I played racquetball for about thirty years, and though I never achieved any sort of elite status, I was able to glean some thoughts about how the game should be played. One of the things I noticed when I hung out with guys who played at the pro level was that their shots - their stroke - always looked the same, backhand or forehand, flowing through a "strike zone" - there may be some parallels to baseball here as well. Rather than reach out too far and awkwardly attempt a shot when the ball was not optimally placed, they would move quickly to position their bodies so that the ball would fly right into the perfect area for their stroke, and their footwork and body position was such that the ball was pretty well certain to go in just the right direction, rather than popping off the racquet in a random direction, as my shots often did.
I'm starting to get the same feeling about the basics of pickleball. When I stop long enough to analyze the reasons why I didn't make a particular shot, it's generally because a) I didn't take the time to get into position so that the ball was well within my "strike zone" or b) didn't stop and align my feet and body to put the correct amount of power in the proper direction into the shot, or c) didn't follow through completely with a smooth motion. The only other major error-causing problem is failure to keep my paddle at the proper angle, which often is the result of trying to reach a ball outside of my strike zone.
If a ball simply arrives too quickly for me to react, then the failure on my end was more of a mental or strategic error where I failed to anticipate my opponents' most potentially deadly return.
As is often the case, these failings are a lot easier to see in others than in myself. However, the more I see a fellow player fail, for example, to properly line up their feet and body for a shot or try to hit the ball while moving forward instead of getting into a set position, and watch the ball go flying off in an unexpected direction or sail straight into the net, the more it reinforces my conviction about the importance of these basics.
Some of this, perhaps, is the reason you'll see so many players "walking around" a backhand and hitting a forehand shot from a disadvantageous court position. They don't have a "ready" position in their repertoire for a backhand, so they feel more comfortable taking the extra effort to move until the ball is in their forehand zone.
In the world of professional poker, there is a thing called "going on tilt". It happens to players after a series of bad beats, usually, and causes them to be so upset that they no longer play rationally, but make their bets based on emotion, especially anger. This can happen in pickleball, too. If you go through a period of time when your shots are inexplicably going astray - into the net or out of bounds - or every ball your opponent hits seems to end up exactly where it needs to be, while you struggle, it is easy to "go on tilt" and begin to play with anger or even depression. If you can avoid this emotional type of play, and simply weather the storm, you can generally come out the other side of a losing streak and begin to play well - and even win. Sometimes, if you can't seem to shake the emotional side of things off, it's best to just give it a rest and play another day.
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