Paperback Pickleball Writer
September 10, 2024
-
Nothing in Joe Baker’s life before pickleball would lead you to think he’d become a bestselling author or popular YouTube host. A son of the south who moved around often due to his father’s job, Baker did nothing in his career to indicate that he might someday write books about pickleball, and by his own admission he wasn’t particularly athletic.
After graduating from high school in Wilmington, North Carolina, and from North Carolina State University in 1980 with a degree in mechanical engineering, Baker worked as a mechanical engineer for the DuPont Chemical Company for 35 years.
After retiring in 2013, Baker, now 67 and living near Richmond, Virginia, read in his church newsletter that pickleball was being played in the church gym. It piqued his interest.
“I was going to just watch what was going on, but the people were very friendly and they encouraged me to play,” Baker told me. “They stuck a paddle in my hand and told me to just get the ball back across the net and they would keep track of the score and tell me where to stand.”
Then Baker said what virtually all pickleball first-timers say: “I fell in love with the game almost immediately.”
Baker made “a bunch of new friends” playing pickleball and says the game “is not just about strength or brute force. It’s really about thinking, strategy, and learning not just one technique but many techniques.”
Baker says pickleball improved his health and encouraged him to get fit and lose weight. He’s 5-feet, 8 inches tall and says his weight has dropped from 208 pounds to 180. “This is one of the few sports where I think I can stand out and be as good as people who have more natural athletic ability than I have,” Baker said.
Baker says his current DUPR (Dynamic Universal Pickleball Rating) is 3.75. “I don’t compete in many tournaments but when I do I compete in the 4.0 skill level and I have several silver medals that I’ve earned at the 4.0 skill level. I also won a silver medal at the Virginia State Senior Games,” he said.
Baker became a student of the sport. He sought out the legendary pickleball coach, Richard Movsessian, better known as “Coach Mo,”whom I profiled recently. The famous coach was giving a clinic near Baker’s home. It was a brutally hot summer day in central Virginia, so Baker and the coach went over shot techniques and strategies in the lobby of Coach Mo’s hotel.
“I think I spent at least a couple of hours with Coach Mo teaching me. It really was not a handicap being in a lobby because I wanted to know what to do, where to position myself, and where to hit versus practicing shots. So, he explained step by step:
- Here's how and where to place your serve. The key: Don’t try to ace your opponent. Instead focus and don't fault.
- Here's where to place your return of serve shot (rather deep and to the backhand of the even court player...very near the middle).
- Here is where and how to place your third shot.
Baker said, “After meeting Coach Mo and having him work with me and teach me the winning strategy that all of the advanced players use to win pickleball games, I created a notebook of learnings. I started to develop game plans and shot by shot strategies. I analyzed and broke down many videos of the pros.”
The research led to Baker producing a video titled Doubles Pickleball Strategy 101. It became enormously popular and now has more than 1.2 million views. He has since produced about 170 videos and his YouTube channel has over 31,600 suscribers
“People from all over the country were asking me for a more complete story on pickleball strategy,” Baker said, “and they wanted a copy of the video script. People just kept asking me for more information. So I took all of the notes that I acquired and much of the knowledge that I learned from Coach Mo and started creating a book. I never thought about writing a book. I created most of the diagrams myself and it just became kind of a hobby. It took me maybe six months or so to create the first book on the market about pickleball strategy, especially for advanced players.”
That book, At The Line Pickleball: The Winning Doubles Pickleball Strategy, became a bestseller. He went on to write two more popular books about pickleball strategy.
“I never thought I would be an author,” Baker says. “Things just fell into place.
“My advice for a 3.5 rec player is to get a practice partner, try to do drills, try to work on specific things. Always try to improve your game and try to keep metrics. Make a note of how many serves you missed and how many return of serves you missed. How many third shot drop attempts went into the net? So I advise doing drills and working with a drilling partner. It’s also a good idea to video your games and see where your mistakes are occurring,” Baker said.
Regarding the mistakes often made by 3.5 players, Baker says, “I think the [most] common mistake that rec players make is trying to win the rally with every shot they make. They just want to hit the ball hard for every shot. They think that the key to winning is by overpowering your opponent. It's good to be able to have powerful shots that are low to the net but you need other tools also. So you can't have a one-dimensional game. You need to have a skill set that includes dinks, drop shots, and attacks, as well as drive shots. You need to be able to see and create holes.”
Baker says he plays pickleball five days a week. ‘I have many other friends that do the same thing, where pickleball is a part of just about every day of their life.
So many of us can relate.
Name dropping anecdote of the week
I was doing a television story in The Hamptons on Long Island around 1999. In the news van en route my photographer, who spent summers there, mentioned how our interview at a realtor’s office was near a restaurant frequented by Billy Joel. It was a gray, chilly March day and the street was deserted when we arrived in the summer resort community at around noon. We were early so I sent my photographer to the marina for beauty shots while I prepared questions for the interview outside the realtor’s office. Within minutes, Billy Joel was walking towards me. No entourage or bodyguards. Alone, unshaven, wearing a pea coat and wool hat. I told him we were doing a story about the downturn in The Hamptons real estate market and since he was a resident I asked would he please go on-camera. “Man, I’m looking a little scruffy today,” Billy said. “But okay.”
I had to stall for about five minutes until my photographer could get there. It was somewhat nerve-wracking because I didn’t think Billy would want to wait long in the cold. He could not have been nicer and did a terrific interview. What a down to earth superstar he is.
Book recommendation of the week
An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960’s, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. One of America’s top historians writes beautifully about the decade and the emotional journey she and her husband embarked upon in the last years of his life.
Overheard at the courts
Due to right wrist soreness I wasn’t at the courts much this week so I didn’t hear any funny or informative words of wisdom or angst. That’s what happens when you’re 70-years-old and play 30 out of the previous 33 days. After four days off, I returned to play on Sunday. Wore a wrist brace, played less than my usual two and a half hours and iced it afterwards. So far so good.
My thoughts of the week, not all pickleball
- I have my SiriusXM tabletop radio pre-set to 10 stations but rarely change it from the 60’s/70’s channel. Almost every song is a classic.
- I don’t care what the announced attendance was at Sunday’s Jaguars-Dolphins game in Miami, I saw thousands of empty seats. Florida residents are just not that into professional sports. I’m not including hockey, it’s a niche sport (and I love it) and any decent NHL team can sell out 18,000-20,000 seat arenas. The attendance for the Miami Marlins and Tampa Bay Rays baseball teams has been awful for years. College football is huge in the Sunshine State, with the University of Miami, Florida State and Florida generating big crowds and interest year after year.
- Sixty-five years after its debut, there still has never been a better television show in its genre than The Twilight Zone. I loved Rod Serling’s themes of greedy, evil people getting their just due and good people being rewarded.
- Last week’s column about wheelchair and adaptive pickleball mentioned that a group in Greenville, South Carolina, is seeking donations for sports chairs. More details are here.
- Seems to me that fewer drivers than ever use turn signals. Even though not using them is illegal and potentially dangerous.
- I wrote two stories for the latest issue of Pickleball Magazineand I think you’ll enjoy both. One is about a woman whose top bucket list item was to play at least one game of pickleball in all 50 states. Her journey and her life, including a very rough childhood, are amazing. My other article is about spectacular backyard pickleball courts. The photos are stunning. It’s the cover story so you can read it at pickleball magazine.com. To read the entire issue or any other issue you can order a print or electronic subscription from the magazine’s website.
Congratulations to Tedd Clauson of Shoreview, MN. Tedd was the first reader to email the correct answer to last week’s contest question, which was: In my August 20th blog, the legendary pickleball coach Richard Movsessian (better known as “Coach Mo) cited the three biggest mistakes a 3.5 player makes. What is the #1 mistake he listed? The answer: “They do not play from the non-volley zone line as much as possible.”
Tedd won a Hudef Viva Pro Gen3 paddle, valued at $169.99. My first blog of each month includes a contest question with the winner receiving a free Hudef paddle.