A man with a shaved head wearing a white undershirt from the nineties slams into the fence next to us.
“Oop, almost got it.” He points to the yellow ball now bouncing between the courts. Sam rushes to catch it before it rolls back to the check-in desk, then tosses it over the fence. The man salutes, then turns back to the group on the court, shouting, “Six to two, I’m a one!” and smacking the ball from the baseline with a grunt.
Sam raises an eyebrow. “You were saying?”
Okay, so maybe I need to chill out. These people all look approachable. Maybe this isn't like the tennis clubs I grew up with. Plus, if they named the sport pickleball, they had to know that dirty jokes were on the horizon.
I scan the courts on either side of us as we walk the last twenty feet to court number three. Most people play in groups of four, and there’s a good range of ages. Comforting, considering how my dad reacted when I told him I was taking lessons.You’re young. Play tennis now while you still can. Pickleball is for after you get a hip replacement.
Then my eyes land on a man standing on the court across from ours. He’s tall, obviously athletic, though I can only see him from the back. His calf muscles flex as he shuffles and smacks a ball with a loud pop, then moves back and gets in position for another one from the ball machine positioned on the other side of the net.
His strokes are smooth, strong. The ball whistles in a perfect arc, nearly grazing the net and hitting deep in the back corner of the court. I don’t know much about pickleball, but it feels like that’s what it should look like when it’s done well.
He hits one into the net and growls something under his breath, then smacks his paddle against his thigh.
“Someone takes himself a little too seriously,” I murmur, then jump at the sound of my name.
“Hey! Alecia and Sam?” A man with a kind smile and salt-and-pepper hair wearing an official navy-blue Smash Point T-shirt and black shorts waves us over to the fence at court three. “I’m Frank.” He puts out a hand, and we each shake it, introducing ourselves.
Frank pushes open the gate, nudging the cart full of balls to the side so we can enter. “Hang your bags there, and water bottles can go in the corner.”
I nod and hang my purse on the hooks, noting that everyone else seems to have bags with hooks on them. They’re hanging directly on the black chain link fences surrounding the courts.
“I didn’t bring a water bottle,” Sam hisses.
I set mine down on the floor. “You can share mine.”
She wrinkles her nose, and I laugh. “It’s not like I lick the nozzle.” We don’t say it, but we both know she’ll be removing the lid and waterfalling.
“Alright,” Frank says, clapping his hands. “Welcome to Smash Point. We’ll start with the basics. Today is a dink day.”He grins, like he’s waiting for us to comment. I mean, he did say “dink.”
Sam keeps her mouth shut. I can almost feel the energy building from her internal struggle.
I clear my throat and point to the line at the top of the court. “That’s up by the net, right?” I did some research the night before, so the word isn’t completely foreign.
Frank looks pleased. He has smile lines around his eyes and mouth, and I can’t help but think of my grandfather. “Good, Alecia. Dinking is the soft game. It’s like flirting with the ball. No big swings. We’re just getting to know each other.” He laughs at his own joke and twists his paddle in his hand. “We’ll talk about the rules of the game a little later, but for now, let’s warm up.”
He walks toward the net, and we follow. The court smells like acrylic coating, and I suddenly feel nine years old again, holding a tennis racquet that’s almost as big as I am. There’s that thrum in my chest, the rush of adrenaline.
“Let’s stand at the non-volley line.” Frank points to the thick white line running parallel to the net. “Sometimes called the kitchen line. You can’t volley—hit the ball out of the air—while standing inside of it. You can step in the kitchen to play a ball that bounces, but then you’ll want to step back out as soon as you can.”
I nod and get my paddle into position, but Frank appears at my elbow. “Let’s try this grip.” He rotates my hand. “Continental. Like you’re shaking hands with the paddle.”
Sam and I both do the handshake as Frank rounds the net to face us on the other side of the court. “Soft knees,” he says. “Paddle out in front. Think ‘gentle hands,’ a little looser grip. The goal is to drop the ball over the net and into their kitchen so it bounces low. Make your opponent hit up. Ready?”
I glance at Sam. She’s already sweating. If she weren’t holding her paddle, I’m pretty sure she’d be giving me the finger.
Frank rolls a ball with his sneaker, pops it to himself, and floats it over the net. I stab at it, and the ball hop-skips off my paddle into the bottom of the net.
“Perfect,” Frank says cheerfully. “That’s exactly what ninety-nine percent of tennis players do. Try this,” he says, demonstrating a tiny lift with his wrist, like he’s tossing a bubble. “Use your legs a little, and keep the paddle face a touch open. Meet the ball out front.”
“Yeah, Alecia. Meet the ball out front,” Sam murmurs, and I snort. She’s not cracking jokes a second later because a ball comes to her next, but she does get it over the net in a tall, rainbow arc. “I did it! Did you see that?” She turns to me with a look of complete joy.
I laugh and sink into my knees, remembering what a ready position feels like. When I was sixteen, Dad strung a net in our driveway so I could practice volleys against the garage door. I wore a groove in the concrete and made our garage look like it’d survived a horizontal hail storm. “Gentle” wasn’t part of our vocabulary.
Frank sends another soft ball. I keep the paddle face open, hold my arm out, and let the ball land on the face. It bounces off like it’s a marshmallow, flutters over barely skimming the net, and lands on the other side.
“Yes,” Frank says, satisfied. “Do that again a hundred times.”
