Two insights from losing a pickleball tournament
& an interview with one of the world's best players
Gm, Twosdazers!
Parents love to put their kids in sports because of the life lessons it teaches them. We then grow up and forget that sports are still available as lifelong teachers if we’re willing to play as students.
This past weekend I played in my first PPA pickleball tournament with my friend Brian. We lost in the first round to 15 and 18-year-old brothers who referred to us as sirs. I’m fine.
My fear for Gen Z grew and I gathered some insights while dinking around.
Here are two life lessons I learned from losing a pickleball tournament:
Results have no regard for woulda, coulda, shoulda
I thought the teenagers beat us because one of them had a disgusting spin serve.
“If spin serves were banned in amateurs like they are in the pros, we coulda beat them.”
“We woulda done better if we drew a ‘normal’ team to play first.”
But a few days of reflecting (and mourning) have led to the truth of why they actually beat us: they were better than us. (They went on to get 3rd, which made us feel better.)
Sports — like our lives — rarely go as smoothly as we imagine. We plan for perfection, but intentions don’t determine outcomes.
When we allow woulda, coulda, shoulda to justify our results, we reject reality by dwelling in the past — a place we can’t change. But the quicker we accept the present, the more able we are to create change.
Learning from the past is wisdom. Living in it is foolishness.
Woulda, coulda, shouldas also undermine the achievements of our neighbors rather than celebrating them. Everyone experiences woulda, coulda, shouldas, which is why nobody — especially the scoreboard — cares about them.
Question to ponder: Where do you need to stop saying woulda, coulda, shoulda?
Consistency beats intensity
“It comes down to who wants it the most.”
☝️ My most hated line by sports commentators.
If you get paid or pay to compete, you probably want to win as bad as the person next to you.
But just like intentions don’t determine outcomes, neither does passion.
Sure, intensity helps in the short run, but it’s too weak on its own to sustain long-term results. (A person who sprints 100 meters once a week will never develop the cardio of the person who jogs a mile every day.)
I didn’t lose the pickleball tournament because I didn’t want to win enough. (I’m annoyingly competitive.) I lost because I wasn’t as consistent as the ̶g̶u̶y̶s̶ boys across from me.
Passion is produced in personality (think enneagram 7s) and connection (think alma maters).
There’s a sentimental reason you root for your sports team of choice. But your passion doesn’t get you any closer to making the team.
Consistency wins the day because it’s produced in practice.
About 75% of all lost rallies in pickleball are unforced errors. For me, many of those errors happen when I try an intense shot rather than a consistent one.
Like sports, we tend to win in the areas of life where we practice the most. (Unless you’re Allen Iverson and don’t want to talk about practice.)
And if practice leads to consistency and consistency leads to winning, then patience is the virtue of champions. Success is often the result of enduring ordinary work for an extraordinary amount of time. Patience produces long-term results that passion can’t.
Question to ponder: Where do you want to be more consistent in life?
✌️
— Luke
PS. I emailed a few questions to Zane Navratil, a top pickleball player in the world that has the best spin serve in the game, and he was gracious enough to respond.
1. What are core characteristics that distinguish a pro from an amateur?
consistency, shot selection, and court positioning
2. What drill gives the highest ROI?
Drilling of any kind will always give a higher ROI than playing recreational games. A few of my favorites are quick hands (volley) exchanges from the kitchen line and 1-on-1 competitive dinking drills.
3. What's an underrated and an overrated move amateur players make?
An underrated move I see some amateur players making is trying to be the first to the ball. This may not always make you many new friends, but it involves a good aggressive mindset as long as communication is involved!
A more overrated move many amateur players make is trying to speed the ball up from below the net or as the ball is already falling below the level of the net. These types of shots require a high amount of experience and practice.
PPS. New to pickleball? I wrote about two tips for beginners 👇
