Month: June 2017 (Page 2 of 3)

Wednesday, June 21, 2017 (Off Day)

I’ve figured out that I’m impertinent. I don’t take what I’m told at face value. I want know why. I want to proof that what I’m being told is correct. I should learn to trust, I suppose. Call me a stinker.

Why do I mention that? Because I haven’t been convinced that watching the ball during serving is best. While looking at my target and not the ball, I have never, even once, messed up the paddle contact with the ball. Never.

I posted my question in the Pickleball Forum on Facebook and got a mix of answers:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1340630926008388/permalink/1558959670842178/

I wrote to Mark Renneson of Third Shot Sports and he got back to me saying that it boils down to (paraphrasing) ‘what you are doing will work, but when all the top players are doing it a different way, you might want to consider instead doing it how they do it’. Indubitably good advice, of course. 

Another argument—the most legitimate one in my book—is possibly giving away your serve’s destination to opponents watching your eyes.

Residual from the Roll

It turns out that my elbow was a bit more injured than I thought. I couldn’t see it until I took a picture of the scape and saw the bruise! Oops! No wonder it’s a bit tender when I bump it!

Thursday, June 22, 2017 (Court Day #37)

I got to Scotts Valley’s Skypark courts at 6:30 p.m. sharp and games were already underway. I was able to get into a game pretty much immediately. A far cry from months ago, it stayed light for a quite a bit of time, with sunset at 8:30 p.m.

I spent most of the evening serving while watching the ball and not the target. I can still get the ball in, though it seems that it’s not quite as accurate as me looking at my target. I’ll continue to experiment. Overall, my play seemed subpar. Alas.

The next-to-last game of the day was Kris and me versus Bruce and Marie. We lost 11-3. Well, that was miserable. We had an immediate rematch and lost 11-5. Boy. There was no doubt who was the better team on this evening! Bruce has developed a very fast and low serve, generally to the backhand. It’s effective.

We wrapped up play at 9:15 p.m. I ended up talking in the parking lot with Bruce and his wife Janet for about 15 minutes. Janet suggested that when Scott Moore comes back for a workshop that I take it. (She knew I was out of town for the recent one.) She was able to take it and felt it was well worth it. When I said I really want to drill more, she said that she and Bruce have a net and live near me. We could always arrange a drill session.

The Looming Cloud

To be honest, I’m very frustrated with my play. In that, Janet and I are in the same place. We’re better than where we were, but aren’t improving fast enough. I want to be better. I’ve said it a bunch of times. I need to drill. Drill.

Softball

My team’s second game, and the first I can attend, is tomorrow night. Will I be sore? Will pickleball affect my ability to run the bases and run in left field? We’ll know soon.

Number of days on a court: 37
Number of total hours: 106

Tuesday, June 20, 2017 (Court Day #36)

Today was the first day of Jerry Louis’ pickleball class offered through the City of Santa Cruz. Class began at 8:30 a.m. In spite of me trying to be early, I got there about 2 minutes late. My classmates (Derby regulars) were there doing dinking warmups. There were 8 of us: John P., Eric, his friend Ted, Me, Maree, Cathy, Kim and a woman I probably have met but don’t really know. It was evenly split between men and women.

I guess I’ll share now what Eric very thoughtfully emailed me one week ago the evening after the first class:

Hi Andrew, 

Self-Evaluation

Back on Sunday, June 4, Jerry handed us a folder. In the folder were a number of articles to read as well as a photocopied form Skill Assessment for 3.5 Players (I some sleuthing using Google and found the original PDF online.) It was interesting. Each question is answered on a scale of 0 (crappy) to 3 (solid). I found some questions hard to answer, such as “Uses a forehand and backhand lob when appropriate”—I think so, but sometimes they are just poorly executed and get slammed back. I tried to be honest on the form and ended up with a mix of 2s (need work) and 3s with a couple of 1s. (My third shot drops are not consistent enough at this point, for instance.) Anyway, I handed the form to Jerry when I arrived and he provided another handout to read.

Warmups

Jerry talked about warming up and that tournament will only give you 2-5 minutes. We did some dinking and some diagonal serves to our own partners, asking the other team if we could switch so we could serve to the other service court. He mentioned not showing anything fancy and giving anything away in warmups.

Heading for a Fall

During a break, John and I played a few points of a singles game just to mess around. The problem is, I don’t have much of a “medium intensity” gear. John sent a shot off to the left and I went after it—hard. But I couldn’t quite get to it and lost my balance at the effort. Instinctively, I turned the fall into a roll. My cap and sunglasses (on my cap at the time) were strewn about. No blood, but I have a sore 2″-long light scrape on my forearm, and a sore left palm. I was back on my feet immediately and assured my classmates that I was fine.

Drills

Jerry had us doing a variety of different drills. Some of the best ones—eye opening—was the drill of serving into the last 4 feet of the court and returning into the last 4 feet of the court. I was quite surprised how many of my serves that I thought were landing deep were, in fact, falling short! Good to know!

I have to admit, I do have a really good cross-court backhand dink. Jerry even stopped to tell Ted during a dinking drill game, “You probably want to dink to his forehand, he [Andrew] is pushing you out of position.” A positive reinforcement!

Wake Up Call

I thought Eric and I were doing pretty well today . . . beating John and Ted fairly easily . . . until we played Kim and Cathy to 5 and got our butts kicked 5-1. (Or maybe my butt kicked; Eric said, “Boy, they sure were picking on YOU!”)

Lunch

Eric, Ted and I headed to the standard Mexican restaurant after class. Ted ordered a burger. Eric and I went for more traditional fare. I mentioned an upcoming tournament to Eric, the Golden State Games held up in the Bay Area in mid-August. Eric didn’t bite. He has more sense than I do. I later emailed John about it to see if he was interested in joining me in trying out 3.0, but he was reserved: “My first tournament experience told me that I should be much better before I play my second tournament. Also note that it’s pretty hot in Concord in August.” Yeah. After the game with Kim, I’ll probably need more than two months to make a more respectable showing at a tournament.

Number of days on a court: 36
Number of total hours: 103.5

Friday, June 14, 2017. (Court Day 35)

Being that construction of new courts is underway at Brommer, game times usually held there have been moved to Derby. So, Mondays and Fridays are temporarily additional days of pickleball nearer my house! I would be leaving town around 1:30 p.m. for Southern California, so I had just enough time to squeeze in some much missed play.

The SCPC is posting updates on their website, including photos.

Mounds can be seen indicating where the posts will go at Brommer.

Post holes up close and personal. It’s happening!

I arrived right after 9 a.m. at the Derby courts. It was already warm, the hottest start to a day yet. Given that I had to get on the road ASAP after playing and I had to scramble to work out some last-minute roster issues for the first softball game taking place that night—a team manager’s work is never done!—I’m typing this up two days later on Sunday night! There not a lot memorable, though I was on the winning side of another bagel game (11-0) where I had the first 0-0-2 serve and got to 8 or 9 points before they finally broke my serve! (I was playing with Rich who I’d met at Brommer recently.) This wasn’t against weak players either! I was also part of another winning partnership where we won 11-1. Those felt good. On the downside, I hit Robin in the shin with a slam and later she got smacked in the chest too—that might have been me again, but to be honest, I can’t even remember now.

It was a mixed morning of good and not as good, but overall, it was decent. I did try to backspin a deep hit to the baseline again—with the same result of it flying up and too deep. I gotta stop doing that!

I left about 12:20. It was hot, solidly in the 80s.

Action Camera

Literallly minute before I headed to Anaheim last week, I saw that the replacement Akaso camera package had been delivered to my work. I threw it under my desk for me to retrieve after I got back from Vancouver. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet, but at least it has the correct number of batteries this time! We’ll see if the remote control function operates like it’s supposed to this time around. I’ll use it soon. It’s definitely time to analyze my play again.

Softball

While passing through Pasadena, I got a text about 10 p.m. from my assistant manager saying our summer softball team had won its first game! (It would have been sweeter had I been there and playing, but still I’m happy to have the team be 1-0. (Don’t worry, my iPhone was temporarily mounted to the dashboard and I had Siri reading me the message!) One of my concerns is the impact of playing both sports. Pickleball takes its toll on various body parts (right glute, right knee, right ankle, hips, lower back) and softball also does (right shoulder from throwing, quads from sprinting, sometimes right thumb from batting). Funny is pickleball—the “old person’s sport” wreaks more havoc on my bday than does softball. Softball is more of muscular pain, pickleball is more joints. We’ll see how I hold up. I have to admit, the right gluten bothers me when driving long periods of time. Coming down from Vancouver last week was painful enough that I had to turn driving back over to my dad.

I turn 50 next month. Maybe age is indeed catching up with me. A sad state of affairs.

Ontario, CA

Travel. I figured I’d have no time to play pickleball in SoCal, but that didn’t stop me from optimistically bringing my paddle and ball anyway! Alas, I was correct and no time surfaced, but I was prepared if something happened to change!

Class

I missed the first of Jerry Louis’ three classes but I’ll catch the second on Tuesday morning. I’m looking forward to it.

Weather

After being in rainy Portland/Vancouver and then the stifling greater Los Angeles Area, followed by a reststop on I-5 in the Central California valley where it was 105 degrees according to my car (and it felt it), I’m very happy to be playing pickleball regularly in Santa Cruz. When it rains, it rains then goes away. None of this overcast off and on rain stuff of the Northwest. And 90 in LA is not atypical. Santa Cruz gets 90 about three days out of the whole summer and drops back into the 70s and 80s for the rest. Honestly, I have to wonder how pickleball ever survived in the Northwest! “Let’s play! Oh. Never mind. Raining again!”

Number of days on a court: 35
Number of total hours: 100.5 (Broke 100!)