Author: Sam Arnold
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Booking a Court at Slate? Here’s What You Get…
The on-court experience at Slate is nothing like you’ve experienced before. First, as you may have seen from our renders, it will be the most stunning space for an actual court-playing area ever designed. The building materials are quite functional as well. The wood on the back walls is actually a special acoustic material which…
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Construction Construction Construction!
If you’ve been following along, you may have noticed that things have been pushed back. You always hear that construction is never done on time. And now, experiencing it firsthand, you really get to understand why. To make Slate truly great and incomparable, there are many steps that we are taking that unfortunately increase the…
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Midcourt Madness on the Pickleball Court!
Stage 1 of Slate’s opening is complete. We’ve evaluated hundreds of Stage 1 members. We’re so grateful for having the opportunity to meet you all and have you all on court. As spoken of in previous blogs, our coaching team has noticed specific patterns of play that get a lot of players in trouble and…
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Pickleball Forehands and the Kinetic Chain
How do you create a proper kinetic chain on forehand pickleball shots like the dink and drive? I see a lot of “paddle tip down” techniques applied by many players, especially in the Intern and Manager Levels, which unfortunately isn’t a good method. You’re limiting the energy control to just the muscles in your arm,…
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Let’s Get Flicky With It
The flick is one of the ultimate weapons in pickleball. You can take a short soft shot that was more effective before this shot existed and whip it into topspin shape, an offensive weapon that will rock your opponents’ world. To wisely execute it, you first have to take a tactics-first approach. What is the…
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Level Evaluations: Reflections and Results
📝The data is in! As of writing this article, we have conducted assessments on exactly 240 Stage 1 Slaters! We’ve had at least two sets of eyes from our highly trained staff on each Evaluation to ensure maximum accuracy. 👁️Have a look at the distribution chart below: You can see there is certainly a bell…
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Slate’s Junior STAGE Program
Junior Development! This became the bedrock of my passion for coaching tennis a decade ago. Developing the physical literacy and tennis skills of a student from a young age all the way to the point where they became teenage tournament-level players, growing their love for the game in the process, was very rewarding. Perhaps it comes…
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Levels at Slate
Pickleball has changed. A 3.0 is different today than it was two years ago. The reason comes down to the increase of the skill gap. Now that millions of people are playing, and the professional scene has skyrocketed, the levels of play that are at the top are far greater. But, there aren’t numbers added…
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We’re Opening On Tuesday!
The Brookside Backcourt is opening to play and programming on Tuesday, October 1. Now you’re wondering, why not September 30? Well, the weather last week was not conducive to the paint drying. We wanted a high amount of acrylic layers to increase the quality of the court surface, which means more drying time. But the…
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Let Go of Your Fear of the Drop
It’s okay to hit your drops high. Third shot, fifth shot, even the holy seventh shot, whichever. I know it’s not your intention. I know you sometimes get blasted as a result of your errors. But just because you occasionally loft them up and get severely punished as a result, does not mean you have…