Pace or Place?

Good shots come to those who wait...

Last Saturday's post - You're Winning but Haven't Won - was yet another reminder of the patience needed to get an attackable ball...and to continue to hit unattackable balls. Today's post is a different version of that same theme. It is based on a short conversation I had with a player who is still learning the game.

I normally play indoors. But I try to get outdoors when I can in order to practice for the upcoming outdoor tournaments. I had an opportunity to play at my home-club courts on an unusually warm day recently. Many players there are new to the game in the last year so I use some of my play to get used to outdoor conditions while I work on specific shots. With other players still learning the intricacies of strategies and techniques, I get lots of questions.

On this day, I worked a lot on the soft game - dinks and drops. As the play was winding down, one player was on her way home when she said something like "You really hit a lot of slow-paced balls". My immediate response was "My game was all about pace. If I don't get the pace right, I will lose". Later that day, I thought about that response and wished I would have stated it differently.

I wish I would have answered this way:

Pace is not my goal. But I have to use pace to hit the target I have in mind.

In other words, I want to target a point in front of an opponent that I cannot hit with a hard stroke. In order to hit that target, I MUST hit soft. It fits the commonly-used saying "If you're hitting up, hit it soft. If you're hitting down, hit it hard." That can be overly-simplistic, but the general gist remains true. Pace must be slower when a ball is unattackable.

So, the answer to the post title question, place is the strategic goal. But the tactic of using pace allows me to successfully attain the strategic goal.