I've been hearing about pickleball for quite a while now... I would say that I have been hearing about it a bit too much and to me it started to be something that annoyed me when I would hear about it because the people who like it seem to really like it and when that happens I immediately start thinking about cults.
Thankfully, there were no religious undertones when I did go and it was just me and 3 of my buddies, none of who are in super awesome shape so that put me at east right away.
That place doesn't look like much, I know but construction standards in Vietnam seem to consist of "if you can get it to stand up, it's legal" when it comes to one-story structures. This place is very basic looking on the outside but it was pretty damn nice on the inside.
I didn't know a great deal about the sport when I started but my friends assured me that they would walk me through the rules and in a way it is kind of like tennis but less fast.
The ball itself is a hollow piece of plastic kind of like a whiffle baseball, but it has a bunch of holes in it so that it can't be bent or made too much of a crazy angle on it when you hit it. Some people try to do that anyway I guess but not really in my group. We were just happy to keep it in bounds.
One thing I do like is that you serve underhand... actually you are required to do so. One thing that chased me away from tennis in the past is because the overhand serve was something that I just couldn't get the hang of.
Lemon Pickleball has only 4 courts but according to my friends who play here weekly it is almost always fully booked especially at super early times in the morning that I was never going to participate in anyway. Who goes to play a sport at 4am? not this guy, that is for sure.
We were in there from 10-12 and even though we are still in the spring portion of the year, it is blazingly hot in there. I brought 3 sweatbands with me and they were all disgustingly saturated by the time I left. I am going to need to remember to bring a plastic bag with me if they invite me back because the inside of my backpack is disgusting now.
When I first arrived I was kind of worried that our (my) shots were going to be flying wildly into other games adjacent to us but I quickly found out that unless you are intentionally trying to hit someone else the ball never really moves fast enough to crush anyone in the face or at least if it does, it is really rare. Our ball never entered the neighboring court surprisingly.
One important rule that was tough to beat into my thick skull was that you are not allowed to play in what is called "the kitchen." That's the pink area in front of the net. Why are you not allowed to play there? Don't know! Why is it called the kitchen? I also don't know!
I think that this is a good sport for people who aren't massively athletic because I actually made some good shots in the 7 or so games that we played over 2 hours and if the amount of sweat I produced is any sort of indication of how much of a workout it is, it's a pretty good workout.
One thing I also noticed is that outside of certain situations it is actually kind of counterproductive to try to smash the ball because if you do that it is going to likely fly out of bounds. Instead it is a game of finesse and placement and I don't have that ability yet either, but I think I would like to work on it.
This is great news for me because I often struggle to find things to do in this town other than just meet up with people at the pubs, walk my dog (and let's be honest this normally ends up at a pub as well), or just stay at home on my own watching movies.
This could be a new chapter in my life and I can confirm, it isn't a cult! Unfortunately they don't allow dogs here so Nadi will have to stay at home!
