Month: April 2017 (Page 5 of 6)

Thursday, April 6, 2017

One of my staff walked into my office and exclaimed, “Your wand is here from Hogwarts!”

Well, it’s not a wand, but still something pretty fun—my brand new paddle arrived one day early! Figures that it’s raining today plus I have plans tonight anyway, so I won’t be using my new paddle until maybe Sunday.

At lunch time, I took the paddle out of the plastic baggie and tested the grip size. Too small. Not enough gap between my fingers and the fleshy part of my hand near the base of my thumb. And I found the raised ridges on the grip to be annoying. But I had ordered some overgrip too, so I installed that immediately. It beefed up the grip and smoothed out the ridges—both good. The telltale gap should still be a bit bigger, but I’m going to run with it as is and see how it goes. Regardless, I should try to get some paddle time in my garage to get used to it before I play on a court next.

 Paddle grip factory specs

 Paddle grip with overgrip installed

Aches & Pains

I’m not sure what’s up but my right wrist is hurting. It used to chronically bother me a few years back between computer use and preparation/practice for bagpiping competitions. Hopefully, it’ll get better quickly. Plus I have the usual assortment of sore muscles. I was pretty beat by the time yesterday wrapped up. During the last game I played, I could feel the effect of fatigue on my body. It was probably good that Allen wanted to head out and didn’t allow another game to start—though I was ready to keep at it!

Number of days on a court: 12 (Still)
Number of hours playing: 34 (Still)

Wednesday, April 5, 2017 (Court Day #12)

i arrived at Derby Park at 9:10 to find one game already in full swing, my friend John was amongst them.

Today was better than Sunday, I made fewer errors. My number one error is simply hitting the ball into the net when I mean to drop it over, typically when I’m moving up to the kitchen.

During one game, I was partnered with Tom S., a pleasant fellow. Tom is a tall thin man with a trim white beard. He’s a regular. Tom stopped me between points and told me to make sure to keep a player that is back at her baseline back by hitting deep. Of course, he’s right. It’s just implementing what I already have learned into an actual game.

Tom advising me to not hit short to a player who is back. Yeah. Oops.

Eric and I played two games against Allen and Lauren. We lost both by roughly a 2:1 score ratio. We were just making too many mistakes by either setting up easy shots for them or failing to get our shots over the net or within the bountries of their court. That’s not to say they aren’t solid players, they are. Not 5.0 players, but probably one notch above Eric and myself—not as many unforced errors.

I lost a few points over the morning by lobbing too short (smashed back) or too long (out). And you wonder why the pros only lob about 1% of the time.

Serving Hard

While Eric and I were waiting for our opponents, I figured I’d try a hard serve. I hit a serve as hard as I could with topspin. To my surprise, it landed in . . . right on the line in the corner! Not one I’d trust in a game quite yet! Though it still didn’t seem as fast as I’d like, it was promising.

Paddle

I checked the tracking on my paddle and USPS says it’s expected Friday. I had been hoping today, but as far as using it on a court, it makes no difference if it came later today or then. And I’ll still need to install the overgrip anyway.

SCPC Shirts

The Santa Cruz Pickleball Club came up with a new white club T-shirt with a big graphic on the back to go along with the small breastpocket logo. Karen Long kindly arranged the sales. I bought a medium one for $25. I was expecting a standard cotton shirt, but these are fancy wicking synthetics. Now if I can just get good enough to wear it and not dishonor it!

Dave Allenbaugh modeling the new SCPC shirt

Videos

I recorded another few games today. The one I wish I would have recorded was Dan and myself against Dave (former neighbor) and a 30-something tall guy named Mark with short blond hair. Some of the regulars knew Mark though I’d never seen him. I overheard Mark say he’d been in Costa Rica. Mark is a hard hitter. So was this guy Dan. Dan is about my height but stocky, sporting dark hair and a trim beard sprinkled with gray. I’m still trying to figure out how Dan was getting so much speed on his serves. Dan and I won, but that was more Dan than me. I managed to avoid losing too many points. Dan saved me a few times by successfully returning slams that I’d inadvertently set up. But it was nice to not be the reason had we lost. That felt like the most serious game I’d been in with the ball whipping back and forth. There was at least one point where I could take credit since I was volleying at the net and was able to put away the point between Dave and Mark. The match was like jumping onto one of those spinning top-like playground structures—most have removed these days as unsafe!—and hanging on for dear life! You are glad you survived afterward!

The Long Dink

One thing that I’m getting pretty good at is cross court dinking. In the video still above, you can see Dave trying to return my cross court dink. I’ve managed a few of those recently. Hmmm. Looks like Eric and I both should have shifted to the right. If Dave had gotten that he could have popped it down the line or around the post. He did manage to hit it, but not get it back onto our side of the court. Dave and John did come back in this game and win however.

The day wrapped up at noon. Allen seems to have a tighter schedule than Dave A. Dave often hangs out while players continue to play past the official noon ending time; Allen, not so much. I headed home and then off to work to muse about my next pickleball day with rain in the forecast this week.

Number of days on a court: 12
Number of hours: 34

The Perfect Game

So, I’ve been watching these videos of matches analyzing what I’m doing wrong and what I’m doing right.

I came to the conclusion that there are sometimes shots made by an opponent that are just really, really good shots and there is nothing you can do.

There was one that I thought was one of those, but after watching it a few times, it may have been preventable. In motion up from the baseline at midcourt, I drop the ball cross court from my right to left. It’s a decent shot. Low and fairly shallow. But it’s still high enough to volley. My opponent (in this case Marie) dinks back cross court and it’s perfect, right on the edge line. I just cannot reach it to hit it back. Once she hit that, the only way I could have returned it was to have a six or seven foot arm and I don’t have one. (Not that I’d really want one, it’d be hard to find shirts!) I might have been able to prevent her volley by doing a better drop shot on the run.

About to bounce right on the line. Nice shot, Marie!

But I keep working backward on that point. Back to the serve. My serve from the right service court. I served it shallow, which brought her up to the kitchen. A short serve is not necessarily bad, it’s good to mix up your serves. But generally, you want to hit it deep to keep your opponent at the baseline. This time, I didn’t catch her napping and she returned it down the middle into my court right by my left forcing a backhand by me. (It was a safe shot, about 4-5 feet short of my baseline.) Now, this is where I made a mistake. I should have done one of two shots: a drop shallow into the kitchen or a lob over her head. (Lobs are rare by the pros, by the way, since they have great drop shots.) Instead my drop shot wasn’t shallow enough. She volleyed it back short to my forehand. I had to take it on the move, I didn’t have time to set up then hit. That’s where the above paragraph takes over. My decent shot. And I moved into the right place at that point, on the kitchen line, guarding the middle. But being that she could take it in the air, she had the angle and put the point away.

Maybe there is a perfect game out there where you do everything right but still lose points. And it seems that should be winner shots that are simply unpreventable even if you do everything right. There was another lost point in one of my videoed matches where I figured it was just one of those perfect shots that I had to just notch up to my opponent’s skill or luck. But now I wonder if that one is also traceable back to an error or lack of precision/skill on my part.

All I can do is continue to analyze and get the hours in. Maybe I’ve mentioned this already, but in sailing, they talk about “time on the water”, that is, to get better, you just need to be out sailing—maybe it’s races, maybe it’s drills, but it’s time on the water.

For me, it’s still just a lot of time on the court that needs to be put in.

(Funny thing is, after watching it over and over, it looks like her shot on the line was actually out. Not by much, but out. And I told her I thought it was in. Ah, well!)

Number of day on a court: 11 (still)
Number of hours: 31 (still)