MD Sporting Solutions Tennis & Pickleball Mount Review
The two things I recommend the most to beginners to get better is to drill with an intention to improve something specific and to record yourself and analyze your play. I’ve tried many ways for recording my gameplay. I’ve used tripods, little fence mounts with little legs you wrap around the fence to record. And now, a mount that goes on the top of the fence with the MD Sporting Solutions fence mount.
I've now recorded over twenty games using this mount and have tried many different angles and set ups. Even before using this mount, I also already had a habit of recording our games. And you compare the difference using home baked solutions or tripods versus this actual fence mount.
The TLDR is that the video quality from the recordings through this mount are significantly better than the alternatives. The higher angle leads to much better viewing, both for fun and for analysis.
I used this mount in a recent local tournament and many people asked me for the recordings afterwards and were amazed by the video quality.
MD Sporting Solutions provided a free mount for us to review, but we are not compensated in any way for this review and this is an honest breakdown of the product. You can get it on Amazon here. You can also get it directly from their site here and for a limited time until Dec 31st 2025, use code 11pickles for 15% off!
How to use the recordings to improve at pickleball
Before getting into the exact details of this fence mount, I want to start with explaining how I use recordings because this informs how I use and evaluate recording set ups.
Fixing Mechanics
If you’ve ever watched yourself play on film, you’ll notice that you look different than the pros. You may already know why you look different. When I first watched myself play, I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that something was off on every shot.
The great thing about film is that you can zoom into every detail to figure out what is wrong. Find scenarios in pro games where they’re hitting the exact same shot. Notice the details like where their weight is, arm positions, paddle face, knee bend, etc. look at everything. When I first watched myself play, I was shocked that I wasn’t bending my knees as much as the pros were on most shots. I felt like I was squatting and my quads were even sore after some games, yet surely when looking at film, my legs were only slightly bent and the pros were much lower than I was.
While useful at all levels, this was especially useful at the beginning of my pickleball journey because I wouldn’t have to unlearn as many bad habits. Pickleball is a game with a lot of mechanics and basic fundamentals and recordings are fantastic to get a feel for that baseline.
If you ever get coaching, recording these can be super helpful because you’ll be able to notice the difference between when you hit the shot and how the coach hits it.
Watching film helps you understand what to work on in your next drill session or game to help you improve those mechanics.
For example, the shot I'm reworking out right now is my forehand and backhand drive. Since I don't come from tennis, I don't have a natural swing path and footwork for it. And I developed bad habits early on when playing. I initially used these videos to fix dinks and footwork, and now moving on to this drive. I can easily isolate differences in my form to try and implement into my game.
Understanding Strategy
The other thing film helps with is evaluating decision making. Pickleball is a game of many micro decisions. You have to decide whether to take the ball out of the air. If you or your partner will take the ball. If you’re hitting it soft or hard. If you’re hitting a safe shot or aggressive one. Where on the court to hit it. Tons of little micro thoughts. In the moment, it can be difficult to tell what were good decisions and what were bad ones. Film makes it easy to analyze after.
With decision making, watching pro analysis can help you get a feel for what good decisions are and what patterns to recognize in pickleball. Tanner Pickleball on YouTube has some good breakdowns. You can use those same learnings to break down your own tape. Figure out if you were in position, perhaps you attacked balls that were too low to attack. Maybe you missed opportunities to gain the upper hand in the point. Maybe you hit shots that are too risky. In film it’s much easier to see those patterns and recognize what decisions to change next time you play.
If you have friends who are much better than you, it's also fun to watch film with them. They'll notice a lot of things that you don't notice strategically and can point them out to you.
For this most recent tournament, it was great to be able to re-watch points to figure out our weaknesses: Footwork, positioning, decision making, and even count how many third shot drops we hit versus missed. The video doesn't lie, so you can easily tell yeah analyze the stats to see where your game is holding you back from the next level.
It’s also fun!!
While I initially got this product and wanted to review this from an improvement and analysis angle, I also didn't realize and underestimated how fun it would be to be able to see film of us playing. You get to relive the highlight. and all the cool moments and crazy plays that happen. Sometimes insane rallies happen and it's so cool to see it back on tape.
Seeing our crazy ernies, resets, ATPs, or just great gets on tape made me more excited to back out there on the court!
The higher angle from MD Sporting Solutions Mount makes for a better recording:
The general rule of thumb for recording is you want a relatively high point of view for recording. Especially for game analysis because you can see the patterns and spacing of the court better.
You need tripods that go pretty high or be pretty tall and a good fence attachment. And some fences have a sound blocker which prevents you from hooking onto the fence in an ideal angle.
On the top you can see the recording angle from the mount vs. on the bottom, through tripod. You can see the big difference in recording quality. The high angle allows you to see way more of what is actually happening on the court.
The MD Sporting Solutions Mount goes all the way at the top of the fence and thus provides a great high view, never gets blocked by people walking by, and never gets hit by a stray ball (yes this sometimes happens).
This leads to much higher quality film for analysis!
Set up is relatively easy but I wish there were more tips and instructions
After opening it you’re greeted with a little card. It’s quite nice and puts a friendly face to the brand.
The poles are pretty easy to put together and set up was fairly easy but I still would have liked to have some instructions. There were some tips I found online that I found helpful that I wish came with the product but didn’t realize. I’ll go over the tips in a moment.
Tips for Recording With the Mount
When setting it up, my favorite spot to put it was directly in the middle, lining it up with the middle line and putting it up on the fence right behind that middle line. Creates a balanced recording view of both sides.
Some folks online recommended recording using the front facing camera of the phone. I did try this but the front facing camera is just not as powerful and also has fewer settings. The benefit of the front facing camera is to be able to see the angle and court positioning from below while you’re putting it up. I tried this and it was fine, but it was more likely to cut off parts of the court because it doesn’t have as wide of a camera.
I did find that the 0.5x option for the back-facing camera on my iPhone led to much higher quality recordings and preferred that method. It also led to a much wider field of view, which meant I could see the court in its entirety.
To do this, however, initially I had to hit the record button, put it up, and then take it back down to see where it was actually recording because from the bottom you actually can't see where it is. However, after a few trial and errors of this, it was quite obvious that for this specific port tilting it fully down angled as far down as possible was the way to go and led to great recordings, so I never had to do this again. I was since told that if you have an iPhone and an Apple Watch, you can trigger the recording directly from your Apple Watch. So you don't have to go through the process and hassle of putting it up and taking it down. Instead, do the adjustment and you can see where it is on the Apple Watch.
Some Challenges I Ran Into
Wind Movement
I tried using it during a day with a little wind and the camera pole definitely moved a bit rolling back and forth, ruining the footage a bit. I had to adjust it when I noticed. The wind was definitely pretty strong that day, however.
I also tried using it on days where the wind wasn't so strong, and just a bit of light wind would move it slightly, but not super strongly. And certainly not enough to affect the recording quality.
Pole Length
Even when fully collapsed, it is pretty long and as a result doesn't fit in any bags. For me this wasn't a huge deal, but I think for some this could be. The creator of the product mentioned that they are working on a smaller, more collapsible version that may help with this.
I don't think this is a common problem for most people, but the courts that we play on have extremely tall fences. I'm about 5’ 9” in height, and I could barely get the hook over the edge. In most places we have played, the fence mount fit perfectly fine when fully extended and did not take much work to get over the top edge. However, these specific courts just happened to have pretty high fences and it definitely took a little bit of reach for me to get it over. That said, somebody 1-2 inches taller than me had no troubles at all putting it on the fence at that court.
My Final Conclusion: A Great Tool For A Good Price
Overall this is a really high quality product, really easy to set up, really easy to use, and I've found it to be incredibly helpful when it comes to improving at pickleball. The footage from it is significantly better than that of using a tripod or having a friend film.
The drawbacks I mentioned really did not affect the recordings very much of the twenty plus games I've recorded so far, only one day was windy enough where this became a problem. If you're in a very windy area this might be a different story, however, it might be hard to play pickleball if you're in a heavily windy area anyways.
Solid price, great footage, and easy to use!
MD Sporting Solutions provided a free mount for us to review, but we are not compensated in any way for this review and this is an honest breakdown of the product. You can get it on Amazon here. You can also get it directly from their site here and for a limited time until Dec 31st 2025, use code 11pickles for 15% off!
