019 | The Feel Guy, Touch Guy, Patient Guy Transcript

Morgan:  My guest today is Mr. Steve Dawson. Steve is the owner and operator of Bobby Riggs Racket & Paddle Club in Encinitas, California. He’s seen the world, conquered tennis and Pickleball. Has arguably the best calf muscles the game will ever see, and along the way managed to raise some other incredible players, Callan and Tyler Dawson alongside his lovely wife, Jennifer. Please welcome the man, the myth, the Steve Dawson.

 

Pulled The Trigger Too Fast [0:51]

Morgan:  How are you, my man?

Steve:  I’m doing fine. Thank you! A little steamy – not as steamy as you, but I’m doing fine.

Morgan:  Yeah, it’s only 117 here today. What is it down there?

Steve:  I’m complaining, it’s probably 85.

Morgan:  Oh come on! You don’t even know you’ve been born. Jeez!

Steve:  (laughs…)

Morgan:  So, tell me, how have yourself, the family, and the Bobby Riggs empire been handling the little pandemic that’s going on?

Steve:  You know, for two months we were sort of huddled into our house and the club was closed. So like every contemplative person, I decided to get the most of the time, so we enjoyed the family time. And Tyler’s medical school closed, he came home, his girlfriend came home, Callan moved out with all his roommates and came home, so we had a good time of cooking and eating and drinking like everyone else.

The club reopened a little too early, so the sheriff had to close us down.

Morgan:  Aw…

Steve:  Yeah, one of those. And then I jumped the gun.

Morgan:  It’s understandable. People love their Pickleball.

Steve:  I pulled the trigger too fast but now it’s staying open and the club is doing fine, and we’re as busy as ever, so all is well.

Morgan:  Okay, well all’s well that end’s well.

Steve:  Yes.

Morgan:  But you’re typically not so much the high-risk, high-reward kind of Pickleball player. You’re known for your consistency. Are you changing the guard there?

Steve:  No, I live with Jennifer.

Morgan:  Ah, yes. That’s true.

Steve:  There goes the trigger-pulling right there.

Morgan:  Okay, alright. Monkey see, monkey do.

Steve:  Yeah. (chuckles…)

Morgan:  So the word around the campfire is you have been playing a more aggressive style of Pickleball. But when you first started, I think for a number of years, your game kind of revolved around consistency, high-percentage play, fantastic dinking. What sort of change? Did you just see the writing on the wall? Or was it always by design?

Steve:  Well, everyone else seems to be pulling the trigger faster, and I haven’t given up the dink strategy. I love it if people will engage me. But I have a partner that will engage in a similar game-style. And when you play soft and move the ball around, you’re really waiting for that exact moment to strike. But if your partner has already struck on the first or second ball they get, you become reactive to a point instead of manipulating the point on your terms, so…

Morgan:  There’s real pros and cons to both of those. For me, I felt like I didn’t think my hand speed was good enough when I first came in. So I really thought my best chance of improving and getting up to speed is pick a fight as early as possible because they’ll have to get quick or die.

Steve:  Right.

Morgan:  And I totally understand the wait for the exact moment and sort of only pull the trigger when you’ve built the point to a certain degree. I feel like it kind of takes four to tango in that scenario. If two or three people want to play a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am kind of Pickleball, then it doesn’t matter how much you’d like to dink them to death. They’re not going to agree with that.

Steve:  I agree. So to be more of a participant in the style the game is going, I’ve had to lift up my aggressive play a little bit or else I’d become an observer instead of a participant.

Morgan:  Yeah, I mean I’ve seen you drive the ball and I’ve seen you serve it hard. So there’s no reason why you can’t really evolve into a power player. That would be quite fun!

Steve:  Yeah, I’m enjoying it. I look at Pickleball – I’m going to add up on something you said – my first tournament I played, I was 54. Callan and I got to the finals at Nationals, I was 55 and we’re playing all the 22-year-olds. I was slower, I was older, my hands and feet weren’t as fast, so when I got into the game, even when I played tournaments against you and Marcin, I wasn’t going to pick a fight because I had no chance. I had to be the feel-guy, touch-guy, patient guy because why would I go hands speed battle against Daniel Moore or Morgan Evans? So I had to play that style to succeed, that’s when I was playing with Callan. And the senior Pickleball, which is what I play now, guys’ hand speeds aren’t as fast, our reflexes have slowed just a little through the aging process, so I have felt that the aggressive game can be more rewarding at the senior level than the open level. At least for me, I’m a 60-year-old now, it’s not like I’m going to slap balls right by anyone anymore.

Morgan:  Yeah, so it’s more of a case of knowing your enemy and adapting your style to work out what’s going to beat them the easiest.

Steve:  Yeah. Believe me, if I went and play another open tournament, I’d be the softest hitter known to man.

Morgan:  (chuckles…) I believe it, I believe it.

Steve: (chuckles…)

Morgan:  Do you think the kind of style that you choose to play and what kind of partner you choose to play with is critical? Or can two people sort of have opposite styles and still complement each other?

Steve:  I think opposites can work.

Morgan:  You and Jennifer seem to – you know? You spent a large degree, and I know you play mixed in a slightly different way than men’s, but it’s fair to say she does like to speed things up a little early.

Steve:  Yeah, she does. And you know, that’s her strength too, so she’s fearless. She likes to slap that ball like crazy. So when I play mix with her, I try to get the ball up to speed where she’s more comfortable.

Morgan:  Okay, so you’re focused more on picking the speed and the style that makes your partner more comfortable?
Steve:  Yeah, and when I play with other senior players that like to speed the ball up, I just have to get use to when they do it because part of speeding the ball is surprising your opponents; half the time, your partner surprises you.

Morgan:  Yeah.

Steve:  And so, when I’m playing with a guy that surprises me, I’m just as caught off guard as my opponents, so it does take some getting used to the partner you’re playing with. But I think opposite styles can complement.

Morgan:  Yeah. I remember I had the good fortune to partner with Leigh Waters a couple of times last year, and I remember thinking this is probably how Steve feels because she wasn’t waiting more than one or two shots before she try to nail one through the middle and I wasn’t often over on the sideline hoping someone was going to dink the ball nicely to me and wondering why the ball was coming whizzing through the middle, and her looking at me as, “You know, you got to protect the middle, right? I’m just going to speed it up all the time.”

Steve:  (laughs…) Exactly. Well, it’s mixed doubles, Morgan, it’s always your fault.

Morgan:  It is, and that’s how I roll. It is the penance.

 

Whatever It Takes to Keep The Peace [7:27]

Morgan:  So there’s a lot of players out there that potentially would like to play with their significant other. You seemed to have found a good way to be married to the person that you can win major titles with. Is there any kind of secret you would share with our listeners?

Steve:  Oh, if I had a secret, I would share it. It’s minute by minute and second by second, it is very difficult even though I still do it. I have been, in the last year or two, treating my wife off to various partners so I could enjoy myself in the stands, watching the finals instead of having to be out there in a nerve-racking situation.

So I do well if I play with her, and half the time play with other people as well.

Morgan:  Okay, alright, so you like to mix it up. That’s probably a safe bet. I had imagine if people out there that do want to play with their significant others, that the mounting tension and anxiety if you only ever play with them, is probably one of the reasons why it does tend to end a lot of either partnerships or relationships.

Steve:  This is meant to be taken humorously but I was hoping that I would have Jennifer play with other people. And when the tournament is over, she would say, boy, how much she missed playing with me but that hasn’t happened.

Morgan:  (laughs…)

Steve:  I was hoping to get more appreciated but I’m still waiting.

Morgan:  (chuckles…) Well, hopefully, she’s listening to this.

Steve:  She’s in the other room. I’m sure she’s got her ears wide open. I do have funny couple stories for you, though.

Morgan:  Oh yeah, do so.

Steve:  In the finals of the California Open last year, Cammy and I had a couple of match points on Jennifer and Chris Miller, and we lost that, so Jennifer got to beat me in the finals of a tournament. And then at Nationals last year, myself and Gigi Lemaster in the main draw, beat Jennifer and Chris Miller which was very fun. Gigi Lemaster was happy as I was.

So we were resting our laurels for a few more matches and then in through the back draw comes Jennifer and Chris Miller, and I was like, “I can’t believe I have to play my wife twice in the same tournament.”

Morgan:  (chuckles…)

Steve:  And then they came around and beat us. So even though Jennifer went on to the finals, I can say I was one and one against her in the same tournament.

Morgan:  Yeah, that’s fair. That’s a win.

Steve:  And the family is happy!

Morgan:  Yeah, whatever it takes to keep the peace, right?
Steve:  I do whatever it takes.

Morgan:  (chuckles…) Good man!

Steve:  Sometimes it’s still not enough.

Morgan:  Well, I’m sure she appreciates the effort anyway.

Steve:  (laughs…)

Sponsor: CoachME Pickleball  

 

Transforming Bobby Riggs [11:18]

Morgan:  So now, you’ve slowly transformed Bobby Riggs from a tennis club into a Pickleball haven. Was there so blowback initially or was it pretty smooth sailing?

Steve:  There is blowback all the way.

First of all, I didn’t forcibly say I’m going to transition the club into Pickleball, I just followed the trends and what the people wanted. And as more and more people flooded to Pickleball, I thought it would be foolish to say no, this is a tennis club. So I changed the name of the Club from Bobby Riggs Tennis Club to Bobby Riggs Racket & Paddle Club, started opening up more courts to Pickleball, and tennis players got upset. But through the entire transition, tennis players never had to wait for tennis courts. Tennis players were never denied the opportunity to play. They just didn’t like looking to the other side of the club and seeing people play Pickleball.

Morgan:  Yeah.

Steve:  So it was no other reason other than they don’t like it. It’s like, “Hey, you got a court whenever you want.”

One of my funny lines I like to use on the tennis members when we have them as they would always complain about the noise of Pickleball, so I would purposely schedule my Pickleball lessons right next to a tennis court. And then when the tennis players would glare at me, I would ask them to please keep all their comments to themselves, I’m trying to teach a Pickleball lesson. They didn’t like that.

Morgan:  (laughs…) I’m sure that goes ever brilliant.

Steve:  Please be quiet! I’m trying to teach a lesson.

Morgan:  I was reading something by Joe Dinoffer, the OnCourt OffCourt guy, and it was an article about the noise of a pickleball versus a tennis ball. Apparently, per contact, it’s about 30% quieter than a tennis ball. But because there’s so many more contacts in a rally in the game, and often the general amount of laughter in a short space, that’s what kind of leads people to believe it’s a noisier game than tennis.

Steve:  Everyone does the test on the decibel rating but I’ve read very little about the pitch.

Morgan:  Yeah.

Steve:  It’s not about how loud it is, it’s about the soundwaves coming off as a different pitch is what people find intolerable.

Morgan:  Yeah.

Steve:  It’s more than it’s different than it’s loud.

Morgan:  I heard recently over the weekend that you know have a group of fencers that are occupying some courts on a weekly basis. You’ve got a fencing club going on there? Is this going to become the Bobby Riggs Racket, Paddle & Sword Club?

Steve:  (laughs…) How did you find out we had a fencing class out there?
Morgan:  Well, we just had the tournament at Newport.

Steve:  Oh yeah. I kind of like it actually. But no, fortunately, before I opened the club more to Pickleball, I went down to the city of Encinitas to find out the exact zoning of the club and how it was registered with the city of Encinitas. Thankfully, the club is registered as an athletic club. If it was registered as a tennis club, I would have a battle but it was registered as an athletic club, so I said great!

Morgan:  Brilliant!

Steve:  And make Pickleball, that’s a sport; tennis is a sport and so is fencing. And with COVID, one of the local fencing or sword-fighting club was closed and they just needed a place outdoors to do their stuff. So a few times a week, a bunch of junior Olympians and fencing people and their coaches put up all their gear and their little foils, and they get out and do their stuff outdoors which is wonderful.

Morgan:  Oh, would be tempting just to go in there with a broadsword and really show them what’s going on.

Steve:  Morgan, you’re welcome to come over during your summer heatwave. I’ll arrange it for you.

Morgan:  Oh that would be – I’ve always wanted to try fencing but it’s actually one of those things that looks a lot more difficult than the average person could just come in, prance around a little bit and hope to stab someone.

Steve:  Right, yeah. To me, it looks like a bunch of people in bee-keeper suits out there running around.

Morgan:  Yeah. I guess it’s a great sport for COVID, you know? You’re kind of pretty well protected from everything, right?

Steve:  Yeah. If you don’t social distance, it means you were stuck by someone’s foil and you just lost.

Morgan:  (chuckles…) So tell me, obviously, Bobby Riggs was a legendary tennis player. In talking to you a couple of years ago especially, you were of the firm belief that if Bobby was alive today, he would play Pickleball. I would agree. Any idea what kind of player he’d be?
Steve:  He would be a player that would gamble on himself.

Morgan:  Oh…

Steve:  But he also would be good, and I think I told you in that conversation that a lot of people don’t know that Bobby Riggs was the California State Paddle Tennis Champion as well as the Wimbledon Tennis Champion.

So Paddle Tennis, that’s the sport that Jessie Irvine came from, correct?
Morgan:  Yeah, that’s correct.

Steve:  So, Bobby Riggs was the California State Paddle Tennis Champion and a tennis player, and there’s absolutely no doubt that he would be thoroughly involved in Pickleball — no doubt about it.

Morgan:  Can you imagine if he and Billie Jean King managed to team up just once before he passed, that would have been fun.

Steve:  Paddle Tennis or Pickleball?

Morgan:  Well, Pickleball, yeah.

Steve:  Sounds like another Battle of Sexes.

Morgan:  It’s true, it’s true, yeah.  Host another one of those?

Steve:  You know, I don’t know. I was hoping that after the first one, we would always take the US Open Men’s Senior Champions and play the US Open Women’s Pro Champions is a yearly thing. It never did, and maybe some time again, I mean I would love to see it again to tell you the truth.

Morgan:  It was exciting. It gave me an excuse to wear a suit.

Steve:  Yeah, I will say that I’ve been asked by our opponents in that match for a rematch, and I said, “Without a doubt, it’s never going to happen.”

Morgan:  (laughs…) No, no. Quit while you’re ahead.

Steve:  I’m not going to go try that again, I’ll tell you that.

Sponsor: CoachME Pickleball

 

No Man’s Land [17:13]

Morgan:  Today, I want to talk about the Land of Opportunity or as many people still call it, No Man’s Land. I grew up in Australia, and Australia loves its motorsport. Legions of fans line the tarmac week after week to bear witness to the age-old marriage of speed and testosterone. One of the more interesting races is called the Go To Woe. It’s a drag race with a twist. Unline a traditional drag race, the Go To Woe is a race to get to the finish line as fast as possible and stop just before it. It’s testing a driver’s ability to break as well as accelerate.

What does this have to do with Pickleball, I hear you say. Well, funny you should ask and I know what you’re thinking, “Morgan, your analogies are really on point today. Can we have another automotive one?”

Yes! Yes, you can.

Early production cars were woefully slow by today’s standard. But the speed race was never as dramatic as it was in the earlier 20^th Century. Horsepowers rose with the advent of bigger and bigger engines, but what’s stopped power translating into increased speed wasn’t cylinders or suspension. It was the brakes. Manufacturers struggled to stop their cars within reasonable braking distance, so they couldn’t really afford to let their engines off the leash.

The takeaway from this is simple: Move at the speed that allows you to stop in time. If your brakes aren’t working as they used to, resist the urge to sprint because the chances are you won’t be able to stop yourself in time when it comes to the all-important split step. Do the hard work early. Stay present over your third ball. But as soon as your feet are ready to move and you can see that your third ball was a successful drop – move. Explode out of the gates with every once of gusto you can muster. Your goal is to get as far as possible as quickly as possible so that when you have to put the breaks on, you’re in a position to have options. At all costs, try to avoid being in forward motion when your opponent is contacting the ball. You don’t know exactly where the ball is going. And your ability to move sideways while moving forward is limited to say the least.

If you start spending more time in this area that’s generally called No Man’s Land, then a few things will happen.

Firstly, you will realize that you have a lot more time to react to incoming balls. You’ll also be able to more accurately see which balls are going out, and unfortunately, you will have to bend your knees. Sorry, but let’s be honest, knees are made for bending. Games are so often won or lost in this midcourt area. Players who are comfortable dinking, defending and attacking from this area are essentially using valuable real estate to employ time and space to their advantage.

Enjoy this No Man’s Land. Embrace the location, and one day soon you may just see it for what it really is – The Land of Opportunity.

 

The Soft Game [20:04]

Morgan:  Okay, let’s head back over to Mr. Dawson, see what’s happening…

So when it’s time to hang up the Bobby Riggs paddle, is either Callan or Tyler going to take over?

Steve:  Right now, Callan has started a few months ago to become the general manager, so he is now teaching Pickleball out there four or five days a week and managing the club, and helping run the Prokennex Pickleball Paddle Company as well.

It was interesting, he spent years out of Pickleball, studying to be a paramedic and a fireman, and he finally got hired by the City of San Diego as a fireman, and he did that for a few months and didn’t really like it. The day he said, “Guys, I’m quitting fireman. I got to do something else,” was actually the time that COVID hit. So he quit being a fireman right when COVID hit, a bunch of his co-workers at the fire department all got sick from transporting COVID people.

Morgan:  Oh wow!

Steve:  So he does not regret his decision at all.

Morgan:  Oh, that’s perfect timing – amazing!

So, I saw him on the weekend and it looked like he has slimmed down. He looks fit and strong and playing incredible Pickleball. I didn’t realize he had gone into coaching. Is that something that’s obviously been helping his game?

Steve:  What’s helped his game is getting fitter. That is all because of fire academy and running with logs on your back and having fire gear wrapped around you when it’s 102° and running around with hoses. I mean the guy dropped 25 lbs.

Morgan:  That’s amazing! That’s incredible.

Steve:  And now it stayed off and you saw his results the last tournament.

Morgan:  Yeah, it’s impressive.

Steve:  Going back to our earlier conversation, he took the soft game in dinking to another level in this tournament and just dinked them to submission. So the soft game is alive and well with the pro level of Pickleball.

Morgan:  For sure. I think one person with the highest level of skill in one of the arenas can certainly change the game. If you’re an incredible banger with lightning-fast hands, you can certainly change the game. But equally so, if you have the most incredible ability to cool things off and settle things down, that it just frustrates someone looking to pull the trigger, then perhaps equally so. It will be very interesting to see if he’s able to – no matter what speed of the ball, always be able to settle things down into the arena that he excels at, the soft game.

Steve:  Yeah, it’s fun– it’s fun having different styles of different players that do different things and match them all up. I’ve always – I hope you agree with me that a fantastic banger and power player with quick hands is always going to be a real good dinker but a fantastic dinker is always going to a real good banger. So it’s when they perfected their art form, not the art form that determines matches.

Morgan:  Yeah, I guess the beauty of the game really is there’s a place for two different skillsets to kind of level out and become that great equalizing factor that keeps us going back.

Steve:  There we go.

Morgan:  Have you got any tournaments coming up?

Steve:  Well, I pulled out of this last one in Newport Beach. We’re supposed to go on a business trip but that got canceled, so I went and had a little toe surgery, I’m going to limp around for a little bit.

I’ve got the Las Vegas Open in a month or so. And then after that, the PPA Championships the week after. So I’ve got two more tournaments this year. The APP Tournament, SoCal Classic was rescheduled from June, the third weekend in June which is where it’s been for 12 straight years. Because of COVID, it was moved into December but a lot of tournaments have been canceled because you can’t have spectators. As you know, one of the greatest things about Bobby Riggs is the viewing phase and the decks, and you can crowd people in, and all of that is in jeopardy with this COVID stuff. So I will have a phone call with Ken Herman in the next week or two to find out what’s going to happen with the APP Tournament at Bobby Riggs.

Morgan:  Okay. We’ll keep tuned it for that.

 

Check Out Bobby Riggs [24:06]

Morgan:  How can our listeners find you if they want to come and take a lesson or join Bobby Riggs?

Steve:  All information is at BobbyRiggs.net.

Morgan:  Perfect! I love it. Well, thank you so much, Steve Dawson. Will speak to you soon and will see you on the courts, mate.

Steve:  Alright, thank you, Morgan! Take care.

Morgan:  Alright, take care, bud!

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode as much as I have. You can find out more about this episode at Pickleball.FM, and you can follow me on Facebook at More or Less Pickleball. The links and info about our guests are on the description and on the website, so please check them out, guys.

Sponsor: Selkirk Sport