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56 56 | SUN LAKES LIFESTYLES | DECEMBER 2020 | | SUN LAKES LIFESTYLES | DECEMBER 2020 | Southern California's favorite baseball announcer, Vin Scully, often reminded fans "Baseball is a game of inches." That adage could probably apply to many sports, as the video cam at the US Open Tennis tournament demonstrates — even fractions of inches make the difference between an ace and a lost point. Well, pickleball has even those fractions beat. It has been reliably calculated that the moment of contact, when paddle strikes ball, takes all of two milliseconds. That's 1/500th of a second! Yes, that's when the important action occurs. Sure, there's the seconds for the ball to land and the minutes of arguing about whether the ball was fair or foul. And don't forget the hours of rehashing how the match turned on that one shot. But, whether serve, volley, lob, or slam, everything thereafter depends on that fleeting fraction. There are two other aspects to the stroke in pickleball: the back swing and the follow-through. The former determines the speed of the shot and the latter, while not mattering at all where the ball is headed (it's left the paddle by then) is still very important in allowing the player to take a more relaxed stroke and avoid tensing muscles that can lead to strains and injuries. But be careful of that back swing. It can make the difference between a shot and a miss. We don't need much back swing, except on the serve. It takes too much time when the ball is fast-approaching. Keep your paddle up and in the ready position and push that ball over the net. Accuracy is way more valuable than brute force. So, for those of us who have played long enough to make 500 pickle shots, we can take some satisfaction in knowing that we've only consumed one single solitary second of our day. What have we done with the rest of our time? Our games here at Sun Lakes are intended to be for fun and exercise. Nevertheless, most of us try to be as competitive as our aging joints allow. We don't harp on some of the rules that pertain to tournament play but it is good to practice correct form. To that end, here's a reminder of one rule that may catch some of us off guard: a serve must be to the diagonal side of the server, with one exception. If the serve is errant and heads toward the wrong half-court, it will be a side-out… unless… if it strikes the opponent it is a point for the serving-side. Only wise guys try to intentionally hit an opponent in such a churlish way. Just be on your toes in case you happen to oppose one. See you on the courts! Pickleball Club

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