, our fellow uh carbon guy, Tanner Tomasi. He's talking about when you get that dead dink. So let's say you're on the right hand side, you get a dead dink, and very often we recommend you speed up to the person who's right in front of you. That it's the shortest distance, they have the least time to react.

et cetera, et cetera. But one thing I really thought was cool, and I don't know why I never thought of it before, but it was a really cool idea, is that the first time you get that ball, wind up like you're about to speed up at them and fake it. But don't actually speed it up. And the reason why is because they will show you their counter.

They will show you if they like to sit in backhand counter or slide to one direction or not. That's their comfortable counter. And then the next time you can speed up to the the opposite side that they're going to be countering. You're basically making them show their hands. It's like when in football when that

person goes in motion and it shows whether it's gonna be man to man or zone. It gives the quarterback some idea of what's going on. So I really like this idea of kind of faking that initial dink to see what kind of uh counter or defense they're gonna put.

Yeah, that's a really nice tip. Alternatively, you know, you try speeding up to a spot that you think is gonna work and if that doesn't work then the next time you can try that exact thing or the off speed. I like to mix it up as much as possible and with with pro level speed ups or aggressive shots, as we talked about before

Attacks can be aggressive dinks, it can be lobs, it can be the traditional speed up or full send. So you will see that the pro-level attacks vary both the spot that they're attacking, the pace the spin, the height of the ball, all those things.

And it's dictated by what your opponent's strengths and weaknesses are. So we talked about your own strengths and weaknesses. What are our opponents' strengths and weaknesses? And usually you can figure those out in the first A lot of times I can generally figure it out from watching other players play in the warm up, but if you can't after four or five points, you can really

get a good feel about which player is better, which player prefers their forehand off the bounce or their backhand in the air or vice versa. And the reason I bring this up is because when you're playing the right side and let's say that you're getting targeted, my left side partner is getting attacked a lot. Well, if they're getting attacked a lot, it's probably because

What I'm doing is I'm hitting the ball to the preferred side of my opponents. If I'm trying to dink just cross court, I'm not usually trying to dink cross court to the right side players. dominant shot which is usually their forehand.

for the vast majority of players. Yeah. And it's so often that you'll see especially in rec games, that the right side player, when they get a ball, they just go cross court to the right side player's forehand. And then their partner gets sped up on, they lose the point. And they're looking at their left side partner like, Hey, you know, why do you counter that? Hey, hey, what happened? Yeah, what's going on? Like, you know, it's just incredible how much pace of play in the shot selection just

can be changed by just where you're hitting the ball. And we've gone over this a ton, but like The ideal target when you're on the right side, where you're gonna dink is usually to the backhand of the right side player on the other side. So you're digging over kind of that middle stripe, trying to get it down to their left foot to make it bounce to put them in an awkward like inside out backhand.

dink situation or if they really try to go straight, it's a really tough dink to go from the right side straight ahead with your backhand off a ball that's coming from the opposing right side player. One thing I will say is that as you get better at pickleball, when you hit that ball, you'll know Typically a better player will realize like they'll hit a ball that wasn't good and they set their partner up.

for a a shot. The very often there's knowledge, like you'll know it as soon as it comes off your paddle. Like, oops, that's not what I meant to do. Or that's not where I meant that to go because you just got your partner pounded by that. So that is something that will happen up the line. The challenge is when they don't know that they're doing it and you gotta go, hey, you gotta stop hitting that one shot. I've gotten, you know, four welts from from them because you keep giving them this ball.

The other thing I think that happens is that the people you play against typically they'll have a a few arrows in their quiver in terms of if you decide to go right hip versus left hip versus, you know, whatever. Most people don't play people that are that good. You know what I mean by that? I mean that like.

Whatever their counter is is probably what their counter is. Yes. They might have a good straight ahead backhand body counter, but they might not have ever worked on like Now they have to slide to their left and hit a forehand counter because you're chicken winging them four times in a row.

That might be something that they've never drilled before. So you can continue to kind of make hay on that until kingdom comes. So for most of us that are listening to this, you're gonna be facing generally a single shot that you have to.

Figure out and target. You said you played when you're in Aspen, played with Colin Johns a lot. This is Ben Johns' brother, very well known for his. steady play. He's very defensive. He's not a very offensive player at all. But we've seen clip after clip after clip of him being a brick wall and the ball comes back so measured and unattackable Pretty much from everywhere on the court. Now you contrast that with his new partner, Gabe Tardio, who's super young. Супер офенсив анат сам рай сай.

Can you talk a bit about the contrast of those two players and if more of a Gabe Tardio thing is is where you see the the pickleball game evolving to? Ikea presenter you the forendering. Thanks for that. Welkom till Ikea. Well, Gabe is obviously much more present now because of his partnership with Ben. I was just fortunate enough to see him develop over the course.

of time from when he started out and started playing with us and and the Johnsons. And it's just remarkable to see him grow and I told him so many times that just the sky's the limit. It just depends on his his work ethic and and what he puts into it. But I was fortunate enough to play a bunch with with Colin the summer. He was only there for I think four or five days, but got a chance to play a bunch with him during that time and I

you know, seen him a million times before from when I was coaching and uh you know just being out on the tour, but I didn't really never really played with him. What's interesting about their different game styles is they both just maximize their skill sets. They fold that into Ben's skill set. because he's obviously kind of the prototypical dominant

left side player where he likes to move a lot. He likes to take a lot of balls in the middle. And Colin really worked on his defense, his consistency, and his job was to keep the ball in play and keep it unattackable to allow Ben to create the patterns that work well for them. He would get a little bit out of Ben's way and Ben would take those balls a lot of times right in front of him, almost didn't take any balls to his left hardly at all. Ben wanted those balls.

And there were times where Ben actually didn't want him to speed up like hardly at all. You would see games where he might speed up almost nothing if one or two balls, but he typically did not speed up a ton. Now, there were times when he needed to be more aggressive and he would and he's very capable of it. Like when we played, he played left side a bunch and he's very capable of

having that aggressive style, but in his partnership with Ben, that's not what he had. But what he would do is he would dink these unattackable dinks a lot of time towards the middle. They liked dinking the middle very much'cause that would keep the ball in front of both of them. and it would not allow the angles to be created. Both of them could see the ball really well. Contrast that with Gabe, and Gabe is Taller, has longer arms, has more reach.

a different type of ball. He hits a lot more spin. He loves to take that backhand flick out of the air. The positioning is a little bit different because Gabe likes to hog that middle ball. And if you float a ball to Gabe in the middle with that backhand, he'll take that flick and you know he'll make you eat it. He also likes to be able to do that. speed up quite a bit.

He gets a lot of spin on both sides, both his backhand and his forehand, just like Hayden Patrickon does. They both hit a lot of spin. Very aggressive spinny dinks. Their skill sets

Colin versus Gabe are very different and that allows them to set Ben up in different ways. I do want to say one thing about positioning and spacing. When you are the right side player, you don't necessarily have to get out of the way of the left side player with those balls in the middle. Scoot out of the way.

someone's gonna hit you if the ball if they're taking a big forehand volley and they're gonna hit you, obviously you don't want to be in the way. But that being said, one of the mistakes that I see a lot of time in mixed doubles, particularly the female who plays the traditional right side in in mixed doubles. will scoot over so much that the guy has to cover ninety percent of the court when the opponents have a relatively easy ball. If the ball is on your side, yes.

You can scoot over and and let your dominant left side player take those balls, but you don't have to necessarily get out of the way. I mean, we've all seen that in pretty much every Riley Newman clip that he's like all the way over to the right side. Are you suggesting that They should be a little more balanced in that or I'm not exactly sure what you're saying. So what I'm saying is you let's let's give you a scenario, okay?

You're playing right side. I'm playing left side. I dink cross court. That player hits a dink. In the middle, like sort of towards your backhand, but it's actually coming towards me. I don't need you to get out of the way. I just need you not to hit that ball because.

Right. Unless you're hitting something offensive. If it's high, yeah. If it's at like your chest level and you can crush it back in, then by all means go ahead. But if the ball is going below the net and you're gonna take that defensive dink, We've talked about this scenario a lot.

But I'm saying you don't have to scoot out of the way. You just have to let the ball go. Do you know what I mean? I shift over just to let you know that there's room. But that's not the that's not the dink I'm talking about. I'm talking about the one that's coming from The other right side player that's going towards my left foot, that's the one I tend to move out of the way and let you take that forehand.

instead of me sort of stabbing at it with a low backhand to get that ding. Yes. I wanna move out of the way and allow you to to go at that point anywhere you want.'Cause you can go middle, you can go back to the left, you can go to the right. You've got a lot more options than I do. I want you to know that I'm deferring and giving that space. Yes, and I would prefer you defer by stepping back rather by s than by stepping to your right.

Because if you step all the way to the right, that increases the amount of cord I have to cover. Whereas if you step back and I dink Straight ahead in front of you, you can go right back and fill that hole. That might be the tip of the episode, dude. Right there, which I've not heard, but it makes tons of sense. So uh you're the person right in front of you, you're playing left. I'm I'm on the right.

person right in front of you, so the other right side player has now dinked to my left foot, which is a very difficult ball for me to get. I you know, if I try to field it, even though it's coming towards me, my Safest spot's gonna be right in the middle, but if I have to short hop it, it may be an attackable ball right in the middle. It might be a very challenging ball for me to get.

What I've been doing is shifting to the right and allowing that player to do whatever they want with it. But now shifting straight back does a couple of things. Number one, it opens up the space for you to do whatever you want to do. If you shouldn't hit the ball you want, meaning if they attack, especially attack body, I've got a little bit more time to counter that.

which is great. And maybe it leaves my feet a little exposed, but I think it's probably worth it because if it goes down on the other side, I can just step right back up to my kitchen line spot again. without having to shift left and then you don't have to cover all of that vacant space that I've left because I moved to the right. I think it's a really good tip. Yeah. And that that helps a lot because

like right in front of you, but it's to the left, like your backhand. I can take that dink and I can kind of speed it up straight ahead of you actually. And the ball either comes back to you or it goes back to my backhand. That's typically where it goes. I just literally had that scenario yesterday and I actually apologized to I was on the left side. And I fired a ball that they countered really fast at my partner, but he was there and ready for it and

He put it right away and I was sort of I was like, Oh dude, sorry about that. He goes, Oh no, no, keep doing it. I'm ready. I'm ready for it. That's one of those situations where he knows generally where they're going to go. He's ready. So he's like, No, no, you

feel free to fire away because I'm waiting for that ball. So we might call it a bait ball. I think at a higher, higher level, you wouldn't maybe want to hit that ball, but because he's very used to the people that we were playing across from He didn't have any problem with me uh putting it up a little bit. So he's like, no, go ahead, speed it up. We're we'll I think we'll win the point.

And he did. So he was really, really on it. Another spacing and scenario tip that I think is really important is that if they shift over to take a soft, fluffy, controllable ding. They run around their backhand a little bit and take a forehand. There's some space in between you two. What you want to do is shift towards the middle and get your backhand ready. When they speed up. straight ahead, often that ball is going to go right to your backhand if you've shifted and are covering the middle.

So if I see Jose run around his backhand and he's attacking straight ahead, I'm shifting right to the middle. So my foot is either on the middle line or even slightly over, and I have my backhand ready to cover, so I'm covering the space. And if he hits it hard straight in front of him, that ball is often funneled right to my backhand. And if the player gets really late to the ball and is

hitting the ball hard or countering the ball to my right, the ball's gonna go out. Because he's going inside out. I really like this. I'm gonna reiterate this because I wanna make sure I have it right in my own brain. You're on the left. You've been swung with a a somewhat wide dink, but it's not

it's slicey and low, you've got enough time to get behind it. So now you're actually fully behind the ball instead of having to reach out across your body and take that backhand dink. So now you have options. You can go back to what you might consider that underhand basketball throw or, you know, through the legs bowling and just dink it straight ahead again, which is gonna go to the other left side player. Or you can come around it and Flick it with your forehand, like a wristy little forehand.

to that guy right in front of you. So you have options now, and probably you would have just dinked cross court a number of times at this point. So now we've lulled them into some sense of complacency where they're maybe not expecting a speed up. But because I know you're you and you sometimes speed up from there as the right side player, I need to now shift over it every time you do that.

and be ready for a backhand counter because you may very well fire it right at that person across from you. And if they respond, how we we put out a few episodes ago with this triangle idea. That you're firing it at them, they're gonna go probably cross court right through the middle, and now you're gonna be ready as that right side player with your backhand counter. Did I get that right? Absolutely. Exactly what I'm talking about right there.

Yeah, that's cool. I think that's a very very cool uh scenario to play out. One thing I wanted to say before we wrap this is that If you do end up on court with somebody that has a really great backhand counter and you guys just decide, or maybe you're feeling like I want to play right side today, you don't have to do a full stat. when you do that. Just just do it on serve. Just half stack.

For that right side. And that's fine. If you do find that, like, man, when I play the right when I'm on the serve, we win more points. Then you might consider, all right, let's think about full stacking here, because clearly, strategically, this is working out better for us. But if you end up being in that situation where and this has happened to us a number of times, where it's like you maybe you're opposite, so maybe you're on the left and your partner's on the right and you get one point.

and you end up switching and then you just keep losing points, then stack the opposite way when you're on serve. Like let that be the thing that gets mixed up because you got the one point when you were on the opposite side, whatever that side happened to be. That's an easy strategic thing to implement, even in low-level rec play. Just a little half stack while you're on serve.

Did you lose three or four points because you're just making random errors or your partner making random errors? Or are you losing those points because you're in the wrong position, meaning your partner should be more on the left? And you should be more on the right or vice versa. And it might be dictated by not only your skill set, but your opponent's skill set. Is your partner directly across from someone that's attacking them and they're just losing that battle.

Yeah, as we discussed before we recorded, it could be day to day, it could be partnership to partnership, it could be game to game, it could be halfway through a game. Sometimes you get a hot streak, sometimes my my four hand drive just gets

It's amazing. And I'm like, we should I should be on the left so I can take all these middle balls and and rip'em if I want to. That might not be the case tomorrow. You never know. Exactly the pickle b whatever the pickleball gods decide to bestow upon me that particular day.

Exactly. Uh initially we're just kinda talking about different situations where this might pop up and I think we have executed that and given a number of good tips along the way. So That is our Christmas present to to you guys is that we take Myrch's strategic knowledge and apply it to my goofiness. And here we are. Amircha, thanks man. I I hope you enjoy your uh Christian Thank you, my friend. Same to you and for everyone out there listen. We are most grateful for you.

And your support It means a great deal to us and we appreciate all the shout outs that we've had personally from people saying Thanks for Following up and getting some episodes. And we apologize for the delays, but between holidays and our

Our lives it's been a little bit tough to crank them out lately. So we're gonna work on getting better and more consistent going forward. That's our New Year's resolution. I like that. I like that. All right guys, enjoy pickleball. Hopefully you'll get a chance to play. You got some indoor courts to play on if it Terrible weather. say so for Mircha I'm 4.0 to Pro Find us on Instagram. But don't forget to have a lot of fun.