Month: October 2017 (Page 3 of 5)

Wednesday, October 18, 2017 (Court Day #83)

The car thermometer read a surprisingly low 50°F. That’s only one degree above 49°! (I know—we’re spoiled here in Santa Cruz, but, hey, it was close to 80 midday yesterday!) I was pondering if I should have brought a sweatshirt, but I knew I’d warm up quickly. I arrived at Derby Park at 9:10 and John P. was setting up. Dave had emailed a few of us site supervisors that he couldn’t be there today and John had responded first volunteering to fill in.

An early game paired lefty Steve and me against Terry (Mrs.) and her friend . . . I can’t recall her name—something like Catherine, so I’ll use that. Steve and should have walked away with this game, but we found ourselves behind at the start. I messed up a few shots then Steve took over as the primary mistake maker. Regardless, we pulled things together and won solidly. Steve’s serves are fast and can be hard to return. I usually have to rely on spin and placement to mess up people’s returns. It’s rare that someone fails to return my serve due to its speed. I’m pretty good about serving to people’s backhands. Then if they start cheating toward their backhand at the center of the court, I’ll drop it very short on the sideline. I make them stay honest!

I was playing well. Not perfectly, but I didn’t have a losing game until mid-morning when I paired up with Marianne against Ted and Terry’s friend Catherine. I’d never seen Catherine before today, but she played alright. Not as good as Ted, but better than Marianne. Marianne is still coming along. Not a strong player yet, but she can get the ball over the net unless it’s a harder to return shot. I got to experience the “better player boredom blues” . . . Marianne was getting more than her fair share of balls coming to her. I did end up overplaying the middle a bit and poaching. Still it was a fun game. Hey, it’s always fun to play! And Marianne is super nice.

I played a game of Steve and me against neighbor Dave and Gary which made for the most balanced teams. Steve and I won. Afterward, Dave playfully challenged, “I want to play you again!”

Another game was against Kent. I can’t remember the other partners. Probably Ted and Wayne, but not sure. Anyway, Kent and I were in a dinking battle and I hit one sharp and far from right to left that he couldn’t return. He smiled and said, “I’d like to see you do that again!” “Ok! I will!” A few minutes later, with Kent and me diagonal again, I hit a sharp and far shot at the net backhand from left to right that he couldn’t get. Playfully, I retorted, “There you go! I did it again!” Kent laughed, “And it was backhand this time!” One of these days I’ll earn my way to more respect from the better players. Not that they don’t respect me, they just don’t respect my play all that much yet. It does have to be earned. And each player takes a different level of skill to get “the nod” of “ok, you’re one of us now”. The local 4.0 tournament players are the next group to “crack”.

During the last game of the day, Ted told his partner that I was playing “inspired”. Leah and her husband, whom I’ve seen maybe once or twice before, were visiting. I played with Leah. “They were hitting everything to me,” she said afterward. She apologized. We’d blown a lead and lost 11-9. It happens. I didn’t do every shot perfectly myself.

Today was a “climb” day.

Things to work on:
– Not hitting “out balls”
– Getting my serves deeper
– Keeping my paddle up, especially at the net
– Getting to 99% success on my drop shots. (I’m probably over 75% now.)
– Landing every single serve, even the tricky ones
– Hitting my serves harder/faster

Overall, I feel that I’ve crossed another threshold in my play over the past couple weeks. The first threshold was from novice to beginner. Now, to solid intermediate. I’m more consistent. I don’t take two hours warm up to play well. I’m pulling off far more of my drop shots. Just better. I’d say I’m in the top half of players that typically show up at Derby. I’m not as sure about saying that for Brommer. It’d probably depend on a given day.

Play wrapped up at 12:11 and away I went. Off to home then work.

Number of days on a court: 83
Number of total hours: 235.5

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

Sunday, October 15, 2017 (Court Day #82)
Los Gatos (Indoor) Tournament

I woke up and my back was still sore from Wednesday—but playable, especially since it starts out sore then has gotten better over the course of each day. I picked up Eric at his house shortly after 11 a.m. He trotted back in to grab a couple pairs of protective goggles, just in case. We arrived at The Club in Los Gatos around 11:30.

I didn’t tell Eric but I had a brief muscle pull in my calf walking up the stairs to the second floor main gym entrance! But it wouldn’t bother me today other than that.

Sign In

They signed us into their computer system at the front desk, we signed the required waiver, then we overheard a woman asking a worker very specific questions about the odd rules of the game. Eric and I helped where we could based on the tournament rules email that we had received. One thing was we’d all be allowed to play balls that had bounced off the walls. So if a ball bounced off of the floor and hit a wall, it would be still live until it hit the floor again. Very different!

Sophia, the very nice organizer, gave Eric and me a quick tour of the facilities. It was weird. I’d been expecting a big open gym with close walls, but we’d be playing on racquetball courts! In other words, walls met the perimeter of the court. And the court is 4 feet too short. I didn’t know it was short at the time, but that explained why my first few test serves were too long and hit the back wall. Imagine playing a tennis tournament where there are walls around the outer court lines and the players are allowed to play the ball off the wall bounce. It’s not tennis, right? Well, this wasn’t pickleball. It was “squash pickle” or “pickle squash”. The owner of the gym admitted that when he called the USAPA for advice holding this tournament, they said, “Don’t.”

The non-volley zone was only five feet from the net. Oh, and the nets were a touch short too, just as a bonus! (Yes, that’s sarcasm.) Another weird thing was they allowed underhand serve returns without a bounce. And the servers were allowed to hit the return of serve with an underhand volley as well. Quirky. No one took full strategic advantage of this crazy rule, including Eric and me.

After seeing the courts, being that balls would be bouncing off the walls at angles and times we weren’t used to, we opted for the eye protection. Eric with his frames with the lenses popped out and me with Eric’s extra set of clear lenses glasses.

It Begins, Game #1

Being that we were early and one of the doubles teams for the first match were missing, we got asked if we’d take their spot and play the first game on Court #1. Eric and I agreed. The result wasn’t even close as you can see from this photo:

Yeah, 15-0. Our opponents weren’t using the loaner paddles belonging to the gym, so they weren’t newbies, but they weren’t strong players.

John Connors and his partner Mr. Oliver showed up. And you know what? Mr. Oliver is Chuck!

Eric then noticed that the brackets had been changed for Court #2 and the Blacks were no longer listed. We suspected that David and Beth balked once they saw the weird rules and dropped out.

I did my best to stretch out my back between matches. And that helped, I didn’t notice my back during game play.

John and Chuck won their first match pretty easily too.

Here you can see the court setup. Pretty odd, right?

These two women on the nearside (Rodriguez & Cohn) would go on to win their match and play us.

Rodriguez & Cohn. Ms. Cohn had asked the organizers to be paired with anyone but the original person flaked so she was paired with Ms. Rodriguez instead.

Game #2

In our second match, we pulled out to a fast lead, 8-3. Our opponents did their best to make a run at us, but never got within fewer than several points. In the end, we won 15-8. That was a much more fun match than the first.

With our win, we’d play against the winner of the Connors/Oliver vs. Fransham/Baker match. John and Chuck’s opponents had strong skills and youth—and both obviously had racket sport experience. Based on what we’d seen leading up to that game, Eric and I were both expecting the younger team to win. And they did, but John and Chuck made them work. It was pretty back and forth but the younger team pulled out at the end and won 15-9. Fransham/Baker would be our opponents.

20-something Chris (leftmost) and his woman partner with the hard-to-remember Asian name (hidden) taking on John (blue) and Chuck (right).

Semi-Final Game

Before our semi-final match—ha! it’s funny to be able to say that—Eric said “We really need to force them into the short game”. I agreed. If we got into a slugfest, it was going to be a quick game. And it was. I lost the first two points myself, hitting both shots long. (Can we say “shorter court”?) I did get the woman into a dink battle once, and it ended with her hitting the ball into the net. But we didn’t play “our” game. It ended 15-3. We got clobbered. It was embarrassing. Chris, the young fellow, was very good about returning balls that had bounced off the walls—hits that my brain was trained into already thinking “winner!” were not over yet.

BBQ 

The Club had a BBQ going for the players. Eric and I made our way outside and had some hamburgers and salad. We were then informed that the finals had started (best 2 out of 3, games to 11, win by 2). I was waiting for my hotdog to come off the grill then after gobbling that down, we’d head in. While eating the hotdog, the Fransham/Baker finals team came out. “That’s strange,” I thought, “what are they doing out here?” She told us that they’d already won in two quick games 11-1, 11-2. She added that we’d played pretty good. At which I responded incredulously, “Well…” But perhaps in comparison to their final opponents, we did play well. John and Chuck gave them the hardest run for their money. It turns out Chris is 4.5 ranked tennis player who plays pickleball also since he “gets bored with tennis”, so he mixes up play. His partner is also an active serious tennis player.

Afterward, I was telling Eric, “Maybe I should have recorded our last game after all.” (I didn’t record any of them.) Eric said, “It’s not pickleball. I don’t know how much of it would be helpful.” No doubt he’s right. Still, I hate losing like that and I’d like to know what we did wrong. But it’s not pickleball. I should just flush it from my brain.

Eric and I were on our way back to Santa Cruz around 3:30. We both agreed it was a worthwhile experience but we probably wouldn’t do it again. Maybe during rainy months when outside play is impossible, but otherwise, we’d be playing real pickleball, not a quirky hybrid. The Club staff was super nice and welcoming, so maybe singles with our own rules sometime in the heart of winter.

Oh, given the amount of standing around time, I’m figuring an hour for warm-up and playing time, so from 231.5 to 232.5 hours of court time.

Number of days on a court: 82
Number of total hours: 232.5

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

Wednesday, October 11, 2017 (Court Day #81)

I arrived at Derby at 9 sharp. Dave and John P. were setting up. Wayne arrived a few minutes later and we all warmed up for a while, followed by a game of John P. and me against Dave and Wayne. 11-1, John and me. One thing I’ve noticed is that it’s taking me a lot less time to get “going”. Sometimes, I can play very well right off the bat. Right now, I’d say my biggest Achilles Heel is hitting balls that would otherwise go out. I need to let more go sailing.

The second game was me and Wayne against Stuart and Dave. We made it a few points in when I tweaked my back. I made it through one more point then yelled over to John to take my spot. I took an ibuprofen (I’d taken two before I left the house) then sat on the bench and did my best to stretch out my back. After about 15 minutes with no improvement, I called it a day at 10:00. Home, then an ice pack. Followed by a day at work.

Bye, bye pickleball courts…

The big question is how much better will it be by Sunday?

Tournament

The organizers of the Los Gatos tournament sent out the brackets today. Exciting! I noticed two—or three—things. Most of the last names I didn’t recognize. But there were some that I did. Connors was on the COURT 1 list: “Connors + Oliver”. No doubt John Connors, the medal-winning 4.0 player. And on COURT 2 is “Black + Black” . . . David and Beth Black. Also 4.0 players. None of the other names mean anything to me. But, then again, most players I only know by their first names! Of course, the most important names are “Lenz + Schmidt”—yep, me and Eric! 1:00 p.m. Playing time, COURT 1.

I would not give us good odds of getting past our second game. It’s the winner of the Connors + Oliver match. If Brodine + Brodine wins against the Connors team—watch out!

Fire

I suppose I should count my blessings that I wasn’t playing this afternoon. There is a really bad series of fires going on north of the San Francisco Bay Area. Santa Rosa has lost thousands of homes and at least 21 people have died. The photos are stunning. Neighborhoods as far as you can see are simply burned to the ground. Block after block after block. Anyway, this afternoon the sun was orange and it smelled like smoke. I figured there must be a local fire too. Nope. The smoke has traveled over 100 miles!

Number of days on a court: 81
Number of total hours: 231.5

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