Carolyn Harvey – My SF Pickleball Story

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Pickleball in SF

Carolyn Harvey (in the front row, second from right)

Details I Remember

The first time I heard about pickleball was in July of 2014 when my sister Shirley Cross in the small town of Arroyo Grande, CA., invited me to join a group of her girlfriends at the Pismo Beach Athletic Club. (When I play with them now, we call it “chickleball” ha!)  I LOVED the game, and I was TERRIBLE at it.  In an earlier life I had played a little tennis so I had the typical beginner tennis player’s misjudgment of how high the ball would bounce.  My nice swing missed the ball by several inches.  It was a bit embarrassing (this is before I learned the “pickleball way” …no “sorry’s”, no criticism, everyone welcomed regardless of athletic prowess and gentle competition at the level of your fellow players so everyone has fun.) Of course, as we advance, we enjoy a VERY competitive game but, again, always, always fun comes first.

When I got back to San Francisco I spent an hour every day for a week at the tennis wall at the old Golden Gate Park tennis complex getting used to the pickleball bounce. Then I went on the hunt for other players.  I googled it; spoke with Rec & Park; spoke with John Murphy, the manager of the Golden Gate Park tennis complex, and with the manager of the senior center in Golden Gate Park. No one had heard of this funny sounding sport. 

Still eager to play, I bought four wooden paddles and a portable net, and with the approval of SF Rec & Park, I taped temporary court lines on the basketball court and asked some neighbors to play at JP Murphy Park. Unfortunately, these folks were not taken with the sport, but in the process, I met Wellington Chen who had posted a note at JP Murphy Park asking anyone interested in playing picklebalI to call him. I called and we began playing in the foyer of the Palega Recreation Center several evenings a week, quickly gaining interested players.

Wanting to play closer to my home in the inner Sunset, I asked John Murphy, if I could try to get pickleball started in the tiny unused space at the far corner of the tennis complex.  I brought my rake and broom and cleaned up five big garbage bags full of leaves and weeds and chalked the court. The area was about a foot too short for a standard pickleball court but shortening the court was not a big deal for novice play. 

With that “yes” from John Murphy, I posted Saturday hours when I would offer free pickleball lessons.  That brought in a few players but mostly it was the foot traffic in this area that finally got San Francisco pickleball going. 

I would yell at people passing by and announce free pickleball lessons with equipment provided. I taught pickleball but, equally, important, I spread the pickleball “culture.”  By the last quarter of 2015, we had an enthusiastic group of 86 players who had played on this little court. I remember so well that Lyndon Chow was one of the first enthusiasts and Bill Sullivan was finally coaxed to play after riding by several times on his bicycle and watching from that “distant” vantage point. He began to play and make his contribution as the “official” pickleball photographer. 

Wanting to engage tennis players to play and support the growth of pickleball our group would “bark” at them as they passed our court encouraged them to “cool down” with us. We also scheduled a free tennis player pickleball clinic that October attended by 14 tennis players to learn about the sport and try their hand at it. 

At the end of 2015 I purchased a life membership in the USAPA for a whopping $300 and was accepted as a pickleball ambassador with official sanction to promote pickleball at the Golden Gate Park Tennis Complex and surrounding neighborhood. 

By 2016, when it was obvious, we had outgrown the little corner court, Rec & Park offered us the elevated tennis court #5 for play Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 9AM-1PM. Pickleball grew by leaps and bounds. 

PaddleTek donated five paddles to our group; Martha Ehrenfeld generously donated a net and four paddles We also received a grant from the USAPA as a budding organization which allowed us to purchase a cart as well as another net. By now players were beginning to buy their own paddles, and after one of our members purchased a fourth net, we were to expand into four “new” courts.

We began to compare and track the number of pickleball players using tennis court #5with the number of tennis players on the remaining 21 courts. There were times when there were as many as 45 players on the pickleball courts (and waiting) and six to eight players on the other tennis courts.  We always outnumbered the tennis players. It became obvious that this sport had taken off!

In January 2016, I held my first Rec & Park classes to introduce pickleball to a whole new group of folks, including Alycia Chu!!! I continued these classes until mid-2017 when I left San Francisco to live closer to family and settle in a single storied home….an impossibility in San Francisco.

I think my leaving gave permission for others to step up and take pickleball to new heights.  I’m so proud of what you all have accomplished and know that you all enjoy the sport and the camaraderie that comes with it as much as I do.  No play for me once COVID hit San Luis Obispo, but now I’m back playing with fully vaccinated girlfriends.  I hope to rejoin our local Rec and Park group in Arroyo Grande once I am more confident that COVID has been controlled. I might even try some tournaments again.

The best of pickleball

  • Once you have learned the basics of the sport, pickleball culture ensures that you welcome and eagerly teach any newbies who venture on the court making more friends in the process.
  • Easy to learn basic skills and get a game going in a manner of minutes.
  • Healthy exercise
  • With experience, a “smart” player can out-play a stronger player with strategy.  This can allow women to compete against men at the club play level.
  • People of all ages can play together.  I have played with a couple of 7-year-olds as well as with a 90-year-old and had a surprisingly good game.
  • Higher level play is available as people in your area develop skills and as more traditionally athletic people join in, including tennis, badminton and racketball players.
  • Competition via local as well as regional and national tournaments allow lower skilled players as well as advanced players to test their skills.
  • Social engagement and camaraderie with wonderful new friends.  Pickleball players are SO nice!
  • Stress relief.  I know several people who tell me that pickleball “saved” their lives. Worries evaporate during play.
  • Pickleball culture inspires kindness to others on the court but also kindness toward yourself which, hopefully, pervades your life off the court.

SF Pickleball Community (SFPC) – Volunteers wanted

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The SFPC is a volunteer organization and we could always use additional volunteers to help with community needs and continuing improvements.   This includes:

  • Court volunteers – to help with set up, play time scheduling and flow
  • Technical/Communications help – with our website and newsletter platforms
  • Leadership team – advocacy, venue logistics, and community relations

To get involved and volunteer– let us know via the website feedback form or talk to your local court captain. 

Fabulous Court 15

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Provisional Drop Serve Rule

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The rule is new this year. But since it is “provisional” it is temporary. It may be withdrawn next year. For details on this rule, please refer to the actual 2021 Rulebook (See page 25 Rule 4.A.8). Essentially when in the serving motion, you reach up as high as you can, then drop the ball without forcing it down or flipping it up in the air. After it bounces, you may hit the ball in any motion you like. Swing up, swing down, paddle to wrist orientation doesn’t matter. As long as your feet are behind the line, you can even drop the ball inside the court. You can hit it on the second bounce if you like. So long as you drop the ball properly, there are no rules prohibiting how you strike the ball, other than keeping your feet behind the baseline.

I have been using the drop serve a lot the past few months. I think it gives me more time to line up my serve rather than just hitting the ball directly out of the air. I also don’t need to worry about my swing path being legal. Tho as a warning, be careful about the bounce. The ball can bounce erratically. Not sure if it’s due to the ball bouncing off a hole in the ball or just an out of round ball. But if it happens, you can always pick up the ball and try again. Also, I wonder if the drop serve may just appeal to tennis players who are used to hitting the ball off a bounce?

Since this seems such a significant rule change, allowing so many options, I expected all sorts of creative new serves to come from it. So I asked a few teaching pros I’ve met, to get their thoughts on the drop serve. Do they use it in tournament play and do they teach it? Answer: no and mostly no.

Dave Velardo – Teaching Pro and founder of GamevisionAI.com . He also has a teaching website at http://proposalpickleball.com/ . You may remember Dave before Covid. He was teaching in our area but has since moved to Boston.

I believe the drop serve does not make sense for the great majority of players.  This is because the ball doesn’t bounce up near the waist, and, generally you want to be making contact as high as possible while keeping it legal.  Secondly, hitting the ball as it is descending is how the pros get a lot of topspin on their serves (the most common aggressive serve on the pro tour is the hard, deep, topspin serve).

However, of the hundreds of players I’ve seen play in New England, and of the dozens I’ve seen attempt the drop serve, I have seen two 3.5 players consistently hit an excellent, difficult to handle, hard, low drop serve.  But when players ask me, I generally advise not to even bother trying it.

Rob Davidson – Teaching Pro and founder of RisePickleball.com. He is Nationally ranked in Men’s Pro Open Doubles, Director of Pickleball at BlueStar Resort in Arizona. I have attended several Rise Pickleball Camp events with Rob and he is the best. His camps are super fun. If I had any talent, I would be a helluva player by now. Anyway, I highly recommend taking one of his “destination camps”. You can find his camp locations and dates on his website.

There are no pros that are using it that I am aware of. There may be a few reasons for this but the main reason is that, no matter how high you drop the ball from, it’s not going to bounce up higher than your waist, and that is the level that many pros try to make contact with the ball at. Having a lower point of contact reduces the amount of velocity you can put on the ball and have it still go in. I played around with it for a half day and wasn’t sure if there was any significant benefit to using the drop serve.

Jordan Briones – Teaching Pro and founder of PrimeTimePickleBall.com. This is a site full of great tips for improving our game. And as you will see, he produced the video below on the drop serve.

I think the drop serve is a great option for beginner players. It also can add a different variety to serving (i.e. underspin). I personally don’t use it in competitive play, as I believe it doesn’t really provide any significant advantage over the traditional serve. I suggest that players work on both the traditional serve and the drop serve. It is still a provisional rule, so this is why I think all players must learn to serve out of the air as their primary option.

In addition to these comments, it seems the top players do not use the drop serve and do not even support the rule change. So it seems fairly likely this provisional rule will not be adopted for 2022. We’ll see. But if you are interested in giving it a try, check out the Jordan’s video below.

I hope you enjoyed the drop serve discussion. I welcome all comments.

sfkjeld@gmail.com

Line Calls

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This is an age old problem in all sports – making the call. In rec pickleball, whether it’s making a close line call on an opponent’s shot, the legality of a serve, or a non-volley zone (NVZ) violation call…. all are difficult and any of these calls will have some degree of error. I’ve never seen arguments about a serve motion or NVZ violations in rec play. I’ve never seen a team demand a point due to an illegal serve. NVZ calls in my experience, are usually made by the side committing the error. Tho the rule states either side can make that call. Illegal serves generally lead to a discussion because they are usually committed by newbies. While I have never seen a team demand points for these calls, in tournament play, the referee will call either infraction in a heartbeat.

But for this discussion, let’s focus on line calls involving the ball (as opposed to where a player has stepped). Obviously there are no hard and fast rules for calling a ball in or out. Essentially, it is about determining where the ball touches the court in respect to a line. The ball can slide as well, so we need to know where it first or last touched the court depending on the line in question. Not always easy on a well hit ball. And even once you have made that call, there is a question of what happens when teammates disagree. Here is a guideline and a few specific rules from the 2021 Rulebook that may help correctly negotiate a call. Below that, a video where an instructor demonstrates techniques for making the best call you can. I was pleased to hear the him confirm what I believe is a long held misconception in tennis and pickleball. That is, because you are closest to the ball when it hits the court, does not mean you have the best view for making that call.

Here are a few 2021 Rulebook references to aid in negotiating line calls during a game. The Rulebook points to refereed matches. But in rec pickleball most of us try to stick to the Rulebook where it applies.

Guideline from page 7, under “1. The Game”
Either partner in doubles can make calls, especially line calls; there is no place in the game for one partner telling another, ‘that was my call, not yours’.
Meaning there is no rule governing which player has a right to a call.

Actual rules directing how calls should be made.
6.D.9. In doubles play, if one player calls the ball “out” and the partner calls it “in,” then doubt exists and the team’s call will be “in.” Any player may appeal a call to the referee. If the referee did not see the ball, the ball is considered “in”.

6.D.13. After the completion of a rally, players may overrule a partner’s line call, an officiating team’s line call, or an opponent’s “in” call to their own disadvantage.
Obviously these are directed at tournament play. But they are largely common sense.

Here is a video on making line calls that is kinda fun. I hope you enjoy it.

I’d love to hear for you folks if you have comments. sfkjeld@gmail.com

We’re back !!!

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