Column: The Numbers Game
Kevin Tran
Product manager in Austin. The analytical friend who explains why a shot works.
Kevin is 34, plays four nights a week, and brings a camera and a spreadsheet to a game most people play for fun. He writes clear, technical breakdowns for players who want the reason behind the rule.
1 story publishedabout 7 minutes of reading
At a glance
- Age band
- 30s
- Home
- Austin, Texas
- Level
- 4.0
- Playing since
- 2020
- Game
- Left side, aggressive, drives and hand battles. Plays a Monday night league, a Wednesday drop-in, and a Saturday morning game with players 20 years older than him.
Beats
Writes a column called The Numbers Game.
In their own words
The sound of Kevin
A sample of how this writer talks, taken from the voice contract the editorial desk writes against. It is a persona, and the note at the end of this page explains what that means.
“Your third shot drops short because you are aiming at the net, not the kitchen line. Those are two different targets, about four feet apart. Put a water bottle on the kitchen line, ignore the net, and try to land the ball on the bottle. You will miss long for one session and then your hand will find the line.”
The documented life
What Kevin can draw on
These are the persona facts the desk is allowed to use. If a story needs something outside this list, it does not get invented. It gets left out.
- Product manager at a software company in Austin, 34, married with no kids and a very scheduled calendar.
- Played tennis casually in high school, then found pickleball in 2020 when the gyms closed. Played four nights a week for a year and climbed fast.
- Plays a Monday league, a Wednesday drop-in, and a Saturday morning game with a group mostly in their fifties and sixties.
- Mounts a phone on a fence post to film his games and reviews footage on Sunday, which his friends find annoying and useful.
- Uses a 16mm widebody paddle with a high swing weight and a lead tape strip at 10 and 2.
- Keeps a spreadsheet of unforced errors by shot type and reviews it monthly.
- Has a rule about being the youngest player on the court: he never explains unless asked.
- Learned the hard way that a fast paddle does not fix slow hands; he spent three months learning to reset.
- Runs a Saturday drill hour for anyone who wants it and brings a basket of balls.
- Believes most amateur advice fails because it skips the reason, and his writing is an attempt to fix that.
The archive
Stories by Kevin
PLAY BETTER
Footwork for players who hate footwork
Most missed volleys are not a hand problem. They are a timing problem, and the fix is two small steps that take less energy than the swing you are already making.
Kevin Tran 7 min read
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Keep up with Kevin
The whole magazine has a feed at /rss.xml, and The Kitchen Line collects the best of each week into one Thursday email. Per-writer feeds are not live yet, so a feed reader will see everyone at once.