Watching the PPA Kansas City tournament, the game is changing rapidly. It’s getting faster, points are getting shorter, and the top players aren’t afraid to attack from the transition zone. Every team starting with the quarterfinals had this ability to turn it on (be aggressive and quick to start hand battles) or slow the game down with slightly extended dink rallies. This was beyond noticeable in the mixed doubles Gold Medal match between Ben/ALW vs. Jorja/JW.I will say though that these dink rallies are no where near where they use to be when Ben and Collin would just grind their opponents to sleep. This modern pickleball game was even more prevalent watching Alshon/Duomg vs. Ben/Collin where Alshon/Duong were all gas and no brakes. They took every opportunity to play with a first-strike mentality. They only really dinked or reset the ball when being in a position of weakness. And even then they were using aggressive resets or dinks as a way to defend.This is totally a mentality shift. The elite have an aggressive mentality and that is where modern pickleball is moving. @dayne_gingrich noted this best in one of his most recent posts which was absolutely spot on. Go give it a read. #pickleball #mentalskills #mindset
