Category: In the News

Robert Quall writes the Tennis Tips column for the Merced County Times newspaper. He wrote the following article following clinics that we ran in spring 2024.

New kid on the block

TENNIS TIPS
BY ROBERT QUALL

I have given numerous tennis lessons over the past 66 years. I started giving lessons for pay when I was 18! Never have taken a tennis lesson-probably should have. Can’t say that about pickleball! Just took a three hour pickleball lesson that cost me $70! I got tired of Kathryn Nutcher clogging up my text messages with incentives (not money) if I joined her in a group lesson. I think the incentives were four diet cokes!

I knew pickleball players were invading Merced, I didn’t realize how many! Love it or leave it, pickleball is here to stay! According to Jill Gooden, an excellent player, there are over 250 pickleball players in the immediate area of Merced. I know Los Banos sports over 150 players.

What makes the sport so popular? For one thing, you can learn the basics of pickleball in about an hour. That includes rules, shot making, scoring, and so on! If you can play ping pong, you are on your way!

Tennis demands years and years of practice to become proficient. Mediocre tennis players still have many hours of training under their belt! One hundred serves, two hundred forehands, and so on!

I have not yet gone over to the dark side but can see pickleball is lots of fun to play! There all kinds of levels for all ages and skill levels. Pickleball has developed essentially all levels of play so that everyone can be competitive. Although pickleball is very easy to learn you can advance as far as you want towards becoming a professional.

John and Letha Rodrigues, touring professional pickleball instructors, came into Merced three weeks ago. They offered three hour clinics to over 60 pickleball enthusiasts and gave 16 private lessons. After six days teaching on Rose Opinski’s state of the art pickleball complex, they left town escorted by Brink’s armory. Just kidding!

I think with a week’s worth of practice I could be competitive, especially with the other 84 year olds if there are any around. I played lots of ping pong in college when I should have been studying-never tried to enter an Ivy league school!

In Shape has pickleball courts so you have no excuse.

Robert Quall is a former Merced County Superior Court judge and prosecutor who lives in Merced.