Recently, the Bounce team sat down with pickleball player Meredith. She played college tennis at Mississippi State and Belmont and then started playing pickleball after she graduated.
Meredith attends open play sessions across Nashville and has started playing more tournaments in the region. She even won Bounce’s Nashville Invitational last year! Below Meredith shares some great advice on how to get started with open play and tournaments.
How long have you been playing pickleball?
I’ve been playing consistently since June of last year. I had played three or four times before that with my family. My mom had originally got into it, and she kept telling me that I’d love it.
In tennis, my strengths were always my hand-eye coordination and short movements. She was like pickleball is your dream. Then, I started playing with her, and I loved it. When I finished playing college tennis at Belmont, I took a few weeks off and then immediately went to an open play in Nashville at Richland Park.
What are some of the things that made the transition from tennis to pickleball easy? And what made it challenging?
Obviously, the strokes and courts are similar so that helped, along with having hand-eye coordination from tennis. So, it's like I was doing the same thing except a slightly different version. And that helped because you get muscle memory from the strokes.
But the challenging part was that at the same time, it’s so different. I wanted to hit everything hard at the beginning, but you can only get so far doing that. Now I’m learning more of the soft game, the dinks and the third balls, because that’s what can separate you from other people.
How often do you play pickleball?
When I first started in June, I was playing with anyone, wherever, whenever I could. I’m pretty sure I’ve played at every pickleball court in Nashville, because I’ve played with so many different people. I don’t care what level you are at all. I just love pickleball.
In the summer, I played a lot more. It went from six days to five days as the weather turned bad, and now I’m not playing as much. But when it starts getting nicer outside, I’ll be out there all the time.
Have you played any tournaments recently?
I’m trying to play a ton more tournaments in the spring. After I played Bounce’s Nashville Invitational tournament, I thought I needed to learn some more things about pickleball before going back out there.
I’m the most competitive human alive. I hate competing when I don’t know everything about it. I feel like I’ve learned a ton since then, and I’m planning to play a ton this spring.
But you did win the Nashville Invitational!
(laughs)
What advice would you give to someone looking to make the jump from open play to competitive play?
Get to the point where you’re consistently playing at a good level. Practice as much as you can until you feel you’re ready for a tournament. I think I may have gone out a little prematurely.
When I had started playing tournaments, I had done third shot bounces. But when you’re in a tournament and haven’t worked on a certain shot a ton, you won’t do it. You’ll only do what you’re comfortable with. So, get to the point where you’re comfortable doing the things that are harder for you.
What do you like the most about the pickleball community?
The pickleball community feels similar to the running community in the sense that most people are really inclusive. Everybody’s okay with playing with everyone, especially at open play sessions. At my first open play, everybody said they didn’t care what level I was at.
There will always be certain people that do care, but when I went, it felt like a social event. Everyone was so open and kind. I’ve really enjoyed meeting a lot of people in the pickleball community. These are often people that wouldn’t typically be in your friend group unless you have a common interest in pickleball.
When it rained at the Nashville Invitational, a group of us was sitting in a bar. It was me – a woman in her early 20s – a man in his late 40s and two men in their early 30s. Someone came up to us and asked us how we all knew each other.
That’s something I really appreciate about pickleball. You get to meet all different types of people and be around people with different perspectives. I’ve become really good friends with quite a few people I’ve met through pickleball.
For anyone who wants to get started playing pickleball in Nashville, what advice would you give them?
Join the Nashville Pickleball Facebook Group, and from there, find an open play near you to go to. That’s how I found the first open play I attended, and from there, I started going to different open plays all the time by myself.
Make as many contacts as you can. With every single person you play with, say you’d love to play with them again. This will help you grow your contact base, and the more you do that, different people will start inviting you to play with other people.
At this point, people are texting me all the time. And the only thing that’s going to make you better is going out there and playing, playing, playing. It doesn’t really matter how good the people are as long as you’re just doing the reps.
If you could play a tournament with any celebrity, who would it be and why?
It would be super cool to play with Anna Leigh Waters or Ben Johns. I love watching them play and really admire their games.
