Mastering the Transition; How a Former College Tennis Player Conquered Pickleball in Just Two Years

In this episode, we sit down with Joel Clark, a rising star in the Cincinnati pickleball scene who recently achieved a triple crown victory at Dink Cincy. With a background as a collegiate tennis player, Joel shares his fascinating journey from picking up his first paddle just two and a half years ago to competing in APP tournaments today. 

Episode Highlights: 

• Joel's pickleball origin story, starting with a $15 paddle and getting beaten by seniors
• The transition from collegiate tennis to competitive pickleball and how the skills transfer
• Insights on the differences between tennis and pickleball doubles strategy
• Joel's experience winning the triple crown (singles, doubles, and mixed doubles) at Dink Cincy
• How to prepare for APP tournaments and manage tournament nerves
• The balance between drilling and playing matches to improve your game
• Finding the right doubles partner whose game complements yours
• Advice for beginners and those playing their first tournament
• How Joel maintains a healthy mindset toward competition
• The current pickleball tournament scene and costs associated with higher-level competition

Whether you're new to pickleball or looking to take your game to the next level, Joel offers valuable insights on improvement, tournament preparation, and maintaining the joy of the game while pursuing competitive success.
 
Connect and play more pickleball in the Cincinnati area at: 

• The Pickle Barn in Alexandria, Kentucky
• Sawyer Point
• Aces Pickleball Club
• The Pickle Lodge

Transcript

So Joel, welcome to the show. Thanks for being on. Thanks for having me, Ben.

You got it. Pickleball start. 

Tell me when you started playing pickleball and a little bit about your journey. Sure. I started pickleball probably two and a half years. 

I saw an ad on Instagram of all places for the Aces pre-opening. And I was like, I used to play tennis. I used to be like a 5'5 tennis player back in the old rating system. 

And I thought pickleball is going to be easy to pick up. So I bought the cheapest paddle I could from Dick's. It was $15. 

I played and absolutely embarrassed myself with a bunch of seniors. I won one out of, I think, six or seven games. Oh, wow.

It was probably the most I had. It's the most fun I've had losing. Right, right.

And I just continued playing it from there. How much did you, I guess, play or practice before that tournament? Before that, I just jumped right in. I didn't know where in Cincinnati to play pickleball. 

I barely knew the rules. I looked it up on YouTube. Did I have a kitchen violation? Did I go up to the net and volley? Absolutely.

Did I accidentally take the ball out of the air on, I guess, the second? Absolutely. And the gentleman that I played with, very nice. Can't remember his name. 

I see him from time to time. I hope he thinks I'm better. But, oh man, you could see his annoyance when he got paired up with a young dude who had absolutely no idea what he was doing.

Okay, so you played doubles. Yes. Paired up with somebody.

Yes. And you guys obviously got beat up, but you enjoyed it. You loved it, right? Absolutely. 

I absolutely loved it. And then from there, I went back home, told my wife, and I was just like, yeah, I got absolutely wrecked. I lost pretty much every single match, and I didn't really know what was going on. 

I was nervous, but I had a great time. That's awesome. So you said you played some tennis. 

So take me even further back. When did you start playing tennis? Obviously, you played in college, I think. Tell me that story.

Let's go way back. I started playing tennis at the age of six. I'm from Dayton, Ohio, Bellbrook area. 

I played at the Five Seasons in Dayton pretty much my entire growing up. I got my start with lessons from Ray Espinoza. That's a throwback for anyone from the Dayton area. 

But I started taking lessons when I was six and started playing local USTA tournaments when I was nine and ten. And then pretty much throughout middle school and high school, I played tournaments when it wasn't tennis season. I played varsity tennis for Bellbrook High School for four years, played second seed all of my years. 

Bellbrook had a really strong first seed. And then after high school, I played varsity tennis in college, a school called Cedarville University, kind of between Xenia and Springfield area. I played second doubles all four years, and then I bounced around between third and fifth singles.

So a lot of tennis background. Lots of tennis background. Big tennis family.

Yeah, yeah. That translates obviously very well into pickleball. It does. 

It translates extremely well for singles. I would say I definitely have a lot of bad habits in doubles from tennis. Yeah.

Like, for instance? Just the aggression and the tempo of the game. I think doubles tennis is a little bit more aggressive, always looking for opportunities to end the points as soon as possible, where you have to have a little bit more self-discipline and patience for pickleball doubles. Yeah. 

Even though it's changing, right? Within the last couple of years, I mean. Oh, yes. The game is much faster.

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot more drives and I guess speed ups than the whole dink game, right? That's true. But dinking is by far my worst part of the game.

Yeah. There's no dinking in tennis. Right, right, right. 

It's all like sling it, right? Right. That's awesome. So yeah. 

So how much of a break did you take between tennis and then this pickleball, this first initial pickleball tournament? I didn't touch a racquet for two years out of college. Okay. And then I tried to do kind of a local club syncy tennis league. 

I didn't want to join a racquet club. I didn't want to pay the exorbitant fees for a racquet club. Sure.

It was like a 4-5 league and I didn't drop a set. And kind of finding a good tennis match, if you don't pay for racquet clubs, is like pretty hard. Okay.

It was good. It was good to hold a racquet again. I have a lot of, not necessarily resentment towards tennis, but I never really enjoyed tennis to the extent that I should have. 

I definitely took it for granted growing up in high school, juniors, and certainly college. Yeah. And I kind of grew a disdain for the sport just in general. 

So I kind of wanted to repair that relationship. Gotcha. So after college, you played, what, a couple of like tournaments or a couple of matches in tennis or just... Yeah, just a local league. 

Just one local league. And then I never renewed after that. Okay. 

So fast forward to this pickleball tournament and then journey after that. You played that one tournament and then you were hooked and you're like, this is my new thing. Yeah. 

Then I was hooked. Then I joined a group at Aces. They had Thursday night leagues for four or five plus players. 

I did that league for two or three sessions before I found a that I really liked playing with. And then we kind of just spun off from that league, started going to Sawyer a lot, started meeting a lot more people. Some of the people that I met in that very first Thursday group, I still play and sometimes play tournaments with.

So let me ask you this, I guess between doing drills and just playing with a great group that you play with, I mean, is there one that outweighs the other? I mean, I've heard that, or the thought is the more you drill, the better you get, the quicker you get better and stuff like that. But I mean, have you done like a lot of drilling with like coaches or with your friends, I guess, or do you mostly just play? I certainly don't drill as much as I'm supposed to. Definitely at higher levels. 

A lot of people advocate for drilling much more than you do playing. Okay. Even for tennis, I was not a driller. 

I like practice matches over anything, but there's certainly a lot of shots that are, that did not transfer over from tennis that I just need to commit to muscle memory. I was drilling for a very long, I was drilling pretty consistently for a while, but that kind of led to some burnout. Yeah. 

Drilling's not that fun. Right. Yeah, for sure.

Do I recommend it? Absolutely. But you kind of have to spice up the drilling with points and competition and two to three hours of drilling just sounds like possibly the most miserable time Right. Right. 

So what's, what's a good mix for somebody that wants to like really get better. Right. So a lot of people, they just play, they go out and play Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or a couple of times a week. 

If they really want to get better and improve, I mean, is it like, you know, 70, 30 drilling or is it what's worked for you? Let me ask. Oh man. I don't know if I'm qualified to answer that. 

I kind of think it depends on what you have to work with. If you can consistently dink, then like maybe you don't need that technical aspect. Maybe you don't really need to, to refine your, uh, your swing mechanics. 

If you, if you're developing a shot, like maybe a two handed backhand, uh, maybe, uh, you want to make it more into a weapon or you want to build consistency. Uh, if you have that initial consistency, I would, I would think that you should, you should play more, but, uh, for me, I think it's 50, 50, even though I definitely don't hold myself to that standard. Right. 

Right. Do you, do you have a coach that you work with or is it mostly just this group that you. Yeah, no, it's just, it's just this group. 

I did one, I did one lesson, uh, with a local pro, but that's just, so I did pay for this lesson, but it was, it was only to show that, oh, I'm not, I, I'm, I'm one of the better people. Like I wanted to start like drilling with him consistently. Um, very quickly after that lesson, he said, you know, you don't need to pay for a lesson if you just want to hit. 

And I was like, oh, all right, cool. Wonderful. Still paid for that lesson. 

Cool. Yeah. Um, uh, but no, actually one of the things that I really, really like about pickleball is it, it feels like the, the skill floor and the skill ceiling are vastly different than it is for tennis. 

Um, and once a lot of my friends were all like pretty equivalent levels, whether you look at duper or you look at how close our practice matches are. And, uh, it's a very collaborative environment, which I really appreciate. When I stopped doing the aces group, I started leading like a Sawyer group and doing practice matches, practice matches that way. 

After a lot of matches, we would kind of just discuss like how we thought we would beat each other and, and no one really held back. We all want to see each other grow. And so far it's been pretty good. 

A lot of people from my initial, uh, Sawyer group are well over five. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. 

Are they all pursuing semi-professional or professional? Yeah. Some of them are there. They're, they're all pretty crazy and they're, they, they got the bug and they got the addiction and they're, they're just, they just keep going. 

That's awesome. Let's talk about that a little bit. I looked at on duper, like I think a couple of times this year, or maybe even, well, not maybe not this year, but last year, or maybe even before you've, you've gone out for like PPA events, like try to qualify or can you talk me through some of that? Yeah. 

So there, there's two different leagues, so to speak. There's definitely the PPA and the APP. Okay. 

The PPA is the, the big dogs that, that, that's who you see. That's where Ben Johns plays. Gotcha. 

Uh, there, there's the, the lower league called APP where they're still very good pros and, uh, I'm, I'm working my way to, uh, playing main draw APP. Okay. But, uh, getting your start in APP is pretty vicious. 

There's usually rounds of prequalifiers, qualifiers, and then main draw. And it's all dependent on how many APP points you have. APP points are separate categories per event.

So there's, uh, APP points for singles, mixed, gender doubles. Um, so you have to qualify in each of those. Uh, I played my first APP qualifier last year in Cincinnati. 

You don't get any APP points for prequalifying. Uh, I lost my first round, like 2220. Um, and then I won the prequalifier, but it wasn't worth anything. 

And, and then I lost, I lost mixed in prequalifier and then I lost both my doubles matches in the qualifiers. So lots of money to get absolutely zero APP points. Very good experience. 

Oh yeah. Uh, wrestled through a lot of nerves. Uh, but that's a, that's another level. 

Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm sure. 

I remember my first couple of tournaments at the, the pickle lodge and just my first couple of tournaments. Right. And it's like, you know, I, I've played a lot. 

I've played a lot the last couple of years and I got in there and I was like, I could barely breathe. It was like, yeah, it was like, you know, first kind of big thing, but I'm sure stepping up to that level is like another whole nother thing. Right.

Oh, absolutely. No, I, I'm currently like visualizing in my head how I'm going to play this upcoming APP. So I'm not as nervous as I was last time. 

And I can just kind of get into flow state and hopefully just perform. Like I know I can play. Yeah. 

So you said the next one, what's the next one coming up? Uh, APP Cincinnati. Okay. Second week in May, I believe.

Okay. So that's coming up. Yeah. 

Very cool. Playing do singles and gendered dubs. Gotcha. 

Is there a doubles, male doubles or gender doubles that you like typically play with a lot, or maybe that you played with in Dink Cincy? Uh, partner wise. Yeah. Yeah. 

Yeah. Uh, uh, for, for men's doubles, it's going to be a new partnership. I'm playing with a young man named Michael Shaw. 

I think his game is very special. It compliments my game. He's extremely consistent and has a very good head on his shoulders where I am kind of explosive and I like put away power. 

Uh, so, uh, I think it's a good match. You guys will balance each other out a little bit. Yes. 

That, that, that's the goal. How did, how did you guys meet? I think it was just mutual friends. Okay. 

Yeah. And somebody just said, Hey, you ought to try this guy. And he, he asked me and I was like, absolutely. 

I want to play with you. Oh, very cool. Yeah.

So leading up to that, uh, like have you guys played a little bit together or is this? Yeah, we've done practice matches, but we haven't, we haven't really played high level matches together. Yeah. Very cool.

Mixed doubles. Forgoing mixed doubles this time. My partner is, is burnt out. 

Her name's Amber Larkins. This would have been her first APP event and I don't want her first, uh, APP event to be a bad one. So we're going to postpone to probably Chicago or St. Louis.

Okay. Cool. And then of course playing singles. 

That's right. Yeah. That's right. 

Very cool. Let's go back to Dink Cincy. Okay. 

So this is where, this is where I, uh, I, I saw that. So I played, I played in the, the, uh, the singles tournament at the 4.0 level. Um, and anyways, I saw that you had won the 4.5, the 4.5 plus singles. 

I didn't realize you'd won a triple crown. I found that out later, but I reached out to you and I said, Hey, can I have you on the podcast to talk about Dink Cincy? But could you maybe recap that a little bit in all three events? Yeah. Dink Cincy went, went well to say the least. 

Uh, I played all three events and Friday was Fridays was singles. I don't usually like looking at brackets before I go in. Cause I think that will, that will cause undue anxiety. 

And I don't think I want to psych myself out. I got there late and they start at 1.00 PM. I had to take half a day off. 

Um, but, uh, I got off work at 12 rushed, rushed over there. I was late. I didn't, I didn't get to, uh, I didn't get to properly warm up, but, uh, uh, and then I looked at, then I looked at my group and they do it by duper seedings. 

Okay. And usually I'm, I'm on the higher end of the, the, the duper, uh, the duper seedings. Uh, and I saw that there was someone above me and I was like, Ooh, today's going to be a fun day. 

Uh, a young guy named Roshan can't remember his last name, but he was a 5.4 duper tennis for Miami, Florida. Super cool dude. How did that match go? Probably played my best singles match in groups, lost nine 11. 

Uh, and then we played again in the final 15, four. I think he was tired from his semi-final match, but, uh, uh, he could have definitely played as the final better than what the score would, would show for sure. Wow. 

Yeah. That's cool. Singles is probably my best event. 

Why is that? Oh, I think it's just the translation from tennis. I, it, it very, it definitely compliments your style, play my style of play and, and kind of, uh, quote unquote talent, so to speak. I'm very quick on my feet. 

It lends well for singles. Yeah. Um, oh, you have to be, yeah, it's tough. 

Yeah. I agree. How about any major, I guess, concerns or, um, upsets with doubles or mixed or was it all pretty straightforward? There were, there were a couple upsets and mixed my partner and I, Nick Austin, I played quite a few tournaments with him and we had an AP run, APP run in Chicago last year.

We lost two matches in groups and then we just barely squeaked out the gold. Oh, men's men's doubles is by far my worst event. I still like to end points quicker than I should.

And, uh, men's hands are just faster and they also like ending the point quicker, need a little bit more self-discipline for high level men's play. Right. And mixed, how was mixed? A mix was good. 

Amber and I went undefeated. Mix is probably one of my better events. Yeah. 

Yeah. Very similar. Yeah. 

So obviously a great tournament. Um, you do, do you do a lot of other, like, I guess either regional like tournaments throughout the year besides the, the APP stuff? Yeah. I've been playing a lot of local tournaments, just like anything in, in Indiana, Kentucky, or Ohio. 

I think I need to be a little more strategic and selective with tournaments. Just tournaments cost money. They do cost money. 

Yeah. Yeah. Is that, I mean, there's the money factor. 

I mean, is there, is there anything else, any other reason to be, I guess, strategic or selective? It kind of depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for competition or you're looking just to raise your duper, I'm not really in that, that duper race, but, uh, I do like looking for new competition for sure. Okay. 

Yeah. So you've been playing for two and a half years. I mean, have you played like everybody in these local tournaments then for the most part, or when you go somewhere, it's like, do you recognize and know like 80, 90 percent of the people? Yeah. 

I would say definitely local Cincinnati tournaments. I probably know almost all the participants. Okay. 

I definitely play a lot. I definitely used to play a lot at Sawyer getting to know people there, but like, I do know most of the really good players that play at each club. Yeah. 

And we run into each other quite a bit. I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure.

What does, what does an average week look like for you as far as like, if you're not, if you're not prepping for a tournament that's coming up, like on the weekend, I mean, do you just go out and hit a couple of times a week or is it every other night or every night? I mean, how often do you, do you play or drill? Yeah. I definitely try to prevent myself from playing every night. There, there was a period of time where I would definitely book almost every night for like a practice match or a drilling session. 

Very quickly went into burnout state there. I've quelled that a little bit more. I'm, I'm a little bit better, but I probably practice two or three times during the work week and then probably like a good three hour session on Saturday or Sunday. 

Where do you play indoors at? The Pickle Barn in Alexandria, Kentucky. Okay. These, these two sweet ladies just built a barn with two courts inside it. 

64 some memberships there. And, which is a very quaint, really well built two court facility. Nice. 

Yeah. I guess maybe advice for, I guess somebody without a, I guess a tennis background, right? So somebody that's just beginning to play, maybe whether they're young or older, I guess, what kind of advice can you share with probably trying to get better, right? Everybody wants to get better. Everybody wants to win. 

Yeah. What's your advice? I would say for the first six months to a year, just go out and have fun. I think, I think pretty much anyone, if they stick with the game can probably reach like a 4.0 level just on having fun. 

Yeah. I don't think you need excellent stroke mechanic like you used to in tennis. Like I was saying with like skill floors, like you can look at even some of the pro players. 

They look like they have just the ugliest strokes and, but they, they make it work. Right. Right. 

Like JW Johnson scoop calling up pros here and saying that they have bad form, but he makes it work because it's, it's hyper consistent. Yeah. But honestly, just have fun. 

That's kind of how I, that's kind of just my mentality with, with any new hobby. Like you don't need to go full neurotic right out the gate. Yeah. 

Try to try to try to find people of comparable skill, build each other up, kind of push each other. And, and it usually goes well. Yeah. 

That's great advice. That's great advice for, for someone maybe wanting to play in their first tournament. What's your advice for, for them? Oh, first tournament. 

I would just, I don't know. Cause I feel like the first thing that comes to mind when, if a friend is playing a first tournament is nerves. Like I have a lot of friends who, who get nervous during tournaments and so do I. It's just to remind them like, Hey, you're doing this for fun. 

Like the results don't matter. Like go out there, try to win. You don't, you're still the same person. 

It's like, don't beat yourself up or before or after the match. And that's, that's something that I still have to actively remind myself. Cause I'm definitely a results oriented type of athlete always have been. 

And I'm trying to knock that habit out of my mind. So you used to be ultra competitive type of thing. And you're trying to squash that a little bit. 

Yeah. Definitely, definitely during my, my tennis years, I definitely equated results to like, my self-worth that whole negative thought loop. It's only been until like recently, since I've trying to push, I want to say quote unquote, my potential in pickleball is where I have to actively rewire my brain. 

Cause if I, if I go into a term being like, Oh, if I don't win this tournament, that means I'm a bad player. Right. Of course, I'm going to be tight going into that match.

Yeah. It's like, Oh, I'm playing this, this, this is for this, this in my final determines whether I can go for gold or get fourth place and not even podium. Of course, I'm going to put undue pressure on myself. 

Right. Right. Right. 

But, but it doesn't matter. And that's something that I did for dainty, which was, I told my parents, my parents are super supportive. They come to every single one of my matches, just like they did for tennis. 

But I just looked at them and was like, I'm going to have a good day. I'm going to have fun. I could care less if I podium, but I want to win every single point. 

And that's what I did. Leave it all on the court. Right? Yeah. 

That's awesome. Any, I guess, stories that stick out in your mind the last couple of years playing pickleball that, that you could share either something crazy that's happened at a tournament or something, something wild that's happened that, sticks out in your mind. Hmm. 

We might need to come back to this one. I'm not sure. Nothing wild comes to mind. 

Okay. Lots of good memories. Lots of like core pickleball memories with just friends of showing up to Sawyer point at 4 30 PM and then staying until 10 PM.

Lots of long days like that. Yeah. Yeah. 

So the future, what does the future look like this year or beyond taking it like one day at a time, one tournament at a time? Yeah, pretty much. I get asked this ambition question a lot of like, Oh, what do you want to do with pickleball? I don't have some grand vision of taking pickleball anywhere. I just want to improve day by day. 

Yeah. I guess if I, if I had to be real honest, I would be like, Oh, I would want a paddle sponsorship so I can get paddles for cheaper. And then maybe for them to cover like some, some of the tournament, some of the tournament fees.

My God, APP is too expensive. They're just making so much money off these events. So I'm not sure what the entry fee is. 

What is an entry fee for APP? I guess. Let's see. I feel like is it a couple hundred bucks or is it more? It's like a couple hundred bucks just to sign up for the tournament. 

And then it's like a hundred bucks per event. Wow. And I could play, I could play one match to 15 and then be out.

Right. Right. Right. 

That's painful. It's gross. That's painful. 

Yeah. Yeah. Talk about unnecessary pressure is paying $150 to, to lose 15 points in a row and then you're done.

Yeah. Single elimination is tough. That's rough. 

Yeah. At least with these other ones, like dang Cincy, it's like, you know, this round Robin, you're guaranteed at least four or maybe five. Actually, now that you say that the, the format of, of tournaments is funny. 

Cause obviously tennis didn't have like a round Robin in the elimination, but, but I do like that quite a bit. Yeah. It allows for upsets and it allows for people to kind of warm up. 

I think it's actually extremely beginner friendly. Yeah. With the round Robin style. 

Yeah. PPA does kind of that bracketed style of like the traditional, like a tournament bracket. Yeah. 

That could be painful and quick. I mean, a game to 11 is very quick. It can be very quick, yeah. 

Unfortunately, but, but also fortunately, maybe, maybe you went quick 11. Oh, that's true. That's true. 

If you can win quick and, and then go on and save your energy winners, win, so to speak. That's right. That's right. 

Maybe last question. Does your wife play? I've gotten her out a couple of times. We've probably played twice. 

It's not her jam. She doesn't dislike it. Yeah. 

She doesn't mind that I play it quite a bit, which is very nice for her, but she's also has her own pursuit. She's very high achieving in academia. She's getting her PhD in immunology. 

Very cool. Very smart. Nice. 

Yeah. Nice. She'll be able to afford all of your tournaments. 

Yeah. Lois, if you're listening to this, uh, that that's the goal. That's the goal.

Yeah. I love it. I love it. 

Well, Hey, I really appreciate you being on and, uh, and talking with me today, being on the show. Yeah. Thank you for having me. 

Lots of fun. Thanks so much.