Thursday, October 26, 2017 (Court Day #87)

I checked in with my wife and she had no complaints, so I opted to visit Scotts Valley after quite a while. I arrived at 6:40. Like clockwork, I was sitting on the bench by myself watching four full courts play. What’s that?  Three out of the last four visits? So crazy!


Eric and Dave watch Jerry’s successful passing shot.

I got in a number of games, the second with Alan as my partner. We won. It went to 12-11. As a matter of fact, I was on the winning team in every match I played tonight. The lighting was hard at first—very much affecting my depth perception. It was dark so we were relying on the court lights.

Kristin, the tall lawyer, asked where I’d been. “I’ve been going to Brommer on Friday mornings.”

Eric and I played against Jerry Louis and Terry. (Tall Terry, not Terry Long.) We won 11-5. Jerry wasn’t quite himself. Turns out that he was nursing a pulled hamstring. That makes sense. That and he was back from a tournament and was a little worn out. He was a sporting a new paddle that he really liked. It had Riverside printed on it and images of foxes. He said when bouncing balls off the paddle into the air, the new paddle was lively everywhere on the face and his old one was much more dead. So he replaced his old one.

In a game of Eric and me against Dave Cox and Terry, we were down 6-2. We went on a 9 point run and won 11-6. Terry said, “I let you win with all my mistakes!” While Dave wasn’t perfect, it definitely wasn’t Terry’s best game.

Though the last game was a tough battle and a long game. Eric and me against Dave Cox and Alan. 13-11. And it was back and forth. One side would break the other’s serve and vice versa, with the score staying the same or a team gaining one point, only to let the other team creep back. I got some crazy shots back over the net. I wish I had that game on video. We all had shot we’d want over, but there were some pretty cool rallies!

We wrapped up that last game at 8:25. Since I shorted myself the last couple of times, I’m counting this one as a full two hours.

I have to fix my “depower” shot. A player rifles a hit to me and runs up to the net. I have to drop it back over, but sometimes, I take off far too much and the ball drops a foot in front of me!

Eric and I both took shots that we should have left to each other. “Were you there?” “Yep.” “Oops!” It doesn’t happen super often, but maybe once each game tonight. Sometimes, it doesn’t happen at all.

Bagpipes

I just have to share. It’s no secret that I’m a piper. Mark Renneson of Third Shot Sports included an interesting background for his latest video about serving “like you mean it”:

Number of days on a court: 87
Number of total hours: 245

Click here to start at the beginning of this blog: PickleballJourney