Pickleball and Patience
Read Time / 2 Minutes
Theme / Investing
I joined the Pickleball crowd! I became one of the 36.5 million Pickleball players in the United States. The first time I played two years ago, I was unimpressed with the game. Having played a lot of tennis, I didn’t think Pickleball was worthy of being called a sport. I mean, what could be so challenging about hitting a wiffle ball back and forth over a net.
I was wrong.
Pickleball is a game of strategy and skill, with patience being the key word. Unlike tennis, Pickleball has a “kitchen” (non-volley zone), an area seven feet on each side of the net that you are not allowed to stand in while hitting the ball in the air (volley). Rather you must wait for it to bounce or try to volley it from outside the kitchen. These restrictions lead to playing a strategic “soft game” to set up put-away shots.
The soft game is hitting the ball just over the net so that it lands softly in the kitchen. In doing so, your opponent can’t hit a hard put-away shot because the ball is so low and close to the net, so they must hit a soft shot back. The soft game continues with each of you hitting short shots low over the net. But patience pays off! Eventually your opponent will hit a shot that inadvertently flies high and far over the net, giving you the chance to pounce on the ball and hit a hard winner.
There is a correlation between investing in the stock market and playing Pickleball. For the last two years, the stock market has been lackluster, rising and falling but moving sideways. It’s like the soft game in Pickleball, delicately hitting the ball back and forth over the net. The soft game won’t win for you, but, with patience, it sets up the winning shot. Patiently investing in this sideways stock market will eventually pay off because the market has always gone up over time.
"Better to be patient than a warrior, and better to have self-control than to capture a city" (Proverbs 16:32).
Doug Hanson, MBA
Wealth Advisor
208.697.3699
doug@christianwm.com
