A player I have known for years told me they did not think they could advance in the game. If that player believes it, others do too. So this week I want to be clear. There is no real limit on your growth as a pickleball player. Not age. Not ability. The only limit is your decision not to grow. What actually derails players is trying to do too many things at once. The fix is one thing at a time. Lock it in, let the positive feedback loop build, then move to the next one.

Second, a conversation from our Boston-area camp about expectations on the serve side. Because of the two-bounce rule, the serve team starts every rally at a positional disadvantage. When you go back to serve, you are more likely to lose the rally than win it. Not because you did anything wrong. Because that is how the sport is built. Set your expectations with that in mind.

Third, our Partner Play series starts at the end of September and we are collecting stories. Share up to three things a partner has done that rubbed you the wrong way. Post it in the comments, in the community, or email [email protected] with "My Story" in the subject line. Improvement stories are welcome too.

Camps for 2026 and 2027: https://tonyroigpickleball.com/camps
Your Pickleball Coach: https://yourpickleball.coach

Pickleball Therapy: The Book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Be well,
Tony

Doubles pickleball is a team sport just like football or basketball. Two players instead of 5 or 11, but the same dynamics apply: your team plays its best when both players are in sync.

You cannot control your partner. But you can communicate with them, and there's a constructive way to do that. 

The second idea is sonder. Everyone on the court is walking their own path. Your partner included. That matters most in the small moments, like when someone apologizes after a miss. Tony explains why the "sorry" reflex tends to make the dynamic more uncomfortable, and what to say instead. 

The through line is simple. How you treat your partner shapes how they play. How they play shapes how your team plays. Partner play is a skill, and it's one you can hone.

A ceramics instructor swapped a ball for a "priceless" vase and watched his class tense up. Nobody forgot how to catch. They just became afraid of what dropping it would mean.

That shift happens in pickleball too. Early on, the game is just fun. Then the expectations arrive, and the same missed shot that meant nothing now feels like a big deal. This week I talk about how expectations change how you interpret what happens on the court, and why setting them before you play protects the enjoyment that makes this sport worth coming back to.

In the Riff: improvement frustration. Working hard on the wrong thing (the third shot drop is a common example) can leave you wondering where the payoff is. I explain the block-by-block approach we use in Your Pickleball Coach, and why locking in one block before moving to the next builds a positive loop that lasts.

Your Pickleball Coach: https://yourpickleball.coach
If cost is an obstacle, email [email protected] and we will work with you.

There is a lot going on in a pickleball game. Four players, several rallies inside every rally, the lob, the dink, the banger, the volley you got jammed on. And underneath all of it, a conversation running in your head about the score, your partner, the wind, the shot you should have made.

That's all sound. No silence anywhere.

The week before a live coaching call, Tony visited an art exhibit called "Silence Before Sound." One room, roughly the size of a small house, held three pieces of art. That was intentional. They could have filled it, but filling it would have defeated the point.

Your brain works on the same principle. Give it three things to see, and it sees all three. Give it fifty-three, and it sees none of them.

In this episode, Tony connects negative space to the Tap Into Your Flow series inside the Tony Roig Pickleball project, shares what players reported after using The Blue Danube as an anchor, and offers a practice you can start before your next session. Not on the court. In the car, before you get out.

Learn more about Your Pickleball Coach at https://yourpickleball.coach

Episode 309: Use the Force Luke (and Leia)

A floater comes at you. It's just hanging there in space, waiting. Game point. Everybody on the next court has stopped to watch. You bring the paddle up, you swing, and the ball goes straight into the net.

You have to be kidding me.

So what happened? The natural response of any athlete is to go to mechanics. I mishit it. Something in my swing broke down. Something in my grip, my footwork, my paddle face.

I'm going to suggest to you that more often than not, that miss was not mechanical. It was mental.

And I don't mean mental in the way we usually mean it. I'm not talking about focus, or nerves, or staying present. I'm talking about your decisions, or the absence of them, about the shot you just hit.

Run through three questions.

One. Did you have a clear idea of where you wanted the ball to cross the net? A target. A specific space over the tape. If the answer is no, or I'm not sure, then you did not hit an intentional shot. You hit an unintentional one. You swung the paddle forward, and whatever happened, happened. When the ball lands in the net, it's hard to be upset about it. Where were you sending it?

Two. Did you pick a spot with enough cushion? If you're aiming a quarter inch over the net, you have already baked the net into the shot. It sits inside the range of outcomes you selected. Give yourself paddle width over the net, at minimum. You'll still catch the tape once in a while. It will be much rarer.

Three. Did you feed that information to your processing unit? Your processing unit is your brain. The decision only helps if it gets delivered before you swing.

Miss any one of those, and the error was mental. Do all three, with real margin, and still find the net, then yes, now we can talk about mechanics. Footwork, swing, grip, something. But that's the second place to look, not the first.

Here's where the Star Wars part comes in.

In the movies, the Force is telekinesis. You move an object with your mind. You don't touch it. You just decide, and it goes.

You can't do that on a pickleball court. Not directly. But you can do it indirectly, and that's the whole idea. Your mind makes the decision. Your mind hands that decision to your body. Your body sends the ball. If that connection isn't there, the ball goes wherever it goes.

So if you want to fix the shot, start with the mind.

—

The Riff: Gratitude

Most of you interact with this sport as a player. Some of you also interact with it as a student of the game, which is a different thing altogether. There are players who just want to go out and hit the ball, and that's perfectly fine, but they usually aren't listening to this podcast.

There are other ways in, too. Fan of the pro game. Organizer. Referee. Tournament volunteer. The person who texts three other players on a Thursday to make sure Friday morning happens. That last one matters more than it gets credit for.

I'm thankful for the people here who organize our play. David, Paul, Tyson, Stephanie. If I'm forgetting somebody, forgive me. It's been a long day of content creation. Because of them, I get to play on a Wednesday, or a Friday, or a Saturday.

I'm thankful for the facilities, too. Pickle and Pint in Largo, Florida lets me shoot my videos there and cooperates with every project I bring them. None of that happens unless somebody decides to build courts, operate them, and pay for them.

And I'm thankful for you. My coaching would be for nothing without players who listen, who watch, who read, who came in early and founded the community. All of it is what lets me do the thing I love doing with this sport. I like playing. I love coaching.

Thank you, from me and from the whole team here at Tony Roig Pickleball.

Be well,

Tony

Episode 308: The Definitive Guide to Out Ball Disputes

Here's the situation. Score is 10-9-2. Your team is serving. You hit a volley, crisp, and it lands right on the line. A hair in or a hair out.
Your opponent calls it out.

You're sure it was in. What now?

Most of us go straight to the challenge. That instinct makes sense. You saw what you saw, the point mattered, and nobody likes losing a game on a call they don't agree with.

But before you say anything, run through a few questions.

Who created the situation? You did. You hit the ball so close to the line that your friend was put in an impossible spot. Unless you believe they're cheating you, they made the best call they could in a situation you handed them.

Where is this conversation going? They say out. You say you saw it in. They say they saw it out. Then what? Even if nobody escalates, the temperature on that court already changed the second you opened your mouth.

Is there enough riding on it? Is this point worth spending your friendship capital on?

Are you 100% sure you're right? Would you bet your life on it? I clipped a call like this recently and zoomed all the way in. I still couldn't tell you. I wouldn't bet a dollar on it.

And if we want to play by the rules, the rules are clear about whose call it is. Theirs.

Last one. Flip it around. They serve, you call their ball out, and they come at you about it. How does that feel?

Work through those questions, and the answer shows up on its own. Move on. Don't pause. Don't look twice. Toss the ball, serve, carry on.

In competitive play with a referee, an appeal is fine. That's what referees are for. An appeal is not a dispute.

And here's the part that matters most. Those same filters work off the court. Is it worth the cost? Where is this going? Am I sure? How would this feel from the other side? That's a useful screen for a lot of disagreements that have nothing to do with pickleball.

You're out there to play, see your friends, and have a good time. Protect that.

In the riff, I take you behind the scenes on the new course we're building here at Tony Roig Pickleball. It starts from a premise I want you to sit with: you are a capable, intelligent adult, and you can learn to navigate this game yourself. My job is to transfer what I know to you. Yours is to go play.

A thank you to the founding members who have joined us. This coaching, including this podcast, is possible because of you. It means a lot.

Be well,

Tony

Christine Hobson retired at 60. Two days later, she ran her first marathon.

She has run more than 100 since. Every continent. A world record in Antarctica. And when she describes it, she does not lead with the marathons. She leads with what the first one taught her: she had been underestimating herself the whole time.

That is the topic this week.

We do this as humans. We try something, it does not go well, and we file it away as evidence. Enough of those and we start building a case against ourselves. I hear it constantly when I suggest pickleball to somebody. I'm too old. I'm too out of shape. I'm too late. Fill in the blank.

There is a second story in the episode that lands the same point from a different angle. A woman on a date says, almost by accident, that in another universe she would be a stand-up comedian. She had never said it out loud before. Her date asks the obvious question back: why not in this universe? She gave him the list of reasons. He kept peeling them back. She became a stand-up comedian.

So here is the pickleball version. You have a picture of yourself out on the court. The player who sees the game better, who puts the ball where they meant to put it, who feels good walking on. If that player is a 3.5 and you are a 2.5, there is nothing structural stopping you. Not tomorrow. Maybe not in six months. But in eighteen months, with a clear plan and a clear sense of what you are working on, absolutely.

To be sure, some things really do impede you. Bad information impedes you. Bad guidance impedes you. Coming at the game from a purely technical angle, where you need to know the exact paddle angle and exactly where each toe points, impedes you, because that is not how the brain learns to play. Those are real.

Everything else on your list, you put there.

And to be clear, none of this is a directive. Nobody needs to reach a level. If you are happy playing exactly the way you play now, that is a fine place to be. But if there is a version of you out ahead that you actually want, do not be the one blocking the path.

**The riff: two ways to handle adversity**

Missing a shot is an adverse event. Small on the scale of adversity, but real inside the game.

First situation. My partner and I are stacked. The return of serve comes back hard, with spin, into the far corner. He has to cover a lot of ground and hit a very difficult backhand. He catches the top of the net. Good effort, hard shot, no issue.

He apologizes. I tell him there is nothing to apologize for, that it was a great return and a tough ask from that position, and that I am not upset. He apologizes again. Then he says it: I shouldn't miss that.

He processed it the same way today that he processed it a few years ago. It is a loop, and it costs him something every time.

Second situation. Last game of the day, court one, score somewhere in the fours, evenly matched. My focus wandered off. I do not know where it went, but it left. I missed a few shots I do not normally miss.

I could have hunkered down and demanded that focus come back. But there is no switch to flip. Ebbs and flows in attention are the most natural thing in the world. They happen to full-time professional athletes in every sport.

So I told my partner: pick me up, I'll be back in a few minutes. And I was. We lost that game, but we tightened it up and made it competitive down the stretch.

Same category of event. Two very different relationships with it. The second one gives you a calmer mind, and a calmer mind sees the court better and hits the next ball better. That is not a soft benefit. That is the mechanism.

**Extra coaching tip**

Notice who your partner is apologizing to. When a player says sorry after a difficult miss, they are usually not apologizing to you. They are apologizing to the version of themselves who was supposed to make that shot. That is why reassurance from you does not land. You cannot answer an expectation you did not set.

What you can do is name the difficulty of the shot out loud, once, and then move on to the next point with your own body language completely neutral. You are not arguing with their standard. You are just declining to feed it.

Be well,

Tony

This week we look at filtration. Not the sink kind. The kind that decides which pickleball information gets into your head and which information gets blocked at the door. There is a lot of content out there. Some of it is wrong. Some of it is incomplete. Some of it is fine, but not for you, not right now. Without a filter, all of it goes down the drain and clogs up your thinking.

Tony walks through how to build a filtration system: start with a short list of trusted sources, then strengthen the filter as your understanding of the game grows. He also flags one of the easiest filters you can use today — what to do when the coaching starts with "this is what I do."

Then in the riff: "What level is this camp for?" It sounds like a reasonable question. Tony makes the case that it is actually a filter working against you. We all play the same game. Same court. Same rules. Same fundamentals. Serve, return, volleys. The player who executes those better wins. That is true at 2.5 and it is true on the pro tour, which is why Anna Leigh Waters does not sleep on her fundamentals.Don't chase magic. There is no drawer of magic shots.

Mentioned in this episode:

Tap Into Your Flow — free 5-week coaching series, in progress now. Get on the email list at tonyroigpickleball.com and you'll get the invite.

Camp schedule is live. Not sure which camp fits? There's a "Schedule a Call" button on the camp page. It's free, and a member of the coaching team will help you sort it out.If you enjoy the podcast, please consider rating and reviewing it. It helps other players find us. And share it with a friend — if you liked it, they probably will too.

Episode 305: Ridiculously Optimistic

The clip

I open this one with a message from a content creator who goes by Writer's Cramp. The theme: be ridiculously optimistic about your future, aim higher than seems reasonable, and do not let other people talk you out of what you want. Worth the ninety seconds.

These messages always strike me the same way. You hear them and think, well, yes, obviously. So then ask yourself the real question. Why wouldn't you live that way?

What you actually control

Let's be clear about the limits. You cannot control how a game turns out. You cannot directly control how the other players behave, though you have more indirect influence there than you might think, mostly through how you carry yourself.

What you control completely is how you choose to interact with the events that happen to you. On the court and off it.

That is not a consolation prize. That is the piece that determines your experience.

On being scared

There was a line in the clip about being scared being part of being alive. That one applies directly to improvement.

I think of the mental side of pickleball in three parts. Perspective, which is what Pickleball Therapy: The Book covers. Play, which is the next book. And improvement, which is the third, because improving carries its own mental weight.

Improvement is scary. You are leaving the thing you already do well and moving toward something you do not do well yet. That is uncomfortable by design. It is also when you feel most alive, because that is when you are growing.

The story: let's just get four

Last week I was playing in an eight-player group. My friend David and I partnered up for the last game against Jeff and Patrick, two good players. David had not had a great session.

Before we started I told him: let's just get four points.

He looked at me. Four?

I was not being serious about the ceiling. But watch what it does. We score one, and we are a quarter of the way there. We score two, halfway. We get stuck at three for a while, three quarters. Then we hit four.

And now think about it functionally. I have to get to four anyway. Nobody counts to eleven without passing four first. So the target was never a lowered bar. It was a real checkpoint on the way to the same destination.

Once we got there I told him, let's go for six. We got six. Then we pushed it again.

We won the game.

Why it works

Pressure comes from measuring yourself against something you do not control. The final score is not yours to control. A checkpoint on the way there is.

And here is the part that makes it hold up: if we had lost that game 11-4, I still get to turn to David and say, I told you we were getting four. The metric survives the loss.

The other version: time

I talked a few weeks back about using time the same way. Same group, playing with Jeff, and our opponents Tyson and Scott could not miss. All credit to them, they were out of their minds.

We were down 8-2 and the clock read something-25. I told Jeff, let's get to 30. On the clock, not the scoreboard.

We got to 31 and I put my hands up. Victory.

We lost that game. We won on our metric.

If you come up with your own

If you find a version of this that works for you, I want to hear it. Drop it in the comments, post it in the TRP Community under the podcast, or email me. Fair warning that my response time depends on what else is going on, but the address is open.

In the riff

Camp schedule is live

The 2026 and early 2027 camps are posted. You have been asking, so go take a look.

One principle that matters to us: if you look at a camp and the number does not work for you right now, email us and tell us what is doable.

To be clear about what that is and is not. It is not a discount program. The value is there at the stated price. The signature camp includes the online course, pre-camp experiences, and the community, so there is a whole structure around the two days.

What it is: a way for cost not to be the reason you don't get coached. We don't ask follow-up questions. We don't ask for a bank statement. No guarantee we can make every request work, but we will do our best.

Tap Into Your Flow update

The series is underway. Five weeks, one piece at a time, and it is free.

Week one establishes the connection between rhythm and the sport. We have done a version of this at camps for years, where players dink with their eyes closed and hear the metronome underneath the rally. Rush it, and the sound changes.

What has been interesting for me as a coach is pulling the pieces together for this series. Putting music next to pickleball footage makes it obvious in a way that talking about it never quite did. You can watch the rally move with the music.

If your play feels forced, one position to the next, paddle up, paddle back, staccato, this is for you.

And the name is the point. I am not teaching you to flow the way I flow. The flow is already in you. You are a human being who has made it this far on this planet. It is in there. What gets in the way is interference, most of it self-issued, our own minds handing out instructions that keep us from moving cleanly through a shot.

The series includes written materials, videos, and music. You will also come away knowing more about Johann Strauss and the Blue Danube than you expected from a pickleball newsletter.

Links and contacts

• Camps: tonyroigpickleball.com/camps
• Camp cost conversations: [email protected]
• Email Tony: [email protected]
• Tap Into Your Flow: free with the email list at tonyroigpickleball.com
• TRP Community: tonyroigpickleball.com

PICKLEBALL THERAPY  ·  SHOW NOTES

Episode 304 – Tap Your Flow

 What this episode is about

Flow is not something you go out and acquire. It is already in you. This week I make the case for that, and then I show you what the work for finding your flow actually is.

Do you already have flow? Yes.

Picture yourself waiting to return serve. The serve gets hit. What happens next is remarkable, and you do it without thinking about it:

•     Your brain tracks a ball spinning through space

•     It calculates where that ball will be at a moment in the future

•     It moves your body to that place in space

•     You hit the ball

You were doing that before your first lesson. Before your first pickleball YouTube video. Nobody taught you. That is your supercomputer running software that came pre-installed.

So what is the work?

Removing interference. Taking away the noise. Clearing out the distractions and obstacles so that you can stop trying to think your way through the rally and start feeling the rally instead.

Playing by feel more than by thought.

One example of interference: trying to read paddle angles

Players ask about this a lot. How can I learn to read my opponent’s paddle at contact so that I know where the ball is going? It’s a fair question.

To be sure, some coaches teach it. But think about what you are actually asking yourself to do. You are moving. You are tracking the rally. And now you want to also read a paddle face at the moment of contact.

There is a better way. When the ball travels to one side of the court, you start to sense where it is likely to go next. Will you get surprised? Sure. Once, maybe twice. Then your brain adjusts. That is flow doing the work instead of your conscious mind.

Watch the pros. It looks like they are gliding. They always seem to be where they need to be. They are sensing the rally.

Pickleball is music

There is a rhythm to a rally. Learn to hear it and move with it, and you are in flow. That idea sits at the center of what we are doing in the Flow Project.

The Flow Project

Five weeks. Five bite-sized chunks. Focused on your mechanics.

Here is why it works: you have probably already tried the frontal approach to learning pickleball. You want a better third shot drop, so you watch 87 videos and take 32 clinics on the third shot drop. Fine. Let’s come at it from a different angle. That’s what the flow project is all about.

No cost. To participate:

•     Go to tonyroigpickleball.com and get on the email list. The written lessons come by email, so that is the only way to receive them.

•     Add [email protected] as a contact so the emails do not land in spam.

•     Join the community at tonyroigpickleball.com for the video lessons and follow-alongs.

In the riff: what Tony Roig Pickleball is about

It is about you. A pickleball player who wants to grow in the sport. Period.

On the question of whether the pro work I’ve been doing lately means a pivot away from amateur coaching: no. Commentating Major League Pickleball and the PPA, and coaching pro players, increases my knowledge of the game and keeps me current. I bring that back here. Not a pivot. Doubling down.

Free at tonyroigpickleball.com

•     Four mini courses

•     The TRP Community

•     The Flow Project (five weeks)