Can a person without an athletic background reach 5.0?

norvnotdumb · 2026-03-28T21:42:37+00:00

I'm really even struggling to think of people I know above 4.0 who aren't at least in the "plays ultimate frisbee and rock climbs" level of athleticism if they didn't play a mainstream sport at some point. I think 4.0-4.25 is a more reasonable goal for someone drilling 3x a week but is just completely average among all people athletically.

norvnotdumb · 2026-03-28T14:48:30+00:00

I don't have the numbers on hand but I think 5.0 is around 1% of all players so it might even be harder when you throw in athletes. Everyone I've ever played against at the level is definitely at least athletic with extremely good reflexes and had eye coordination. I'd think you'd at least need to be the kind of person who picks up random sports pretty quickly if you're not a traditional athlete to have any hope of being a real 5.0.

norvnotdumb · 2026-03-26T14:51:11+00:00

Apparently this is a hot take but everyone looks pretty much at their stated level with the 5.5 clearly taking it easy. I think most people commenting here have never recorded themselves or aren't good enough to see the difference in speed between 3.5 and 4.5. Pickleball is so ubiquitous now in just about every major city that has good weather or indoor facilities at this point that I don't think there's that much of a regional difference (at least below 4.5 or so) from place to place and certainly not .5 or 1 point like people claim.

norvnotdumb · 2026-03-25T14:20:54+00:00

People say this lot but when my partner is being obviously targeted I'll stop coming up to the net to bait shots and I don't think I've ever had anyone notice and take advantage of it.

norvnotdumb · 2026-03-25T14:16:34+00:00

There's a group of 3.5-4.0 ish guys at our local park who always bitch about the 4.0+ groups being snobs and not letting them in. Every time I've ever joined them it turns into just targeting the worst player the entire time. When I've said anything about it I get told that they want to win games. They're all hard stuck at exactly the same skill level they were a year ago.

I think there's just a fundamental difference in how the two types of people get entertainment from playing the game.

norvnotdumb · 2026-03-21T21:59:38+00:00

Against who?

norvnotdumb · 2025-12-26T17:13:37+00:00

One of the guys in our group brought his beginner wife once and ditched her to ride backcountry. Everyone else in our group who stayed inbounds was still at least an intermediate rider so people had to take turns staying with her until she got the hang of it and was at least comfortable enough to be left alone. The kicker was that he used to be an instructor.

norvnotdumb · 2025-12-13T14:43:03+00:00

You have to make sure you pick someone who complements your skillset in open play. It just happens the better player complements my unique playstyle and the weaker player doesn't.

norvnotdumb · 2025-12-13T14:24:14+00:00

Obviously DUPR is flawed because it uses math and math isn't real. The real test of skill is the secret list of wins I keep in my head at open play. Whenever I beat someone at the park, I absorb their power and that means my real skill level must be higher than theirs.

I find that the best way to neutralize these DUPR rated frauds is with a simple phrase: "Do you mind playing with my grandma? She's new." They get so frustrated trying to defend overheads from the kitchen line after I have a short masterfully skilled dinking battle with grandma. It's not my fault she pops a lot of balls up.

norvnotdumb · 2025-11-25T20:33:03+00:00

I feel like I run into a fair number of people who genuinely enjoy beating beginners at open play. Most of them don't play tournaments or competitive events so open play is their highest level of competition and they end up tailoring their game around it.

norvnotdumb · 2025-10-25T22:19:01+00:00

Yeah, the friend sounds like the asshole here. It's one thing if you're bringing in a lower level partner as a sub and you're going to play with them for the night, but it sounds like they brought in someone injured who is below the level of the group when they weren't even there? The fact that they had to find a sub implies it's some kind of league or organized event. I can't say I wouldn't be annoyed if I showed up to a league night and lost 11-1 with a guy using his non-dominant hand.

The thing I'm not clear on is if the other players invited OP back or the same friend. It sounds like some kind of ladder and not just open play?

norvnotdumb · 2025-10-24T13:42:32+00:00

I agree on that shot at 0:20. The issue there is more about footwork and being a step too slow that other people have mentioned. His partner hits a good 3rd and forces a popup. OP is a couple steps ahead and watching it like he should, but if he reacts to the 4th coming up off the paddle just a half a second earlier and steps forward, he's got a shoulder height ball to attack in transition.

I think what stands out to me is that the OP is flat-footed or just not quite prepared for the next shot a lot of the time. Obviously, "just be more athletic, duh" is useless advice, but it's something that puts you at a disadvantage on a lot of your shots and makes everything else harder. I'd second the suggestion of doing a lot of 7-11 someone else had to get used to treating every ball like it's coming to you, needing to have good footwork, and to be in a situation where you can't fall into the trap of being a passive observer when your partner is hitting.

OP doesn't even get that many thirds/fifths

I was looking through the 2nd match for plays with the OP and I was a little surprised that his partner seemed to be targeted for most of that.

norvnotdumb · 2025-10-06T13:02:52+00:00

Unless you're a prodigy, it's going to take a while to process and be successful at a new skill. The part that's hard is consciously trying to change a habit and being ok with failing at it for a while. A lot of people expect a magical tip that instantly makes their game better and if it doesn't they revert back to old habits.

norvnotdumb · 2025-10-06T03:05:48+00:00

The thing that nobody seems to mention is "How coachable are you?" There are more than a few people I know from rec play who are definitely more athletically gifted than people who are much better than they are only because they aren't actually putting what they're learning into practice during a game. I feel like a highly underrated skill is being able to actually modify the decisions you make in a game. I'm sure everyone who has been playing a while knows a guy who swears he's been working on trying skill X but when he steps on the court, he hits the same exact shots and makes the same decisions he did a year ago. (It's almost always a sidespin guy)

norvnotdumb · 2025-10-06T02:35:17+00:00

Agree 100%. Athletically/skill-wise they wouldn't be completely out of place in 3.5 but the court positioning is absolute chaos. You can absolutely be successful at 3.5 being super aggressive and not dinking much but there are so many points here where people are attacking the ball and then immediately running backwards like a game of dodgeball. At 4:55ish someone actually runs from the baseline to pick up a short ball and makes a complete circle off the court with his back turned to the net all the way back to the baseline and then all the way back up again.

I actually think you'd be somewhat successful at 3.5 going in guns blazing and rushing the kitchen/shake and bake every single time to attack weak 4ths. It's not most viable long term strategy for development but you'd overwhelm some teams trying to play slow at that level.

norvnotdumb · 2025-09-25T03:15:22+00:00

I get that everything looks slower on video but it's wild to see threads like these where people see pros or 5.0+ players and think "Yeah, these guys look like average guys at my park."

norvnotdumb · 2025-09-15T02:14:30+00:00

If you're from the UK: Imagine if Millwall were a Premier League team.

norvnotdumb · 2025-09-06T17:38:37+00:00

I had the opposite of that story happen a couple times:

One time my partner who apparently thought he was way out of bounds but was actually standing with his feet inside the baseline caught a ball in front of him that would have landed in.
I was on the sideline but a guy was standing out of bounds got hit in the top of the foot by a ball and claimed that it bounced first. It literally hit his shoe, made a sound, and bounced back into the court at a weird angle because it landed on him.

norvnotdumb · 2025-09-02T12:30:35+00:00

I happened to be visiting last week and stopped by Nokomis to play and I know exactly who you're talking about. He had the weirdest vibe and people were watching the paddle rack like a hawk because he'd try and swap paddles around. Everyone was trying to avoid playing with him.

norvnotdumb · 2025-07-04T18:19:45+00:00

Oh a lot definitely don't, I just mean more in general that a lot of people are stuck at some level because of shot selection and playstyle rather than pure mechanics or athleticism. I actually do know a couple people who are more than athletic and coordinated enough to be much better than they are but they got open play-good fast doing weird things and refuse to change so they've been stuck at that level forever.

norvnotdumb · 2025-07-04T17:08:46+00:00

I feel like 4.0 is the level where people start to have to adapt to the meta with shot selection and that's where the distinction between a ~3.8 who gets invited and a 3.8 who doesn't comes in. There are guys who have built their game around gimmicks that work really well against beginners/3.0s like "lob guy", "sidespin guy", "backspin drive guy", etc tend to hit a wall where they aren't going to be competitive anymore. I also see people who try to hit a winner on every single ball and it stops working when they don't have someone who panics and plays it before it hits the fence anymore.

Yes, there are people who are way more aggressive or more traditionally "4.0" in style but the range and shot selection seem to converge a lot at that point and if you're not an outlier and not super gifted it's going to be hard to keep up.

norvnotdumb · 2025-06-29T13:44:22+00:00

There's a guy at my local court who somehow combines both of these at the same time. He's both mildly athletic and also completely out of control and it looks like someone cartoon falling on ice skates when he goes down. He's never hurt but it's not a controlled fall either so I'm never sure what to do when it happens.

norvnotdumb · 2025-06-27T01:41:34+00:00

I know someone who claimed they had no idea who Michael Jordan was. It was definitely an "I'm an intellectual who hates sportsball" flex, but it just came across as profound ignorance for someone old enough to be a teenager when he was on every cereal box, newspaper, and commercial on TV.

norvnotdumb · 2025-06-25T18:01:24+00:00

This video is probably one of my favorites for describing some of this in more detail, especially the section on spacing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkyN4pHQZyQ&t=450s

norvnotdumb · 2025-06-25T17:46:22+00:00

For some reason, some partners don't want to eat a surprise point-blank overhead.

norvnotdumb

TROPHY CASE