Courts Now Open at Hudson River Park 🙌

In This Issue…
📋 Hudson River Park: Court Report
💥 Game on in Bed-Stuy!
🤔 If You’re Not Dinking, You’re Donking
🏋️‍♀️ The Path to Pain-Free Pickleball

Plan Ahead: If you can handle the cold, Monday is ⛅ mostly sunny, mid-40s, < 10mph wind. 🌧️ Rain and wind expected Tues PM to Wed AM, but ☀️ clear and calm conditions on Thanksgiving Day! Take advantage if you can, because things get dreary and wet again 🌧️ until Sunday.

Check street closures here for the Macy’s Parade on Thursday. Alternate Side Parking is also suspended, and meters will not be in effect.

Forward this to your favorite NYC pickleballers to keep them in the loop!

Hudson River Park opens 4 new courts with dedicated nets and lights!

Last week, the Hudson River Park Trust opened 4 brand new pickleball courts📍behind the Javits Center. More than 2 years in the making, these courts with permanent nets are a 10-minute walk from the Hudson Yards 34th Street station, and easily accessible by bike path. Official hours are 6 AM to 1 AM.

Officials have emphasized that these are interim courts which did not go through typical development processes and may still be redone or relocated in coming years. In fact, many of the fixtures such as the lights, benches, and fencing were repurposed from other projects. We applaud the resourcefulness of the Hudson River Park Trust in bringing to life this milestone for public pickleball access in Manhattan!

Here’s the full report from our visit at 6 PM on Tuesday:

• Surface is one of the best in the city, tied with the newly resurfaced courts at Houston & 6th (William F. Passannante)

• Plenty of seating and benches for players while waiting

• The solar lights are quite dim, despite being the max setting. If you choose to play after dark, try to slow the game down and avoid unnecessary risks that may lead to injury.

• We have verified that some court dimensions are currently off by 1-2 inches. The project manager is aware, has been very responsive, and will work to resolve it over the next few weeks.

• Wind is a factor given proximity to the water. Players and ambassadors are advocating for windscreens similar to the ones on the tennis courts, which would also help mitigate reflections.

• Watch out for balls escaping underneath the fencing into inaccessible areas around the courts!

Official signage is currently modeled off of the nearby tennis court rules, but alternative signage that is more specific to pickleball has been proposed to the park. In the meantime, we love that players still seem to be rotating and sharing courts in the spirit of other pickleball communities around the city 👏

For real-time updates, join the #games_hudsonriverpark channel in slack or follow our stories on Instagram.

Whether you’re just getting started, or trying to break into advanced games, the instructors on our site are ready to help!

Sam Priven (4.7 DUPR), our latest addition, is a talented jazz musician who teaches pickleball on the Upper West Side. If you’re looking for an energetic, fun-loving, patient instructor, book a lesson with Sam now.

For those in Brooklyn, Brian Ross, our Williamsburg-based coach, is back from injury after working with Fit Club (more on that below), and now taking bookings!

Game on in Bed-Stuy 💥

We are thrilled to partner with Game Over - a team doing incredible things in the NYC basketball community for over 20 years - to offer pickleball programming, events, and court bookings at the Brooklyn Stuy Dome. Thanks so much to everyone who came out to our preview night last Monday, and the Rise N Grind drill session on Friday morning!

We’re running it back today from 7-9 PM. If it’s your first time at this location, use the code STUYDOME for $5 off.

Holiday Schedule at Major R. Owens

• Monday, 8 PM: 3.5+ Evening Open Play

• Wednesday, 7:30 AM: Intermediate Open Play

• Thursday: Major Owens will be closed after 2pm

💡 Reminder: The deadline for entering the NYC Pickleball “MLP” League draft is tonight (Monday) at 8 PM! Apply here.

If you’re not dinking, you’re donking

One of the most common questions I get from beginner and intermediate players is, “Why is dinking worth practicing when I hardly see it in games?” If you’re playing games with little to no dinking, it means many points are being won within the first 3-5 hits of a rally. These types of games can be chaotic and fun, but if this describes nearly all the games you’re playing, it tells me a couple of things:

1. Players in these games aren’t consistently getting up to the kitchen line. This can be related to a lot of things like court positioning, shot selection, and shot execution.

2. You and your opponents are probably “donking” your volleys - popping them up, hitting them out or into the net, and giving up too many free points on your 4th and 6th shots.

3. Everyone is probably hitting a lot of balls that are going out.

If this resonates with you, and you want to break out beyond the 3.5 ceiling that many players seem to hit, then keep practicing your dinks. The reason is that proper dink technique is effectively the same as proper drop technique, which allows you and your team to get to the net on your serve from anywhere on the court. If you get to the net more often than your opponents, you’re going to win a lot more games.

The path to pain-free pickleball

Understanding your body’s strengths, weaknesses, and limitations is one of the best ways to ensure that you can continue to play pickleball freely for years to come. In pursuit of that goal, Ray and I (Eric) have personally been working with the Astoria Fit Club team for the past 6 weeks on injury rehab for Ray, and preventive maintenance for me. In just a short time, we have both experienced steady improvements in strength and mobility. From my initial evaluation, I discovered that my right knee doesn’t track as well over my toes as my left knee does, leading to instability and hesitation when I do a pivot step back on my forehand dinks. Training with the Fit Club team has made me realize just how nuanced but impactful these imbalances can be, and how critical it is to identify and address issues early.

We are excited to make sports physical therapy more accessible to all our players through this partnership. A couple weeks ago, I ran a two-hour pickleball clinic in Williamsburg for the Fit Club staff from all three locations. We are committed to ensuring that our community has access to informed and thoughtful care as it relates to this still-emerging sport. Making sure our partners fully understand the game and the movements is an important part of that, and their team has put in the work!

Enter the code “NYCPICKLE50” when they ask “how did you hear about us?” during signup, and receive your evaluation and 1:1 treatment sessions at a reduced $50 rate (instead of $150)! We don’t make a penny off this code - it’s simply a generous offer to the NYC Pickleball community from our friends at Fit Club.