By Jeff Renshaw

About this series. Campers tend to go home from a Tony Roig Pickleball camp talking about similar things. I know because I have read more than a hundred of their testimonials, and because I am a camper myself. I came to Tony as a student in 2023, have attended six of his camps since, and now work on the TRP coaching team. This series of blog posts covers the takeaways I hear most often and have benefited from myself: fewer things to think about (this post), a steadier mental game, and camp experiences that keep paying off.

I started playing pickleball in the spring of 2023. Within a few months, I had a new favorite sport but was drowning in YouTube, where countless videos offer tips for every shot and situation. Most of what I watched seemed good. Some of it felt incomplete or lacked context. Much of it seemed beyond my skill level. But I wanted to get better, so I kept watching. What I never found was a path. Nothing told me how the pieces fit together or what to work on first.

During my YouTube days, I found Tony’s Pickleball Therapy podcast, then joined his online coaching. A couple of months later, in November 2023, I went to my first Tony-led pickleball camp in Dallas. Afterward, I sent him a note that said, “I knew I was making the right choice when I chose your camp over all the other options.”

That was 3 years ago. The sentiment I shared with Tony after that Dallas camp has held up, and this series is my attempt to show why.

The problem with YouTube isn’t necessarily bad advice

If you learn from videos, give yourself credit. You care enough about the game to study it, and much of the advice out there is sound.

The trouble is what a bunch of random videos adds up to. Each tip is a set of directions from a different stranger. None of those well-meaning folks know where you are in your game or where you are trying to go. Collect enough of these tips, and you walk onto the court with a head full of ideas and no good way to sort through them.

I know this kind of YouTube frustration isn’t unique to me. Kathy S. arrived at camp “feeling overwhelmed by the deluge of pickleball tips we’ve seen online and received from our club pros.” David B. was already a good player, but his improvement had stalled. “Watching videos was not giving me the focus needed to change that,” he wrote. Alex F., a few months into the game, was blunter: “Watching tons of instructional videos hasn’t really helped my game.”

Camp handed me a map

Here is what I remember sinking in with me most at my first camp with Tony. Pickleball is really two games. There is the game you play on the serve side and the game you play on the return side. Each one has a manageable number of objectives.

I had heard this in Tony’s online coaching. But at camp I played it, drill after drill, with Tony close enough to answer my questions and make suggestions that fit where I was as a player. That’s the difference between being told about a map and walking the ground with the person who drew it.

Once I knew which of the two games I was in, I knew what I was trying to do. The game made sense in a way it hadn’t before.

This is about bandwidth, a word you will hear from Tony often. A fast game like pickleball leaves very little attention to spare. Every decision you can make before the rally starts is attention you get back for the ball and the people on the other side of the net. With a small set of objectives, my mind felt clear. The foundation was set, and I was ready to build on it. Camp is where it came together.

Dee-Dee T., aged 75 and a veteran of Tony’s camps, said it in fewer words:

“Makes sense out of this crazy game of pickleball. Breaks it down and puts it all back together.”

One shot that is never wrong

A good map also shows you one road that always leads back to familiar ground. At camp, that road is what Tony often calls the “3-year-old dink.”

I remember watching Tony demonstrate it. He started at the NVZ line. Then he moved back and back again until he hit the same “simple” shot from every spot on the court. He called it a “get-out-of-jail-free card.” It may not always be the best shot, he said, but it is never the wrong shot.

When the pace gets faster than I like, I do not have to choose among five options under pressure. I have one I trust, and it calms the waters. I use it every time I play. It’s the 3-year-old dink.

Other campers name the same shot when reflecting on their camp experiences. Monica went home from camp to play in a tournament, and “when things got crazy, just refocused on the 3-year-old dink,” she wrote. “So simple - and effective!” Happy M. returned to a weekly round robin after camp. A few games in, one of the better players asked, “What the heck, Happy, were you at pickleball camp in Florida?” Happy credits the dink she learned at camp, “along with the idea that it can be hit from anywhere on the court.”

What I carry onto the court now

The game did not slow down after camp. What changed is how much less mental baggage I bring onto the court. Which game am I playing, serve side or return side? What am I trying to accomplish right now? And if things get away from me, there is one shot I can always hit. It is a short list on purpose. It leaves room to watch the ball and enjoy the rally I am playing. This is just a fraction of what I brought home from my first camp with Tony.

Alex F., the newer player the videos had not helped, left camp with the same kind of short list:

“I learned that I need to focus on just one or two main things in order to gain the most improvement before moving on to the next thing.”

If you are weighing a pickleball camp and your head is as full as mine was, know this. You will not leave a TRP camp with a mountain of random tips. You will leave with fewer things to think about. The essential things. And the reason behind each one.

Of course, a clear head does not prevent bad days. In the next post, I will tell you about the camp I arrived at with the service yips, and the 20 seconds of coaching that I still go back to.

You can find upcoming Tony Roig Pickleball camps for adults at all skill levels here: www.tonyroigpickleball.com/pickleball-camps-2026.