035 Transcript

Morgan Evans:
It’s the Morgan Evans More or Less Pickleball Podcast, coming at you in three, two, one. Boom. My guest today is Pickleball’s newest villain. Jill Braverman hasn’t played a whole lot of tournaments, but after five years in Silicon Valley, the 31-year-old Newport native has set social media ablaze with a little controversy during her gold medal performance in the recent APP Tours, So Cal Classics.

Morgan Evans:
She’s a business woman trying to get it done and change the game. Please welcome, Jill Braverman. Jill Braverman, how are you, young lady?

Jill Braverman:
Hi Morgan.

Morgan Evans:
Hi there. You don’t need the video. In fact, it usually ruins the audio. Oh, I see what you’re doing there. For those of you who can’t see an audio wave, she was holding up her gold medal. That is one of two reasons why congratulations are in order. Jill Braverman, you just got married and you won your first singles title. Congratulations. Which feels like a better achievement?

Jill Braverman:
Oh, thank you, Morgan. I’m going to go with the wedding because my wife is in the other room and can hear me.

Morgan Evans:
Oh, smart girl. Yes. Okay. First and foremost, let’s talk about the win. You haven’t played in a singles tournament for quite some time, and yet you somehow mustered out the gold. What was it like?

Jill Braverman:
Rusty. Actually went into my match against Lauren, who’s also my doubles partner and said, “This could be really quick, Lauren. I can’t remember how to play singles.” I guess somehow it came back to me and then in the very first match with Corrine Carr, we laughed so hard walking on the court because we were both still traumatized from our last meeting, which was about a 35-minute backdraw match that I think went 17-15 or 18-16 at the Newport tournament over a year ago in her favor that time. I guess, how did it feel? It felt a little rusty.

Morgan Evans:
I do remember you talking to me a day or two previous to the event asking if it was like riding a bike. I tried my best to assure you, yeah, it’s very much like that. It’s kind of look, see, do pickleball really singles, and turns out that’s exactly what it was.

Jill Braverman:
It’s funny, Morgan, I actually equate it to not quite riding a bike. More like a unicycle.

Morgan Evans:
Oh, yes. All right. I would assume if you’ve learnt how to ride a unicycle, you don’t really forget. Well, you know what? We should probably test that theory. I need you to go buy a unicycle.

Jill Braverman:
Perfect. I’ll bring it over on my segue.

Morgan Evans:
Oh, yes. Yeah. That will look a little funny, but we’ll make it work. Okay. Now, the medal win was fantastic. You had a bunch of tough matches. However, it was not without a little bit of controversy. Just to give a little backstory to the listeners that may not be quite aware of what we’re referring to. At the recent So Cal Classic, you were in the final against young Vivienne David at 3-1.

Morgan Evans:
In the second game, your opponent had called a timeout and was late to get up after the timeout. The score had been called and you essentially served into an open court. Tell me a little bit about it from your perspective, your point of view. How did that go down and how do you feel about it now?

Jill Braverman:
Yeah. Absolutely. That was a good scene setting there. Thank you. I definitely don’t want the whole podcast to be my point of view and in defensive of what I did because I do think there’s broader discussions to be had. Simply put, my point of view is Vivienne was unfortunately out of sight, tucked behind the media booth, receiving coaching from her sister. I think some of the video makes it seem like, “Oh, she was right there. She was walking to the court. Jill saw her and quick served her to steal the point.”

Jill Braverman:
Unfortunately, because I think we all want a villain and want to have some drama that’s actually not what transpired. Like I said, I think there’re some broader discussions to be had here around topics that aren’t really getting explored deeply enough, like how can such a ubiquitously hated rule exist? What is the process for changing these rules?

Jill Braverman:
Where’s the new player orientation that explains these often inexplicable and poorly understood intricacies of pickleball? Finally, why do people want a villain so badly? I think the video has over 35,000 views.

Morgan Evans:
I see what you’re saying. What I think a lot of people don’t quite understand is firstly, they don’t see the camera angle that has no Vivienne in sight. Something similar to that had happened to you a week prior to that. What happened?

Jill Braverman:
Yeah. Thank you, Morgan. The week prior at the APP LA Open, I was coming off of a timeout called by our opponents in women’s doubles and the ref had called time and no one had heard her and all four of us were walking back to our positions and then the ref had called score and no one had heard her. My partner and I got to the line and we’re about to serve, but we were waiting a couple extra seconds for our opponents to also find their position. Then all of a sudden, boom, we lost our serve.

Jill Braverman:
Threw the ball back to the opponents and what did they do? They served and the match continued on. That was super fresh in my mind that you hear the score called, you’ve got to serve. You’ve got 10 seconds. When you’re competing much less for a gold medal, time moves very differently, whether it’s two seconds, three seconds, without a shot clock, it’s hard. It’s just hard.

Morgan Evans:
Yeah. No, no. I know what you mean. You don’t want to get called for a time violation and lose the point. It’s tricky to know where the boundary is going to be. Do you yell at your opponent to quickly get on court so you can serve? Do you do what the letter of the law says and make sure you serve within the time or get penalized? You did mention … And just so we’re clear, for every person that has spoken to me about the situation and said, “Ah, it seemed a little dodgy.”

Morgan Evans:
There was always someone else that said, “She didn’t have too much of a choice.” It didn’t look like Vivienne was going to get back up and into position to return a serve within that 10-second line. At least it would have been very dicey.

Morgan Evans:
I can see both sides of the coin. Regarding the rule change, do you have an idea … Because I do have a bit of a theory and honestly it was offered to me by one of my friends, Greg Carter, who seems like a relatively intelligent bloke. Do you have an idea how that rule could get changed to avoid this kind of situation?

Jill Braverman:
Yeah. It’s a really great question and I think if I were to name this podcast, it would be More Questions Than Answers. Yeah. Or maybe Don’t Hate The Player, Hate The Rule. Right?

Morgan Evans:
Yeah.

Jill Braverman:
Because in all of the hoopla that has ensued post-servegate, we’ve failed, I think to unearth enough conversations around how can such a ubiquitously despised rule exist? If there are rules that everyone agrees need to be changed, how does that happen? Especially if there are these certain rules that put both players and referees in these really lose-lose positions, who’s hearing that?

Jill Braverman:
Who’s listening to the player? I think I have more questions than answers on how these rules come to be, how they’re changed, is that a democracy? Is the public or the players made aware? I’d be curious to hear your opinion.

Morgan Evans:
Well, firstly, I think it is called a pickleocracy because generally you just add pickle to the front of anything and that becomes pickleball-related and everyone seems to be cool with that. However, I do have an idea and as I mentioned, it wasn’t actually my idea, but I’m going to repeat it because I think it’s good. What about this?

Morgan Evans:
What about when the ref calls the score, if that 10-second mark comes up and the other person is not on the court, they lose the point? In fact, when the person calls the score, if the other person is not there, then it isn’t the decision of the server whether to serve or not. It’s just an announced point. What do you think?

Jill Braverman:
Yeah. Or I think give more freedom and flexibility to the players to decide what penalty they want to grant to their opponent. I feel like in tennis … It’s funny because I feel like looking back at tennis, there weren’t really that many rules and it was a lot of like what was understood with the opponent, right? Do you know what I’m trying to say?

Morgan Evans:
Yeah. I think there’s a deeper ecosystem of the unwritten do’s and don’ts, is that what you mean?

Jill Braverman:
I think what I’m trying to say is it felt always like to me in tennis, a lot of it was between me and the opponent and in pickleball it feels like you’re in a threesome with the ref. They’re really there. They’re really present. They’re in it. They’re not a spectator. Maybe it’s something where, okay, the 10 seconds passed, this person’s in violation. Server, what do you want to do?

Morgan Evans:
Oh, okay. Then that leaves the door open for … I’ll use the word loosely, villainous activity. If you put in a rule such as if the other person isn’t on the court when the score is called, they have to be at least inside the boundaries of the court then it’s a point. Then no one can look at you and say, “Well she did this, that’s not sportsmen-like.” That’s part of the rules.

Morgan Evans:
The other person needed to be on the court. Simple as that. They didn’t necessarily need to be in the perfect position to return serve, but they have to at least be on the court for the point to not be awarded to the server.

Jill Braverman:
That seems like a pretty simple solution to me.

Morgan Evans:
Yeah. Well, hopefully someone in the powers to be union might listen to this and consider it. There’s always room for improvement. I did a nice podcast with Mr. Mark Peifer, who is the head of the rules committee and yeah, I think we’ll hopefully get him back on and discuss the issue.

Jill Braverman:
Pays to have friends in high places, Morgan.

Morgan Evans:
Exactly. We’re going to hold it just briefly with Jill for a quick word from our sponsor, CoachME Pickleball. Practice makes perfect. Right? My name is Morgan Evans, and I have to tell you that practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes progress. That’s why we’ve created CoachME Pickleball. At CoachME Pickleball, you’ll find an extensive and growing library of lessons on topics covering every aspect of pickleball for every level of player.

Morgan Evans:
For one small monthly fee, you’ll get access to every video in our library with new content added every month. Check out coachmepickleball.com to sign up for a free seven-day membership. Okay. It’s time. We’ve probably got to do a new promo video. Sorry, folks. Let’s head back over to Jill. Okay. One of the things you’re coming into is a pickleball sport where there isn’t just one tour. In tennis the gold standard is the WTA Tour obviously for female players.

Morgan Evans:
We’ve got a couple of tours at the moment, the APP and the PPA. Do you have any thoughts as to why this is going on? Do you have a favorite? Or who’s going to win this battle? Can they both exist?

Jill Braverman:
Yeah. That’s a really good question. It goes to this broader, to me more interesting conversation than I’m a villain. It goes to what’s going on? What’s going on in pickleball? It feels like to me, there’s some inexplicable or poorly understood intricacies of the sport that would leave new players, pro or otherwise, scratching their head. Whether it’s questions like, why are there two tours? What are the differences? Which should I play in?

Jill Braverman:
To questions for pros like, how do I get sponsored? What’s a good deal look like? A bad deal. To questions like, what rules are okay to manipulate? For instance, I’ll never forget, my first tournament I ever played, there was a very famous female pro player that everyone knows her name and she would purposely stand on the incorrect side to bait me to serve in the wrong position. That’s allowed?

Jill Braverman:
That behavior is allowed, but serving within 10 seconds when you’re going to be penalized if you don’t is not okay? It feels like there are these rules within rule, this etiquette, these technical intricacies. What I think both tours need is a new player orientation. Like if you play LPGA, SE Metro, really any other type of professional sporting organization, the new pros receive an orientation packet. They receive seminars.

Jill Braverman:
Had I not had the help of people like Irina, total class act, really spending time with me early on helping me understand these nuances and these intricacies, I’d be as lost as I was day one.

Morgan Evans:
Yeah. No. That’s a fair point. Are you planning to start a little coming aboard orientation package?

Jill Braverman:
I am, all seriousness. It-

Morgan Evans:
Oh, nice.

Jill Braverman:
Yeah. It really hit me after this scenario when these other pro players who run podcasts and blogs had such eloquent things to say, like, “She should have thrown the ball on her shoe to delay play, or I never would have done that.” Like, gosh, thanks guys. That was just brilliant, brilliant feedback, but how would anyone know to like, okay, in that scenario, you should throw a ball on your foot and delay play? Okay.

Jill Braverman:
I’ve played in like eight pro tournaments, not years and years of experience. If my mistakes can be a lesson for a lot of these new pro players, I love it. I love it. Just last week, helped someone find a paddle that someone else had given me to try. She loved it. She’s now getting sponsored by the company, helps her work through the deal plans. That inclusivity, that accessibility, that feeling of helping each other, that’s what we need to keep bringing to the sport.

Morgan Evans:
Make it more social in the business side of things, allow a little more transparency between play as in new players to give everyone a better chance at a better deal and a leg up when it comes to competing.

Jill Braverman:
Well, we want new blood in the sport, right? So-

Morgan Evans:
Do we though? There’s a lot of tall, good-looking guys that are doing a lot of damage and it’s making my life much more difficult. Do you not think we should limit some of those people? I mean-

Jill Braverman:
The good-looking guys from the sport? Okay.

Morgan Evans:
Well, I mean, they could be at best a seven. How about that? No taller than six foot. I mean, 5’11”, maybe 5’10”. What do we think?

Jill Braverman:
Absolutely.

Morgan Evans:
Great. Let’s get that on the agenda at your first meeting. Could we do that?

Jill Braverman:
Absolutely. For you, anything.

Morgan Evans:
Thank you, sweetie.

Jill Braverman:
In all seriousness, we talk about this notion that at the pro level, it’s becoming boring to watch with the same couple teams in the finals of every single tournament, especially on one of the tours. I’m no data scientist, but it does seem like 90% of time there’re some pretty similar results. I think that might be feeding into this desire for a villain or some type of rivalry.

Jill Braverman:
I think after 35,000 views of me serving to an empty court, there’s this desire for some villain or something to talk about. I wonder what that says, Morgan, about the broader state of the sport. It’s important to remember, pickleball is the perfect metaphor for a startup. There’s explosive growth, continuous change, fierce competition on the business side with the dueling tours, a federation under new and exciting leadership.

Jill Braverman:
Startups like DUPR trying to take on established rating system. Everyone’s fighting for their little piece of the growing pie. To me, that’s so much more interesting than is Jill Braverman a super villain?

Morgan Evans:
Yeah. I imagine you never saw the movie Batman 12. Batman becomes a library monitor because it doesn’t exist. Batman needed The Joker, he needed the penguin to be the hero. Villains are important. There’s no doubt about it, but if the sport has gotten to a stage where it needs one to ignite a fire, then yeah, I’d agree. There’s probably a little bit of an issue. I don’t think we’re there yet.

Morgan Evans:
I think it’s a good thing that there are two tours because you do get to see a whole lot of other players on the podium playing some incredibly high-level pickleball when you do the cross-section between both tours. A villain, I don’t know. Hopefully we’re not going to cast you as a villain just yet. However, you can’t spell infamous without famous. Do you think you can still leverage this or are you planning to pivot and become the good girl?

Jill Braverman:
My background is on the business side of sports coming from Universal Tennis Rating, where I was in charge of the commercial department of the company and the revenue-generating B2B verticals. I left there a couple of weeks ago. I say that I’m funemployed. I left there because I want to work in pickleball in a capacity that isn’t just tangential to the business.

Morgan Evans:
I just love that word. Between that and ubiquitous, I tell you, you probably have one of the top three vocabularies ever on this podcast. Congratulations for that.

Jill Braverman:
Thank you. Thank you. I hope that’s a high bar.

Morgan Evans:
Indeed.

Jill Braverman:
That’s really what I’m doing. Do I want to be a professional pickleball player? Is that my end goal? No. I play because I love it and that’s what I think a lot of people have to remember who aren’t top-ranked players. They’re filling draws. I’m traveling to tournaments. We’re coming and playing because we just love the sport. What is my end goal? Grow the sport. Full stop. I want to grow the game.

Jill Braverman:
I want to get on the business side of the sport and hopefully be known for that versus my professional career and results, or if I served to an empty court or not. That’s the legacy that I want to leave.

Morgan Evans:
All right. You’re going to grow the sport. Now, let’s imagine right now, someone hands you the keys to the sport. I’m sure you’ve probably thought about this before. Someone says, “All right. You get to make some changes. We’re all going to live in Jill’s world.” What would you do?

Jill Braverman:
I think first and foremost, the sport needs some type of unification. Like we talked about earlier, there’s a lot of factions and the sport is in hyper danger of becoming similar to tennis. ATP, WTA, ITF, ITA, USPTA, PTR, it’s acronym vomit in tennis. Tennis is one of the third most bet-upon sports in the world. This is a cautionary tale for pickleball because even though there’s all this betting in the sport, all this money in the sport, there’s really not a lot of sponsorship dollars in the sport.

Jill Braverman:
It’s because advertisers don’t really know where to go. There isn’t this one true governing body or this one place for eyeballs, because it’s a bunch of acronyms fighting and jockeying for a position. When I say we need unification in the sport, I’m not saying, “Oh, the two tours have to get married and have a baby.” I don’t know what the right answer is for the tours. I think having the federation more involved in the tours is a good thing.

Jill Braverman:
Having the federation more involved in spearheading a unifying rating system so that we can continue to provide level-based play and really good experiences to first-time players in the game. The biggest problem in tennis is it’s not level based. People lose [inaudible 00:20:05]. Less than 30% of matches are anywhere near competitive in tennis.

Jill Braverman:
We have to make sure that we’re continuing to deliver that super great first-time experience to players so that they keep coming back.

Morgan Evans:
Yeah. For those listeners out there that don’t know exactly your background or were lost in some of the earlier acronyms, you’ve come from working with the Universal Tennis Rating system, the UTR, which has been implemented and used for quite some time now. Compared to the rating system in pickleball, how is there room for improvement? What does the UTR do in a better sense compared to pickleball? Or is it not better?

Jill Braverman:
It’s much better. I mean, we have a team of data scientists working on the algorithm all day, every day, refining it. The hook in that system is it’s the de facto standard for college recruiting. That is the business and was the business for 10 years until we acquired it three years ago and realized that you can take a rating system and build an entire suite of tools and technologies that make the sport more fun, more accessible and more affordable.

Jill Braverman:
We literally have grown tennis throughout the whole world. In 72 countries, you can find the rating system being used to find level-based play. Why is that important, Morgan? It’s important because 66% of first-time tennis players never pick up another racket.

Morgan Evans:
Really?

Jill Braverman:
At all costs … Right.

Morgan Evans:
Wow.

Jill Braverman:
At all costs we have to avoid that for pickle. We have to continue to make pickle accessible, affordable, and fun. The good news is, it’s already started that way, right? Where in tennis, all you need is a ball and a court and a racket, but somehow became so exclusive.

Morgan Evans:
Right. Tennis for a long time, and I think maybe to a certain extent, still has that elitist status that golf and polo and a few other sports of that caliber had, where the gateway, it wasn’t as simple. Pickleball luckily hasn’t had that, but it’s not to say we can’t make it even easier.

Jill Braverman:
Correct. I think that tennis is a cautionary tale for pickleball. If you look at the numbers, there’s 90 million tennis players in the country, a hundred million worldwide. I think pickleball’s at what? Five. Tennis has a hundred-year head start. That’s an impressive growth. If you go ahead and extrapolate that out further, pickleball has some unbelievable potential.

Morgan Evans:
It does. I think everybody will agree that it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when it hits the world stage in such a such a high level that it can’t help but end up in the Olympics.

Jill Braverman:
Let’s talk about that. To become a … And you go back to, okay, Jill Braverman in your world on the business side of things, how would you fix this? How would you improve the sport? All this talk about becoming an Olympic sport. Well, that’s a pipe dream, until you have a certain number of countries recognizing an international governing body. That’s pretty hard to do with two warring international governing bodies.

Jill Braverman:
The WPF and the IFP, well, the federation backs one of those two, but the other one has more traction. How do we become an Olympic sport? How do we grow the sport when you have these factions?

Morgan Evans:
Yeah. Who does the IOC listen to?

Jill Braverman:
There you go.

Morgan Evans:
Another bloody acronym? You feel like right now, this competition between all these factions is hurting the sport more than helping?

Jill Braverman:
Absolutely.

Morgan Evans:
Okay. The flip side to that obviously is the competition. Whether it be the APP versus the PPA or the various other dueling parties, the competition between the two is one of the strongest mechanisms to actually make one of them better, well, both of them better. They will edge each other on again and again and again. In the same way that when you look at Ben Johns and Tyson McGuffin over the last two or three years, they are the reasons why they both got better.

Morgan Evans:
Ben right now is obviously the dominant force, but it wasn’t long ago when it was him and Mr. McGuffin basically going toe for toe, every single gold medal match and that made him better. Can that same theory work for the IFP now with the WTF?

Jill Braverman:
I think on the federation side, as international federations, no. I think from the tours, yes. It’s really interesting to see every time Connor cooks up something new at the PPA. The next week I think Ken is trying to even one-up that. I think they have propelled each other to raise the bar and the quality of the events. In that instance, I think you’re correct. The competition inspires higher quality. Then obviously a consumer’s happy with that at the end of the day.

Jill Braverman:
I think from a federation perspective, I’ll equate it to what happened in tennis. The ITF adopted something called World Tennis Number, WTN, and why they would do that when UTR was already the ten-year de facto standard for college recruiting, that’s hurting the sport. Now you’ve got these dueling rating systems for really no reason. Really, zero reason. I think in some instances, competition that makes sense, makes sense. Competition that doesn’t make sense hurts our sport.

Morgan Evans:
Okay. We just got to figure out if the competition makes sense.

Jill Braverman:
There you go.

Morgan Evans:
All right. Well, let’s put it on the list. We can bring that up at the next players meeting.

Jill Braverman:
Yeah. I’m Switzerland in this, right? It’s been a really interesting past couple months feeling like a neutral third party coming out of the tennis business and trying to understand these intricacies of pickleball from the business side. It’s fascinating. Pickleball is a metaphor for a startup as we talked about earlier, and I’m excited to see where this all leads.

Morgan Evans:
It is. It is one of the more exciting times to be alive in the game of pickleball. We’re all looking forward to seeing what kind of adventures Jill Braverman is going to have again on the courts. When’s your next battle?

Jill Braverman:
My next battle is in two days. That’s going to be July 2nd at my hometown in Newport at the national qualifier.

Morgan Evans:
Ooh, do you want to give a prediction based on the fact that this podcast will come out a few days after that?

Jill Braverman:
Yes. Here is my prediction. I will obviously win gold. Do you know why?

Morgan Evans:
Why is that?

Jill Braverman:
I had an incredible lesson this morning at 8:45 AM.

Morgan Evans:
Oh yes, yes. You did. Yeah. I like that. I like where your head’s at there. Well played.

Jill Braverman:
Thank you. Yes. For those that have not pieced it together. Morgan was nice enough to get out on a court with me this morning and hit a few balls with me. No, I’m just kidding. Who knows? I think what’s really exciting about pickleball, especially women’s singles, is it is feeling like there’s a lot of potential for anyone to break through. I take no match for granted and I’m just excited to be able to play the game.

Morgan Evans:
Yeah. You say that. Obviously we see a lot of great tennis players coming in. You came from playing for Pepperdine. How long ago did you finish playing college tennis?

Jill Braverman:
Do you also want to know how much I weigh?

Morgan Evans:
No. I don’t … You know? I’m going to guess it’s-

Jill Braverman:
You’re basically asking a lady her age, Morgan. I finished playing a decade ago. Actually, I started at 16. I graduated from Pepperdine at 20 and I played there on scholarship as the least talented tennis player in my family. My oldest sister was a pro, Brandie Braverman, and then my older sister played number one at Pepperdine all four years. I think I duped the coach into thinking he was getting someone of a similar caliber of my sisters, but instead he got me.

Morgan Evans:
Sold him a bill of goods. Nice work.

Jill Braverman:
Thanks.

Morgan Evans:
Now, in tennis, were you predominantly a singles player, a doubles aficionado? What did you prefer?

Jill Braverman:
I played singles and doubles, but I was really a doubles specialist and to me, pickleball singles feels like doubles tennis.

Morgan Evans:
Okay. You feel like you’re a bit of a duck to water? That’s a good thing.

Jill Braverman:
Yes. I feel like pickleball singles is very comfortable. It feels like playing doubles tennis a little bit. A little bit more like ping-pong too.

Morgan Evans:
Did you ever see the video of Andy Roddick playing pickleball?

Jill Braverman:
No. Tell me more.

Morgan Evans:
He obviously notoriously was not a gifted doubles player. I mean, compared to your average person, I’m sure, amazing. But he was a singles player for sure. Watching him play pickleball was not pretty. It looks like there’s such a huge advantage for tennis players, but I think a lot of people don’t realize it’s a bit more exclusive towards the players that really enjoyed and excelled at doubles.

Morgan Evans:
I’ve seen so many fantastic singles tennis players come to pickleball and after about 20 minutes of an hour lesson, they’re either cramping or unable to continue because the kind of positions required to be a high-level volleyer and therefore hold yourself well up at the kitchen line, are just foreign. Did it take a little bit of time for your body to adapt to how to move around the kitchen?

Jill Braverman:
Yeah. Absolutely. I’ll never forget the first time I played with people who actually knew what they were doing and they said to me, “You could be okay at this sport if you stopped playing tennis on the court?” I said, “All right. Well, how should I play?” They said, “Swing at your volleys.” I said, “I will never swing at a volley. I close my volleys.” Right? That’s exactly what it is. You’re constantly swinging up trying to create lift on the Wiffle ball.

Jill Braverman:
Then I think in my first tournament ever I was about to quit. I lost to a woman. She might’ve been in her late 50s or early 60s. I remember being so angry at myself thinking, “How can I lose to someone who’s that much older than me? I’m a better tennis player.” That whole tennis ego just weasels its way. You can’t get rid of it. I hadn’t realized yet, the art or dinking and how it’s a game within a game.

Jill Braverman:
I think when that clicked, you’re able to set aside your tennis ego and say, “Okay. This is really like playing chess on the pickleball court. It’s not bang, bang. You’re playing chess when you’re up at the kitchen line.” Then all of a sudden it becomes way more interesting.

Morgan Evans:
Have you learned to enjoy the art of dinking as you say?

Jill Braverman:
I have, but I still suck at chess and I think I still suck at dinking, so maybe I should play more chess and that’ll help.

Morgan Evans:
You should. Well, Jill Braverman, this has been an adventure. There’s no doubt about it. There’s no other way to describe it. We’re going to have to do it again sometime.

Jill Braverman:
Anytime.

Morgan Evans:
Thank you, sweetie. We will see you on the court, all the players out there. Beyond the upcoming Newport tournament, what’s next for you? Because all your fans will be, I’m sure looking for something they can actually get a hold of. After Newport, what have you got?

Jill Braverman:
What’s next on my schedule? Yeah. The July 2nd event and then to KL August sixth through the eighth. Then August 21st, I’m actually having a second wedding/celebration, which is pretty cool to have two weddings, but to the same person, you know?

Morgan Evans:
Ooh, yeah.

Jill Braverman:
That’s going to be in Aspen, Colorado so there might be a trip for the Rocky Mountain Open the week before that on the 13th. After that, who knows?

Morgan Evans:
Beautiful. Nationals, you’ve got nationals. Oh, I found out I actually have a golden ticket for that thing. We didn’t have to go through the whole show and dance of qualifying and whatnot.

Jill Braverman:
That is music to my ears. I cannot wait.

Morgan Evans:
Beautiful. On that note, hopefully I was hoping that Kristen would come in with a closing ballad of some kind, is she prepared for that?

Jill Braverman:
She is not prepared for that and she’s out of earshot now, but I’ll let her know to submit a little piece later.

Morgan Evans:
Oh, beautiful. All right, sweetie, we’re going to love you and leave you. Take care of yourself. We will see on the court shortly. Congratulations on your recent win and the first of two weddings, to the same person. Couldn’t be happier for you.

Jill Braverman:
Thank you, Morgan.

Morgan Evans:
Take care.

Speaker 3:
This podcast was powered by Selkirk. This podcast is also brought to you by the next generation of Selkirk Paddle. The VANGUARD.

Morgan Evans:
Well, there you go. You don’t know till you know, and now we know Jill. As always, I’m Morgan Evans, and this has been More or Less Pickleball. It’s hard not to like puppies. Puppies are great.