What is a 4.0? The Pickleball Pirates Ranking of The Hanlons!!

hello everyone this is keith valentine from the pickleball pirates and we've got a show for you today john hanlon submitted this video for review uh john and his sister nicole are playing in the spring midwest classic pickleball tournament in terre haute indiana i hope i said that right tournament was hosted by senior pro player rick witzkin in early march and they they went on to take bronze this is a 4.0 mixed doubles match and john wants us to rate him and so if you'd like us to do this for you we're trying to expand outside of central florida and bring in the rest of the world we got videos from india you can just email a link to your videos at the pickleball pirates at gmail.com the link is right here under my my video and you can send it to us there or you can use google drive send it to that same address we will pull it down and select the ones to put up on the channel and we would love to just review your stuff show your stuff and show your skills to the rest of the world so enjoy the show oh i forgot to say one thing so the matches on this happen so fast because they clipped the games in between points so i couldn't really talk during the match but during the second match i read off the iptpa skill assessment for 4.0 players i go down the list and i talk about the skill testing and then i give them a ranking at the end of that stay tuned you got to watch it all the way to the end to see the pickleball pirate ranking we will see you next time on the channel enjoy the show all right let's get started here that's uh john and nicole hanlon in the red on the other side there and they are playing garrett heister and bae heister let's get this show on the road right all right john's owning the line there he's pretty good he obviously is a little bit taller he's got a lot of reach there we're going to be moving faster these i can tell here oh john got that one up a little bit higher than he wanted to he's having to back all the way up to the fence on that good return though oh nicole didn't get all of that one a little bit longer [Applause] that was a decent put away by bay i have no clue what the score is folks sorry about that but uh nobody's actually calling it loud enough for me to hear so i'm uh i'm assuming that nicole and gary uh john are winning because they just came to seem to be serving a whole lot more good third shot drops all right there's the first semi-dink battle that i saw in the game this must be game two good hands by nicole keeping that ball in play good hands by nicole [Applause] so away good defensive stand there okay as we go through this second match i'm just going to read off what the iptpa skill assessment is for a 4.0 player and um 4.0 players should possess all the 3.5 level skills so we're going to start with just reading all of the things that they need to do to be a 4.0 and so it says sustains a volley exchange at the net beginning to use directional control we see them did that do that at the the first game can demonstrate a block volley they blocked several drives that were coming at them and so they were able to block it back to the to the other opponents um able to hit winning volleys when the ball is popped up we saw several put aways by both nicole and john when that happened um better consistency when performing third shot drops from the baseline i was very impressed they they were able to do consistently um get their third shot drops in so that was pretty good um most effectively moves effectively with their partner easily switching sides and communicates when required i would definitely say that they called out balls they moved together you can see that they move together as a team when one moves the other one's moving with them um now dinking i would say a little bit more that i'd like to see is the dinky with a purpose to elicit a put away shot i didn't see a whole lot of dinking but sometimes you can't get into the dink uh because your opponents just keep slamming the ball at you and you just kind of have to play um the the bashing game so sometimes that's hard but when i did see them get into dinks they felt very comfortable um controls play at the non-volley zone by keeping their opponent back if they're at the baseline so um definitely several times they kept the opponent back kept driving the ball back and keeping them back that's really what you want to do to keep people from coming up to the net demonstrate an effective poach and understand when it's appropriate i think i saw a couple pop-ups there when john was jumping across and poaching that ball so he definitely did that um now the next one is uh able to change a fast-paced strategy to a slow one and vice versa so it definitely saw a couple times where the ball was getting slammed and there was a reset in there maybe a little bit more consistency you want to get there but definitely on your way there uh i'll say for john and nicole could consistently perform an overhead and beginning to place the shot for winners definitely saw some winning overheads from both nicole and john and good defense from behind the line there was a poach by nicole right there a body bag by john um so demonstrates control of a forehand ground strokes the direction depth height and spin i definitely saw them controlling their ground strokes better now not so much about spin but you know spin is depending on your swing a lot of people hit flat you know calendar kellen uh uh from pro kinetics kellen dawson he he doesn't hit with any spin hardly he's a very flat hitter of the ball so that's okay um next one is understands proper shot selection to minimize errors so that that's where you're getting into strategy and understanding okay don't hit a drive there they're up at the net you want to hit a drop and reset and just like that reset right there you know i see that they're consistently doing that so i would definitely say that that would be a yes and um able to adjust to different ball speeds consistently definitely i'm seeing a lot of change of pace here and when you're playing in the 3-5-4-0 you know really the other players dictate play and then it's up to you to reset when appropriate is up to you to not hit the ball hard when appropriate or not speed it up if that's their give you know that's their good shot um uses offensive lobs effectively i don't know if i've seen any lobs but you know that's not necessarily a bad thing lobs are a very very intricate shot and you know more times than not can get you into trouble so i'm not necessarily a proponent of lob although i mess one up every now and then and i'll try one uh my partner looks at me like why'd you lob i don't say i don't know but it's something that you want to do um every now and then to keep your opponents off off um off kilter a little bit so the next one is beginning to use spin effectively on a variety of shots once again that goes down to your stroke uh you know if you're not a spinner of the ball you know that's not necessarily necessary but if you know how to place it that's what i look at it you know you're placing the ball all over the different sides of the court you know sometimes they're hitting topspin but you know a lot of times paddles you can't spin right unless you have like an electrum pro or a paddle that has a very very abrasive face getting spin is really really hard um maintains greater patience and dinks and rallies i'll say in this game i'm seeing a little bit more patience in the dings the last game we witnessed there wasn't a whole lot of digging going on and uh but this one here is definitely showing patience some misses here and there but definitely not uh pressing the ball when they don't need to so i would say that's a yes and uh beginning to anticipate shots more frequently than watching where they're hitting it and anticipating it so let me just go through the skill testing requirements so in dinks 16 out of 20 windshield wiper dinks so that's being able to swipe across the ball and dink it i saw definitely 16 out of 20 of those i would say that's a check for them next would be a forehand down the line to hitting be able to hit four out of five forehands down the lines i would say that that would be a yes for them a forehand cross court dink i definitely saw in at least four or five cross-court dinks from both of them a backhand down the link shot down the line shot four out of five of those a backhand cross court shot uh dink down the line so you got dinking down the line with your backhand cross court backhand dinks then um third shot drops from the baseline seven out of ten four hands seven out of ten backhands i would say that they were consistent on both of those so you know what john nicole i'm gonna have to give you a pickleball pirates 4.0 rating doesn't mean much it means something on my channel thank you for submitting your videos and once again folks if you would like to have us do this for you you can submit your videos at the pickleball pirates at gmail.com or use google drive upload it there and then send us a link to that at the same email address and we will see you next time on the channel hello and goodbye to indiana