Tuesday, June 26, 2018 (Court Day #163)
Eric, 59, and Andrew, 50.
Brennan, 35, and Josh, 29.
Scores? No ages.
On the near court: Brennan, Eric (white cap), and Josh to the right.
Any time you lose, it’s a learning opportunity. It’s kind of nutty, but outside of tournaments, I love losing. Not because I like to lose, but because it means I’m playing against strong players and it’s a challenge. Sure, it’s nice to be unquestionably the best player on the court—that happened a couple times on Sunday—but that’s not really a strong growth opportunity.
Brommer
I got to Brommer at 6:30, heading straight there from work. Parking was easy this time. My cohorts were already there plus there were three pickleball players on the other side of the divider. (I didn’t know the other players. I have to wonder where these people come from whom I’ve never seen before in any club play!)
Brennan brought a tall new guy, Josh, whom he’d met at the gym. When I asked him, Josh said he has been only playing pickleball for about a month, but played on the UCSC tennis team and “was pretty decent”.
Eric and I played and seemingly clumsily lost against the young lads. “We want to mix it up?”, asked Eric. “But we haven’t won yet!” I wanted a rematch. We lost. Several times.
“Want to mix it up?”
“I want to play until we win!”
“As long as they don’t get bored beating on us!”
I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even notice that Josh is a lefty until at least deep into the first or even second game. Silly really. It’s a key thing to be aware of. After a couple more games, I told Eric, “There are times when they are weak in the middle with both backhands. Have you been taking advantage of that?” He admitted he hadn’t. We need to strategize sooner.
In the fifth or sixth game we finally won. And easily too. Like 11-2 or 11-3. Now, Brennan was the one who really wanted a rematch! Our success didn’t last. We lost the next one 11-6 or thereabouts.
After that, I played with Brennan as my partner then a second game with Josh as my partner. They were close games. I can’t remember if Brennan and I won, but Josh and I did. They were all fun. Josh doesn’t have a super strong soft game yet, but he more than makes up for it with fast and low serves, powerful forehands and backhands, and angled shots. It’s that tennis background.
Thoughts
The experience of Eric and me against them was similar to our Paso Robles tournament experience. Hard hitters. Not much in the way of dropshots. I remember once when Brennan simply hit the ball so hard approaching the net that when it contacted my paddle it went wild off the court. A learning opportunity. You really need to drill/play against hard hitters to train to handle those—no ball machine or drilling with a soft hitter will help you.
Another thing in the game with them was keeping the ball low. Accidentally hit it too high and they’d take full advantage to end the point. We also needed to do a better job getting them into the soft game and take away their power advantage. It’s easy to lapse into hard hitting when your opponent is hitting hard to you. Eric caught himself doing that and I no doubt did it myself once or twice.
Number of days on a court: 163
Number of total hours: 447.5
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