What kind of player are you?

With a new year about to begin, you may be looking to make some resolutions regarding your racquetball game. To help you make your resolutions, we here at The Racquetball Blog would like to ask you a question: What kind of racquetball player are you?

Generally, there are three types of racquetball players: 1) power players, 2) shooters, and 3) what we’ll call all-rounders (borrowing a term from cricket), as these are players who not especially powerful or really shooters. How do you determine which category you fall into? Well, what do you do when you’re in trouble?

When someone is in trouble they will go to their strength - that is, bring out their big weapon, so when a power player is down in a game, he or she will try to amp up the power to get out trouble. Similarly, a shooter will try to shoot themselves out of trouble, going for winners with every swing of their racquet. That is, when people are in trouble, they will try to bring out their big weapon, whether that be power or shooting.

Now, all round players - those who are not especially powerful or a real shooter - don’t have a weapon to go to, so they don’t have a big asset to apply when they are in trouble. All rounders need to work hard during their matches to grind out wins. Being fit is important in sports, but it’s especially important if you have an all round game style, because you don’t have a big weapon that can serve as a “Get out of Jail Free” card.

Now, as you get better at racquetball, you’ll develop both skills of being able to play with power and shooting the ball. But still you’ll likely do one better than the other. If you can do both really well, then your name might be Kane Waselenchuk, who is great because he is both a power player and a shooter. But that doesn’t make him an all rounder.

Rocky Carson is a classic all rounder, as he has plenty of power and can certainly shoot the ball, but we wouldn’t call him a power player or a shooter. However, Carson is in great shape, and certainly grinds out wins. Indeed, he’s spoken more than once about how he loves to compete, so grinding out wins is exactly what he likes to do.

Once you know the type of player you are, then you next want to know the type of player you are playing. A power player versus a shooter will be a contest of who can take who out of their game: can the power player overpower the shooter so he or she can’t get set up to shoot the ball, or can the shooter put the ball out of reach so the power player cannot crush it like he or she wants?

A classic example of this happened in the Men’s Singles final of the 2016 Pan American Championships, when Daniel De La Rosa played Jake Bredenbeck. De La Rosa is a shooter and Bredenbeck is a prototypical power player. The match was in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, which is at altitude. Balls will travel further at altitude, so a player needs to adjust to that if they are unaccustomed to it. But San Luis Potosi is De La Rosa’s hometown, while Bredenbeck grew up in the relatively low lands of Minnesota. On that day, in those circumstances, the shooter beat the power player, and did so convincingly.

But the trickier match ups are when like plays like. That is, when a power player plays another power player, or a shooter plays another shooter. These are situations where fire is fighting fire, and it becomes a case of which fire is hotter, which is always tricky. So matches between players like Bredenbeck and Alejandro Cardona - both power players - or between De La Rosa and Andree Parrilla - both shooters are difficult to plan for, because each player is trying to do the same thing.

So, before making your racquetball New Year’s resolutions first ask yourself what kind of player you are. Once you have a good handle on that, then you will be in a better position to move forward and make plans for the new year.

Follow the bouncing ball…..