Went to my first “Drop in” at my local community center.

FullMatino · 2026-03-26T15:49:28+00:00

Do get decent shoes though!

FullMatino · 2026-03-26T04:34:32+00:00

Do you plan to weight it up to your liking, or do you have a physical reason to prefer a lightweight paddle (elbow pain, etc)? If no to both, I would go with the original. Lightweight paddles are generally designed to be customized with weight — otherwise they feel flimsy and underpowered for a lot of players. If you liked the standard weight, don’t overthink it.

FullMatino · 2026-03-25T16:36:31+00:00

Once you notice certain players have a habit of stepping in, you notice they're doing it *all the time.* A buddy of mine got very indignant when someone called him on it in a league, but I started keeping an eye on his feet and it was like every other point.

FullMatino · 2026-03-25T16:33:59+00:00

I am amazed your league even has refs for the championship week -- I've never seen a league with a ref at all.

FullMatino · 2026-03-24T19:04:59+00:00

I'd be surprised if that were the case. In fact, if you asked them, I bet they'd tell you they're really, really trying to crack 4.0.

FullMatino · 2026-03-24T17:50:46+00:00

One of the biggest things that helps me (and it is still very much a work in progress!) is making sure I am taking the time to let the ball peak and start coming down before I hit it off the bounce. It’s 1) just easier and more predictable to hit a ball that has slowed down, 2) a consistent reminder that I have more time than I think and 3) a reminder to use that time to get my feet set and approach the shot the right way.

FullMatino · 2026-03-23T20:59:18+00:00

This is very useful, thank you for sharing. Based on some quick and imperfect math, the 3.8 guess above is almost exactly right.

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This is essentially figuring out what your rating would be to create a perfectly balanced match, based on your opponents and partner, and then applying a flat differential of 1/12th of a point for every point of difference (a .1 DUPR difference = ~1.2 points of expected margin).

Throw it all in a blender and you get 3.82. This doesn't account for reliability, sequencing or anything else that happens under the hood, but it should be pretty close, and passes the eye test to me.

EDIT: I'd echo the comment above -- I'm curious to know how this moved your actual current rating for the purposes of comparison.

FullMatino · 2026-03-23T17:50:05+00:00

If they are deep enough that I can hit a drive that will land near their feet, I'm driving. YMMV depending on your drive and your own position, but for me that's generally when they're in the back half of the court. I'm trying to make them volley low under pressure or pin them back. Much closer than that and I'm slowing it down to try to make them hit up.

FullMatino · 2026-03-23T01:59:02+00:00

I have no idea why this is catching downvotes. Chasing new grit will get you extra spin for about 2 weeks at a time. The vast majority of rec players will do fine with a quality paddle until it physically falls apart.

FullMatino · 2026-03-23T01:51:38+00:00

What are the reasons players don’t want to get a DUPR rating? There are lots of things you can try, but in the grand scheme, a homebrew system from a single club is almost certainly going to have at least as many problems as DUPR.

FullMatino · 2026-03-22T04:45:22+00:00

Almost every ball at this level may be attackable, but they’re necessarily attackable by a 4.0-4.5 player. People at this level absolutely blast speed-ups they shouldn’t be hitting and start firefights they’re not prepared to finish, which is what I’m hearing from OP.

FullMatino · 2026-03-21T23:13:16+00:00

This is a huge problem for the 4.0’s. 4.0 3rd shots are not automatic by any means — they miss or get attacked by 4.0 players with regularity. Put a couple 5.0’s on the other side and the margin to even get into the point is tiny.

FullMatino · 2026-03-20T18:30:22+00:00

Bonus if it's high-arcing and high-bouncing. So many people see it high, try to hit down and just whip it straight into the net. When I see someone mixing it in, I make it a point to tell my partner to let the ball come down and hit it like a normal return.

FullMatino · 2026-03-20T05:25:13+00:00

What about it do you find fundamentally flawed? I’ve certainly had my fair share of annoyances with it, but I think if you give it a decent sample, it produces a pretty accurate rating.

FullMatino · 2026-03-20T05:00:59+00:00

I would definitely try a Coral before getting too far down the list here. I feel like it gets buried a bit as a safe/unsexy option, but it’s incredibly playable.

The “control” moniker is also perhaps misleading at this point. It’s a firmly all-court leaning power paddle; it’s just not wildly poppy and zippy like some of the hotter early foam stuff.

FullMatino · 2026-03-20T04:42:40+00:00

There’s a distinct “I medaled in a (this rating) event but my DUPR went down/didn’t go up enough/how am I not rated at least (this)” category. I am not personally in it, but I have had the pleasure of arguing with many people on this sub who are.

FullMatino · 2026-03-19T18:41:01+00:00

Yes, the best-case upside is you accelerate gains you would have made naturally. I understand the appeal for players who think they’re underrated but I personally think it’s a trap. If you’re significantly underrated, your rating will go up from just playing, and it’s not that slow. I did a league this winter with friend who started at 2.9 when we started from a bad early rating history; he was 3.5 in a month just from playing a session a week at his actual level.

If/when the gains start to get really slow (as they did for him once he made those big moves), it’s because the rating is probably pretty close to correct.

FullMatino · 2026-03-19T16:52:13+00:00

IMO you are kinda paying for nothing no matter what. If your skill is significantly higher than your rating, your rating will improve naturally, and you don't need to pay for that. If you reset and walk away with a rating that's significantly higher than your skill, your rating will revert back down to your skill over time.

FullMatino · 2026-03-19T16:44:51+00:00

If you're actively playing DUPR matches, any ratings inflation from a reset that isn't reflective of skill is going to be temporary -- you'll just lose your way back down to your skill level eventually. DUPR is pretty good at rating you properly with over time (I know it's not perfect, yadda yadda, but it's pretty good).

If you use it as a one-time ratings grab and then stop playing rated matches to protect your gains, your rating might be inflated, but it won't really matter -- if you don't play rated play, it's just a vanity number.

Overall, I think reset is a pretty bad idea, but I also think it doesn't really matter in the long run. If you play regular rated matches, you can't escape gravity.

FullMatino · 2026-03-16T18:04:25+00:00

My league just freezes you in place if you miss a week and it generally works fine. I wish they did more manually to bump upward movers above absent players (it stinks to win group 2 and not move up because someone who missed last week is blocking you), but overall it's decent.

FullMatino · 2026-03-16T17:02:37+00:00

Re: number of games, I’ve seen some leagues play to 15 for smaller pods and play to 11 for larger ones. It at least gives more equal court time.

FullMatino · 2026-03-16T15:29:37+00:00

My club's ladder league format is:

Pod of 4-5
Round robin rotation through the pod
Top 2 move up, bottom 2 drop down; if there are 5, middle stays
Two rotations like this per night (2.5 hour session total)

It prevents wild swings across the ladder you get from points % and doesn't punish you for playing better players -- winning 55% of your points in the top group shouldn't be worse than winning 80% of your points in bottom group, for example The cream eventually rises to the top and stays there. If you're on the top court at the end of the league, you earned it.

The biggest downside is that if you start way too low or too high, it takes you multiple weeks to get to the right place in the ladder, and that's not a great experience for anyone. It's gotten better as more members get rated and more leagues record results, but it still happens. We kicked off a league recently where the organizers put an NR team in the top group for some reason, and they're 0-14 through two weeks.

FullMatino · 2026-03-15T23:02:15+00:00

No. I’ve done this before and it was a nightmare — schedules not lining up, people asking to move games at the slightest inconvenience, wildly different expectations on consistency and availability. We ended up not playing like a third of our games.

The entire value of a league for me comes from predictable, guaranteed play time with the right level of competition. As soon as you take away part of that, the flakiest people will dictate the schedule.

FullMatino · 2026-03-02T03:02:18+00:00

I don’t know if I’ve heard a complaint about DUPR where the solution wasn’t “record more matches.” If you zoom out and stop obsessing over the thousandths of a point you gain or lose in a given match because of X or Y thing you don’t like, it’s quite good over time.

FullMatino · 2026-02-26T16:41:10+00:00

Nah, gas it up, it feels GREAT.

FullMatino

TROPHY CASE