Episode 47 Transcript

Intro [0:18]

Mark:  Today on the show, we are talking about one of the new rules for 2021, the provisional rule allowing the drop serve in Pickleball. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that you are now allowed to hit the ball after it has bounced when you’re serving. I’ve made a couple of videos about this, one of them really blew up quickly.

Today on the show, what we’re going to do is address some of the questions and the comments related to those videos. So, if you care about the drop serve, stay tuned.

Sponsor: Pickleball Coaching International

Comments About the Videos [1:27]

Mark:  Alright, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Mark Renneson. Today, we’re talking about the drop serve and specifically about the comments that we have received related to the two drop serve videos I’ve made so far. The first one had to do with just sort of explaining the drop serve, explaining some of the rules.

The second one was taking a look at Tyson McGuffin, the biggest server in Pickleball, what happens when he tries to drop serve for the first time. So we’re going to answer some of the comments and questions relate to those, so let’s get right to it. 

Terry L. saw my video about the drop serve explaining the rules and rights. 

“After playing Pickleball for six years for me, well, these rules are quite different but they do seem like they will be great for beginners, and I can’t wait to try them.”

So I’m not sure about this. It’s true that when you look, it’s called the change document, that USA Pickleball puts out when they explain what the major changes are in the rules and they give the rationale behind them. And they talked about how one of the rationales for the drop serve or allowing it would be that it would help newer players, it would help beginners. I’m not sure about that. I mean, I guess it’s possible. But to me, you’re adding a certain element of complication here because now the ball has to drop away from the player, and then it’s got a rebound and come back close to them. I don’t know, I’m not sure if I buy it that the drop serve is actually easier for people to hit then a serve just coming out of theirhand. I mean, I suppose the counter-argument would be, “Well, Mark if you drop it, especially if you drop it from higher up,” remember the rule is you can reach as high as you want and you can release the ball, you just can’t toss it into the air, that by holding it up higher and letting it go, there’s actually more time between the release and contact. And for beginning players, they might benefit from that extra time, so it’s possible, I guess. It’d be interesting to know if you’re a coach out there or you’re someone who works with beginning players, what has your experience been? Do they find it easier to hit after the bounce? I don’t know. 

Let’s see, [Lynn Jared] here says, “Thanks for making this clip, Mark. I’m sure there would be a lot more spin put on the ball during a serve that has been dropped.”

So I’m not sure about that either. Why will there be more spin? I mean, one of the important difference is, is that with the new serve rule, when you use the drop serve, there’s no more requirement that you have a low to high swing path. You can actually hit the ball however you want. The rules about the low to high swing is gone, the rule about the paddle not being higher than the wrist, that’s gone. The belly button rule doesn’t really apply anymore because the ball’s not going to bounce that high, but you can really hit it wherever you want. So I’m not sure if this is going to be more spin using a drop serve. But you can definitely use different spin. It is very, very difficult to hit a pure backspin shot with the old, traditional serve because backspin typically requires a high to low swing path and you’re not allowed that with a traditional serve. But with the drop serve, you can, so you could hit that driving backspin, and that’s going to be a really important difference, I think going into 2021. 

Alright, Kevin Bacon — Kevin Bacon plays Pickleball. Kevin Bacon asked a question, “Just curious. Why? How do lets hinder the game? I’m curious why you’re against them.” 

Okay, so he wasn’t responding to me. He was responding to someone else. So what he’s referring to is a different serving rule that is coming into effect in 2021. And that is you know when you serve and sometimes the ball clips off the top of the net and then lands where it’s supposed to, that’s called a let, right? As in, let us replay the point. Well, what they did for 2021 is they’ve removed that. So if you serve now, whether it’s a drop serve or traditional serve and it clips the top of the net, so long as it still lands where it’s supposed to in the service box, you play on, there’s no let. And the argument for that, that changed was a few of them, but one of them could be, “Hey, if I served really fast and low and it’s a great serve, and I think it was clean, it went over the net, didn’t even touch it.”

But you, as the receiver, you’d say, “Oh no, it did touch the net.” There’s potential for disagreement or whatever. So by removing lets from the game, it doesn’t actually matter whether it touches the net or not, you play on. 

I’m not sure about that. I don’t think it’s actually as big a deal as most people are making it out to be but there you go. 

[John Meisner] says, “I’m not a fan of the drop rule. Hopefully, it goes away.”

Maybe, it could go away.

Let’s see here… “Is the drop ball serve in effect ASAP?” asked Jim T.

As far as I know, it’s going to be January 25, 2021, when it’s officially in play. Although, if you’re playing with your buddies, you could use it whenever you want. Or I guess, technically if you’re playing with your buddies and you hate the drop serve rule, like a [John Meisner], you don’t have to use it at all. Maybe make a house rule that you’re not allowed to drop serve — I don’t know.

Alright, Margaret Dunbar asks, “Can the ball bounce inside the service box?” I think which she means is the court. Does it have to land somewhere if you’re doing the drop serve? 

The drop serve, when the ball lands before you hit it, you can — anywhere you want. So it could be on the line. It could be inside the court, it could be just behind. There’s no regulation about where the drop needs to take place. You, of course, still needs to be standing behind the baseline and have at least one foot on the ground when you hit it.

[Lynn Courtney] says, “Hmm, if it’s not broken, why fix it? I predict muddy “serve waters.” 

Well, Lynn, I guess to that I would say all sports evolve and maybe something doesn’t need to be broken in order to be improved or changed. But I think there’s other people who — I know there’s other people who feel the same way you do. We’ll see, we’ll find out. As for “muddy serve waters” I guess one we’re eliminating some of the challenges of refereeing by saying, “Hey, you can swing however you want if you’re hitting a drop serve.” The challenge now has to do with following the rules regarding the drop. So when you drop, you actually have to just drop it, you can’t toss the ball up at all. And so, you’ll see that sometimes people, especially if they’re not paying really close attention to it, you’ll see this in the Tyson McGuffin video that I made, where sometimes there is an inadvertent little toss that happens. So that is something to watch for and could be a little bit of a challenge when it comes to officiating.

[Kailua dude] says, “People with strong backhands may benefit from this rule change. It’s much easier to hit a hard, legal backhand serve off a bounce.”

I think that’s partly true, [Kailua dude]. The timing is very difficult when you do a backhand serve the traditional way because you sort of need to get your dropping arm out of the way in order to swing forward. And by allowing the ball to bounce first, it does give you a little more time, and we saw that with Tyson too. 

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Tyson’s New Serving Weapon [8:43]

Mark:  Welcome back to Pickleball Problems. Today, we’re talking about two of the videos I made recently related to the new serve rules; the drop serve, which is a provisional rule in 2021. And we’re talking specifically about some of the comments and questions I’ve received regarding those videos in the drop serve in general. 

I just finished talking about the first video I made, which was just introducing the drop serve and some of the changes. Let’s change gears a little bit here. The second video I made had to do with our good friend, Tyson McGuffin. He, as you know, maybe is one of the biggest servers in Pickleball. He really loves ripping that serve, really using it as an offensive shot. And I called him up and I said, “Hey Tyson, have you tried the drop serve?”

He’s like, “Oh no, man. I haven’t tried it.”

I said,”Well, hey if you go out, can you take some video and send it to me? I’ll put together a little video of you trying the drop serve for the first time. I think it’ll be pretty cool.”

And I’m going to do another show in the future where I actually speak to Tyson on the air, and we talk about going through that a little bit because there were some really interesting observations.

But right, now let’s look at the comments related to this video. So someone says here, “Thank you for sharing. Fun to watch Tyson find another serving weapon.”

And that is true, you can see in this video, he really gets some juice on those serves. 

Okay, someone here says, “Mark, it almost looked like Tyson’s follow-through –” This is from someone that called [Playin’ Pickles], “Mark, almost looked like Tyson’s follow-through is different than with the non-drop serve, the traditional serve. My elbow hurt watching him and I feel like it doesn’t when I watch his other serve. Is that an illusion or did you notice something different too?” And then he/she says in brackets, “I confess, I’m asking this question without going back and looking for videos of his serve the other way.”

Okay, so to summarize that it’s like, “Hey, is the technique different? It looks a little more uncomfortable,” so much so that [Playing Pickle] says their elbow hurts by just watching the video. 

There were some really important technical differences that I noticed, and Tyson and I talked a little bit off air. We will address those in the future. But one of them that was quite different is that he uses in the drop serve video an open stance, meaning his feet are both facing forward toward the net whereas when you normally watch him serve, he stands in a more sideways position. We call that neutral stance. So we talked a little bit about those differences actually generating more of the speed through rotation of his body, rather through a leg drive. Anyway, so maybe that’s something that you noticed, [Playin’ Pickles], but I hope your elbows are okay. 

Let’s see here… [Nance Spire] says, “Makes a difference to the balls you use too. The Dura Fast 40s bounce higher than say Penn or Onyx. Franklins tend to bounce higher too, but not in cold weather.” 

So that’s true, how much of a rebound you get will depend a little bit on the ball and that’s not something that matters really on the server, at least with the traditional serve, right? Because you just, you drop the ball and you drop the ball. So that’s true, you are going to get more of a rebound on those bouncier balls and therefore, perhaps more of an advantage.

[Andy Tesluk] says, “I think the drop server will cause a lot of controversy on the way the ball is dropped. The tendency is to do a lifting motion.” 

So Andy, yeah, that could be a possibility. One of the interesting things I talked with referee Don Stanley about this, and we’re going to do a show about it as well is let’s say you do toss the ball up a little bit, but it is still well below what could have been your maximum drop height? So let’s say I’m 5’10, let’s say I could reach up another eight inches, I don’t know, my arm is longer than that. Okay, let’s say I can reach up to a 6’5 height. And I tossed the ball, a little gentle toss, sort of inadvertent only up to the top of my head, so 5’10. So it’s still well below what I would be allowed to do, but I am technically using an illegal motion by having that gentle toss. So what’s that going to mean for refereeing? The spirit of the rule versus the letter of the rule? I don’t know. Don and I are going to talk about that, but you do bring up a good point, Andy.

[Ken Battelo] says “I’m thinking the drop serve will be helpful for players with the yips. Also, it offers the option to hit with underspin as a change of pace. I am concerned the players who hit borderline serves now will just keep doing what they have been doing and we may have new disagreements on the drop versus the toss.”

So I’m going to take the first part of what you said there, Ken. I’m thinking the drop serve will be helpful for players with the yips. In the change document, I mentioned that at the beginning of the show, in the change document where they explain the rationale for these decisions, one of the things they said was they think that this might be easier for some beginning players. The other was that they actually use the word “the yips” although they put it in quotation marks. I’m not sure that’s a good rationale for changing a rule. I can think of lots of other rationales for changing a rule, but to say like, “Oh, sometimes you get the yips. We’re going to make it easier for you to overcome them.” I don’t know, that seems strange to me. It’s like, “Well, I don’t know, when I hit my return of serve, it often goes long. I have the yips getting the return in play. Are we going to make a real change for that?” I don’t know. I think that’s when you call up your friendly neighborhood coach. 

Anyway, let’s move along here. Still looking at these comments from the Tyson McGuffin video. 

Someone says, “I think I saw Ben Johns using that same black paddle a couple of weeks ago. Maybe they’re testing a new paddle out?”

Alright, so in this video with Tyson, Tyson of course together, we are on Team Selkirk. Tyson, in this video, was using a familiar shaped paddle, but it was all black, it didn’t have any logos on it. And what you’re seeing there, Josh, is that he’s using a prototype, right? This is often what the companies will do, is they’ll find like, sort of identify some top players that they want to test out something new and see how it’s going. And they’re going to just give you a black one because the makeup and the design of the paddle comes before, whatever graphics they’re going to put on it. And so that’s likely what was — well, I can tell you for certain that’s what was happening.

As for Ben Johns, I doubt that that’s happening. Ben John is sponsored by a different company, so they will probably do something similar where again, sort of the prototype version won’t have any graphics on it. Maybe that’s what you saw. 

[Russ] says, “How is the speed of that serve — the drop serve, Tysons, compared to his traditional serve?” 

You’re going to have to watch the video, Russ, because it comes out that he says a thing or two about that. Check it out. 

Okay, last question here. [Anne Maze] says, “I see a major issue for us older players. Unless you’re not concerned with power and speed, you’re generating all the power from your arm shoulder. It’s fine when you’re under 50, but you are risking shoulder issues over 50. You can, however, get some cool spin.”

Okay, so, Anne, I think if you watch the video carefully, you’ll see that it’s not just his arm. You will see that rotation. I even called it out and sort of highlight something specific related to that rotation,. A person can of course serve just with their arm. When you use smaller joints, like the joints involved with your arm; your wrist, your hand, your elbow, your forearm, then you’re putting more stress on them than you would be if you’re using bigger, stronger joints. But again, like you said, you don’t have to serve really hard. Anyway, if you go back and look at that video a little more carefully, I think you’ll see that there’s still some of those big, strong parts doing the work here. 

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Back to the Drop Serve [16:46]

Mark:  Hello, and welcome back to Pickleball Problems. I’m your host, Mark Renneson. Today, we’re talking about the drop serve and specifically about two videos I made related to the drop serve, which is new for 2021. 

One of the videos was a general introduction to the drop serve and the other was a more targeted video. We asked our friend, Tyson McGuffin, to hit drop serves for the very first time and to record it. We put together a little video of what that looked like. I thought that was a really cool video because you could see him sort of working through the process of trying to figure out how he might use this to his advantage. This was the very first time he had tried it and I had someone write to me and say, “Hey, it was really cool being a fly on the wall for watching Tyson worked through this.” And I  really enjoyed that too. 

[Tim Laurent] in Minneapolis writes, “I love all the possibilities of the drop serve. I can’t wait to see how some of these serves will respond to some wind and a side-slicing serve. I hope they keep it in effect.” 

I agree with you, Tim. I think it’s going to be really exciting. 

Someone named [Cesac31] says, “It sucks!” They also say that they are keeping hope alive. I’m not sure quite what that means, but it’s cool. 

Robin Kelly writes in the email, “Players of Tyson’s youth and ability will have no trouble using the drop serve. It’ll be interesting to see if you use it in tournaments. I’ve tried it and felt very awkward with no positive results. I’ll stick with my regular serve. Thank you very much. I hope they never make the drop serve mandatory, but they probably will if people like it. I don’t think having two legal serves so different is good for the sport.” It actually wasn’t Robin Kelly, it was Warren Kelly, who’s a loyal subscriber to Inside Pickleball.

Inside Pickleball is our newsletter. You can get it at ThirdShotSports.com/newsletter. 

Let’s see, Gary says, “I think the new rule is great. Any server that in the past was using a more level paddle serve can now use the drops are and not have to worry about being illegal. It’s easier on everyone.” 

On Facebook, by the way, you should check out the Third Shot Sports Facebook page. We post all sorts of cool stuff there as well as over at our Instagram.

Sammy Lee writes, “If anyone is wishing Pickleball to go Olympic, please don’t voice a ban on this serve. The drop serve was created for beginners. We can see how the pros will run with it. This is a game-changer and I love it!” 

A lot wrapped up in that one comment there, Sammy. We’ll see.

David Stephan writes, “It will be interesting for me to see how strict refs will be about the small tosses. Tyson’s tosses were very small and the ascent of the ball wasn’t anywhere close to the maximum allowable height. Will refs follow the letter or the spirit of the law?” — good question.

[Pickleball Pro] was being a bit of a wordsmith here and says, “We’ll see how it plays out. Literally.” 

And Atlanta McGrath, we’ll finish up with her, says “Fascinating to watch this session.”

So if you like those videos, I’ll put them in the show notes here. You can also find them over at our YouTube page, youtube.com/thirdshotsports. 

A couple other quick promos. I already mentioned our newsletter. We’ve really been investing a lot of time and effort into our new newsletter, Inside Pickleball. You can get that at thirdshotsports.com/newsletter. You should check out our other cool projects, ThePickleballLab.com. We post all sorts of exclusive stuff for Pickleball Labs subscribers only. You can get it for $99 for the entire year. And if you’re a Pickleball coach or you want to get started, be sure to check out PickleballCoachingInternational.com. 

Alright, that’s it for now. I’m Mark Renneson. Thanks for listening to Pickleball Problems. If I don’t talk to you before, happy new year!