How Pickleball is Slowly Ruining My Life 🥒
(In the best possible way. 😉)
I grew up in Dehradun, India, playing cricket until midnight under whatever light was available. I got into Formula 1 about three years ago and immediately became insufferable about it. I finished Returnal — a video game designed by people who want you to suffer. I thought I knew what competition felt like.
Then I picked up a pickleball paddle. And a 68-year-old retired teacher with a soft dink and absolutely no mercy completely destroyed me.
I've been hooked ever since.
🤔 Wait, what even is pickleball?
It's a sport played on a court about a quarter the size of a tennis court, with a plastic wiffle ball, solid paddles, and a net slightly lower than tennis. It looks gentle from the outside. It is not gentle. It is a sport disguised as a casual activity, designed to lure in unsuspecting adults and then immediately humble them.
It's also the fastest growing sport in North America right now. Somewhere between tennis and ping pong had a baby, and that baby is extremely loud and somehow always wants to play at 7am on a Saturday.
"Pickleball is the sport where you think you're getting exercise and end up getting a philosophy lesson about patience." — Me, after my first week
📖 The vocabulary (because you'll need it)
Before I tell you about my journey, here's the glossary. You're going to need this:
| Term | What it actually means |
|---|---|
| The Kitchen | The non-volley zone — a 7-foot area on each side of the net where you cannot hit the ball in the air. It is the most important real estate on the court. It is also where I spent the first two weeks standing, confused, and getting yelled at. |
| Dinking | Soft, controlled shots that land in the kitchen. The refined art of doing less. Sounds boring. Is actually chess. The person who loses patience dinking first, loses the point. |
| The Third Shot Drop | After the serve and return, the serving team hits a soft arcing shot into the kitchen to reset the point. This is considered the most important shot in the game. I am still learning it. It is not going well. |
| Banging | Hitting the ball as hard as possible. The beginner's first instinct. Often works against other beginners. Fails spectacularly against anyone who can dink. |
| Getting Pickled | Losing 11-0. Not a single point scored. Your opponent shouts "pickle!" You stand there and consider your life choices. |
| Stacking | A doubles strategy where both players position on the same side after the serve, then shift. Looks confusing. Is confusing. Works brilliantly when you actually know what you're doing. |
| The Erne | An advanced shot where you jump around the kitchen post to volley the ball. Looks athletic and aggressive. I have attempted this exactly once. We don't talk about it. |
| ATP (Around the Post) | Hitting the ball around the net post instead of over it — technically legal. The most showboat shot in pickleball. The crowd goes wild. I have never successfully hit one in a game. |
| Poaching | Crossing to take your partner's shot in doubles. Either heroic or the fastest way to destroy a friendship, depending on execution. |
🎭 My first week (a tragedy in three acts)
I showed up thinking my hand-eye coordination from years of cricket would translate directly. I was fast. I was confident. I was wrong. I got pickled in my first game. Eleven points to zero. The paddle felt like a toy. I couldn't figure out why every shot I hit went to the wrong place.
I discovered "banging." Hitting hard. If the soft game wasn't working, power would fix it. I started smashing everything. This worked for exactly three games against complete beginners, then stopped working entirely when I played anyone who knew what a dink was. They just absorbed every hard shot and put it softly back in the kitchen. I ran myself ragged chasing them while they barely moved.
I watched a YouTube video of professional pickleball. These people barely moved. They stood at the kitchen line, hit soft shots back and forth, waited patiently, and then — at exactly the right moment — ended the point with a precise put-away. I realized I had been playing the wrong game entirely.
"Pickleball is 80% mental, 15% soft game, and 5% moments where you absolutely smash something and it feels incredible." — Also me
🌀 The serve that drives people nuts
I found my weapon around week three. The side spin serve.
Most people serve flat — straight, predictable, easy to return. The side spin serve curves after it bounces. Not dramatically. Just enough. The ball lands and then moves sideways, away from where the returner expects it to go. They either miss it entirely or pop it up, giving you an easy put-away.
The first time I hit it well in a game, my opponent looked at the ball, looked at me, looked at the ball again, and said "what was that?" I smiled and said nothing. I have been perfecting it ever since.
It doesn't always work. Against experienced players who've seen every serve, they read it and punish you for it. But against anyone new to the game? Absolute chaos. I live for the look on their face when the ball moves the wrong way.
🧘 Learning to dink (the hardest easy thing)
Dinking is the soft game. Short, low shots that land in the kitchen and force your opponent to hit up. It looks effortless. It is not effortless.
The dink requires you to do everything that feels unnatural in a competitive sport. Hit softer when you want to hit harder. Move slower when you want to move faster. Be patient when every instinct says finish the point now. You're essentially playing a slow-motion chess match at the net while your arms vibrate from the effort of restraint.
I am not a patient person by nature. Ask anyone on my engineering team. I want the solution and I want it before the meeting about whether the solution is possible. Dinking has been, unexpectedly, a meditation course.
I'm not good at it yet. But I'm getting better. I can now sustain a dink rally for about eight shots before I get impatient and smash something I shouldn't. Progress.
😤 Getting pickled (it happens to everyone)
I've been pickled twice since I started. Eleven-zero. Both times were humbling in a way that only sport can truly deliver — that specific silence after the last point where there's genuinely nothing to say.
The first time I blamed my partner. (We were playing doubles. They were worse than me. This was convenient and also completely unfair.)
The second time I had no partner to blame. Singles. Just me and a guy who had been playing for four years and clearly thought of this as a warm-up. He didn't even breathe hard. I walked off the court, drank an entire bottle of water, and spent ten minutes staring at the fence.
Then I booked another court for the next day.
That's the thing about pickleball. The loss doesn't make you want to quit. It makes you want to figure out what just happened and come back better. I haven't felt that competitive itch this strongly since I was running down cricket balls at midnight in Dehradun.
⚖️ The weight — 97kg to 92kg in a month
I didn't start pickleball to lose weight. I started it because it looked fun and I needed something that wasn't a gym. I hate gyms. Treadmills feel like a punishment for crimes I don't remember committing.
But a month in, I've dropped 5 kilograms without particularly trying. Here's why:
A one-hour pickleball session burns between 600 and 1,000 calories depending on intensity. You're moving constantly — lateral shuffles, split steps, net rushes — but because you're focused on the game, you don't notice you're working that hard until you stop and realize you're completely soaked.
More importantly: I want to play. I don't have to drag myself out. I'm booking courts. I'm waking up early. I'm the person now suggesting "one more game" when everyone else wants to leave. That's the difference between exercise you endure and movement you choose.
I have a baby girl at home who is eight months old and whose entire vocabulary is "Dadda." She deserves a Dadda who can keep up with her when she starts running. That motivation is worth more than any gym membership I've ever bought and abandoned. 👶
"The best workout is the one you actually do." — Every fitness coach ever, but they're right
92kg and dropping. Still have a long way to go. Not stopping.
Where I am now
About a month in. Playing three to four times a week. Down 5 kilograms. Can sustain a dink rally without immediately abandoning it in panic. Landing my side spin serve about 70% of the time. Got pickled twice, won some games I had no business winning, lost some I should have won.
Still can't execute the third shot drop consistently. Still occasionally poach my partner's shot at the worst possible moment. Still haven't successfully hit an ATP in a real game.
Still booking courts.
"It never gets easier. You just get better." — Greg LeMond, about cycling. Applies exactly to pickleball.
If you've been on the fence about trying it — don't be. Show up, get humbled, come back. The community is friendly, the learning curve is real but survivable, and somewhere around week three something clicks and you start to see the game inside the game.
That's the moment. Worth getting there.
Disclosure: This post was written by Gautam Marya with Claude (Anthropic). The pickleball losses are real. The side spin serve is real. The 5kg are very real and very gone.