Bugs

Saturday, January 27, 2018 (Court Day #118)

Beth Black texted a group of ten people yesterday inviting them to play at Brommer this morning. The interview I was to conduct was canceled due to my interviewee still getting over the flu—which meant I could play after all! I stopped by work briefly then arrived at the Brommer Park courts just after 9 a.m.

Some days, you are the windshield.
Some days, you are the bug.
Today, Eric and I were both bugs.

Overall, we made a lot of mistakes. Drop shots into the net, hitting drives long and out of the court, slamming winners into the net, you name it. If we play in the tournament like we did today, we’ll have a rough go!

We played Chris (tennis pro) and Dave (Asian Dave) and got absolutely clobbered 11-4. We were lucky to get 4 points. We knew it was going to be a tough game. Eric told them before the game, “We need a game where we get our asses kicked.” What I should have done was video recorded the game to see where we needed work. But almost everything needed help in our games!

We lost to Stuart and Bev. Also weak players, but definitely winnable. On a normal day, I believe we would have won that one. Alas.

All that said, we managed to beat Kim and Beth Black in both games we played against them. They are not weak players, so there’s some consolation in that. And we did win an amazing rally . . . lobs, awkward half volleys, drop shots, fast volley battle at the net, wow. Now, if we could do that all the time!

Hopefully, just a stumble today.

People

The turnout was interesting. Probably half a dozen people came down from Palo Alto to play. such as Bryan (Asian former pingpong player). I said, “Hey, Bryan!” and he replied, “Hey, Andrew!” Nice that he remembered my name given that he’s only seen me three times and he’s a really, really good player.

The courts separated into intermediates on the side closest to the parking lots and the advanced players on the two courts closest to the playground. Today, there was no question which side I belonged on. And amongst the advanced players today, even on a good day, I was on the right courts!

The scene as I left. Three tennis players and about twenty pickleball players.

I left just after noon, raced home and then on to work.

Perspective

As I told Eric later in an email:

“Just some perspective. If I told you six months ago that we’d beat Beth Black and Kim TWICE and ON A BAD DAY, you’d be pretty stoked, right?”

The reply?

“Good point!”

Number of days on a court: 118
Number of total hours: 336.5

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