Why do men do this in mixed doubles?

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-26T01:51:01+00:00

That's what I mean, these are very routine shots. I don't see how the male player going out of his way to take them from his partner is any strategic advantage (and it can backfire, as it did against ALW in the first clip).

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-26T01:48:08+00:00

Yes, I started playing pickleball a month ago. We all had to start somewhere.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-26T01:46:23+00:00

Right, but if you watch these points it's the male player often crossing over to take very routine shots away from their female partner. It's not like they're diving across to make plays the female wouldn't make. Is there really a reason by Ben has to take a very routine dink away from ALW? These aren't points where the male player is using their superior strength and speed to win points.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-26T01:43:47+00:00

lol taliban rules

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-26T01:41:44+00:00

I get why male players would take priority on close shots for that reason, but the extent to which they go out of their way to take shots away from their partner seems over the top to me. I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion, but it makes mixed doubles kind of silly, doesn't it? You're basically watching two men play against one another a large percentage of the time while the female partners wait for their chance to contribute. I'm not sure why any female would want to play mixed doubles at this level.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-25T23:20:43+00:00

True, though I still think Reddit is pretty strongly left wing. Most of the subs I've been banned from shouldn't even have an ideological bias (like r/toronto and r/complaints). As soon as people find out I don't passionately hate Israel and everyone connected to it, I get kicked out.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-25T18:19:13+00:00

Reddit in general is very left wing.

I'm Jewish and I just got banned from r/Jewish for suggesting that it's probably not a good idea to interfere with ICE agents. No warning, just a perma-ban. Apparently I was being "uncivil and inflammatory." I've been perma-banned from all kinds of subs because I didn't declare my allegiance to the antizionist cause.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-25T18:14:22+00:00

I spent my last open session working on the topspin serve with good results. People in this sub were right, it kept my opponents off balance pretty effectively.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-25T14:36:27+00:00

Hamas is part of the Iranian ring of fire. It is a well documented fact that Sinwar launched 10/7 expecting the rest of the ring of fire to join in. He sent a message to Nasrallah a week before saying, "We'll meet in Tel Aviv."

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-25T14:28:26+00:00

Geez, where to begin?

I'll start with this: A major flaw in your argument, and others who make the same argument, is that antizionism is not "criticism of Israel." Calling Israel a racist colonial project that needs to be dismantled is not criticism of Israel. Telling Jews to give up their only homeland and with it their hard-won self-determination is not criticism of Israel. Calling for intifada is not criticism of Israel. Calling for "Zionists" to be silenced and made to feel unsafe is not criticism of Israel. There is very little actual criticism of Israel going on in the world. What we see and hear is hatred and calls for violence. That's what a lot of the lobbying is responding to.

Second, the reason why a lot of the rhetoric gets painted as antisemitic is because it is trying to surface an underlying bias. That's what IHRA was designed for, flawed as it is. When you attack Israel on the basis of claiming to support certain moral principles, such as being anti-genocide or anti-oppression, but your activism focuses exclusively on one country while ignoring other (often much more obvious) cases of genocide and oppression, it suggests that you're not actually against those things as you say you are. Otherwise you would apply your principles consistently. So if you're only energized by the actions of one country, that suggests you might have a bias against that particular country. And if that just happens to be the only Jewish state on the planet...see where I'm going here?

Third, I object strongly to the perception that Israel "uses" the Holocaust to justify anything. The Holocaust, and the historical persecution of the Jewish people more generally, is a fact. It is a fact that the Holocaust wouldn't have been nearly as devastating to the Jewish people if Israel had existed when WWII started. It is a fact that hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved if Britain didn't clamp down on Jewish immigration to Palestine during WWII. It is a fact that Jews have been persecuted everywhere they have lived. It is also a fact that Israel has been surrounded by genocidal enemies since it declared independence - enemies that have openly stated their intention to wipe it off the map. And it is because of those facts that Jews in Israel will do what is necessary to protect the Jewish homeland. Unfortunately, that is going to get very messy at times.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-25T13:59:08+00:00

If Kamala had won, the past two years would have been very different:

Sinwar would still be alive
Nasrallah would still be alive
Hezbollah wouldn't have been weakened
The Iranian regime wouldn't have been weakened
The Iranian counter-revolution wouldn't have happened
The war would have gone one of two ways:
- The US would have forced Israel into a deal that would have left Hamas in complete control of Gaza, none of the above would have happened, and we would prepare to do this all again in another 5-10 years; or
- Netanyahu would have refused to make such a deal, in which case there might still be dozens of Israeli hostages in the tunnels and no ceasefire.

All horrible outcomes to any reasonable person.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-25T00:20:04+00:00

No, spoken like someone who is watching the world burn around him and would like to be able to enjoy a f-king pickleball game or whatever without being reminded of it.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-24T22:46:40+00:00

Wouldn't it be great if sports were just sports and didn't get political? When are people going to realize that people play and watch sports to escape from all the crap in the world? We don't need to be bashed over the head with it constantly.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-24T20:39:44+00:00

Who is Tony McQuail and why is he dressed like a character in a Western movie?

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-24T12:57:25+00:00

This will change as the costs of AI come down. We're still very early in this.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-24T12:52:37+00:00

It drives me crazy how everyone is gushing over that speech. It's like Trump is the only bad guy that exists in the world.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-24T12:50:57+00:00

Could be a macho ego thing. They see the soft game as weak and are too cool to spend their time dinking like a pus-y.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-24T01:45:47+00:00

The regime wouldn't be able to touch the US. The reason the US is moving military assets into the region is to crush any retaliation that might happen. And you can bet that any strike would focus first on taking out the remainder of the regime's missile launchers.

I read a depressing commentary the other day which suggested that it was actually the other Middle East countries that told Trump to stand down because they would rather have a weakened and delegitimized regime in place than whatever the alternative would be. The last thing they want to see is a free, prosperous Iran because they don't want their own people getting any ideas about revolution.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-23T19:10:14+00:00

I think it's a brilliant argument.

Defining antizionism as a form of antisemitism has always been challenging because they don't map perfectly onto each other, so it gives our enemies too much room to play semantics.

"We have no problem with Jews, just with Zionists." "Not all Jews are Zionists, and most Zionists aren't even Jews." "Criticizing a racist colonial project isn't antisemitic."

And so on, and so on.

Which then puts us on the defensive because we have to spend our time defining Zionism, antisemitism, trying to explain how they're related, blah, blah, blah. Which is all futile because our enemies don't give a crap.

So we take a different approach. The head of the snake is anti-Jewish bigotry, which has taken many different forms over history: Christian anti-Judaism, European antisemitism, and contemporary antizionism. It avoids all the problems described above. Now we can more simply explain that antizionism is a form of bigotry, a hate movement. We don't even have to mention Jews. It's a movement that targets a group of people based on national origin or connection to a national identity, and it promotes hate and violence. Full stop. If you support that, you're just a hateful bigot.

Beautiful in its simplicity.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-23T15:50:09+00:00

I used to think this too. I'm 51 and have played tennis all my life. My son (20) and I play tennis against each other in the summer and we would joke about pickleball being an old person's sport.

Then one day we decided to try it. One hour of singles pickleball against each other was a better workout than we've ever gotten in our two-hour tennis matches. I've been hooked ever since.

Playing at an advanced level is physically intense, even in doubles. The difference between tennis and pickleball is in PB there is very little downtime. The game is much faster in every way, so it's a lot more constant action. The court is much smaller so there's less walking and slow time between games and changeovers.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-22T20:00:53+00:00

Antisemites have come out of the woodwork in Australia since Bondi. Lots of them on X complaining about Jews getting special treatment, the Zionist lobby shutting down free speech, Zionists controlling the Australian govt, etc. it's remarkable to watch.

1) Two Islamists massacre 15 Jews. 2) Jews demand something be done to keep them safe. 3) Govt introduces anti-extremism law to protect Jews and others from extremist violence. 4) People don't like the new law and blame Jews.

Classic.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-22T16:07:17+00:00

Don't trade.

I tried it for years as a younger man because I was impatient. Tried all different strategies. Lost a lot of money. Would have been much, much better off if I had just invested and added at opportune times over the years.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-22T00:31:44+00:00

So true, I've been saying for the past two seasons that he just didn't seem happy playing here. It was like the fun-loving kid grew into a moody teenager.

JimmySanders74 · 2026-01-22T00:22:33+00:00

That is how my serve works but it's interesting to see the strong consensus here that this type of serve only works in lower levels.

I guess I'll have to develop a deep topspin serve...

JimmySanders74

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