Friday, October 12, 2018 (Court Day #213)
I woke up with a headache and what felt like sinus pressure around my eyes. I took some Mucinex and an ibuprofen. I arrived a Brommer a few minutes after 9 a.m. to sunny courts. It would be a lighter attended day, but still busy with occasional short waits for courts.
Melody ready to receive.
John and I played a game against Leslie and Dean. (Dean won a gold medal in a large southern California tournament a week ago.) Dean was taking it very easy on us. I remember he passed up on two winners in succession at the net and instead just lollipopped them over. John and I won the game but it was pretty meaningless. We made a decent showing, but while Leslie didn’t pull punches, Dean had dialed it back. He got me on two hard flat serves that I simply returned right into the net. After that he took it easier. After the game, he said because he was serving to us onto the less grippy green court surface, “it wasn’t fair” since the ball would slip, so he didn’t serve as hard.
John and I lost 12-10 to (English) Alan and Di. (Not John’s wife Diane.) I was not as focused. It’s kind of like Dean playing against someone like us. Dean’s not as sharp and taking it easy. While I wasn’t pulling my shots, I wasn’t dashing about and crouching down. I was moving more leisurely around the court.
Another man named Dean was visiting, though I don’t know where really. It sounded like he lives an RV life, with a permanent “residence” in South Dakota, but is more or less never there. Visitor Dean is a very good player. John and I had a game with Dean and Kim. John and I got absolutely clobbered. 11-0. Every possible little opening that we left was pounced on. Kim was playing the best I’d ever seen her play and Dean was a machine. It was awesome. I’ve never been so happy to lose 11-0. It was a full-on, 100%, no-holds-barred challenging game and we were shown where we stand in the pickleball universe’s pecking order. Intermediates, and definitely intermediates. We still have work to do.
By the end of the morning, I was dragging. I had no energy left.
The last game was John and me against Josh and Tish. After a few points, the outcome was never in doubt. We won 11-5. After, John turned to me and said, “We’re ready.” We have the tournament in San Juan Bautista in two days, on Sunday.
The courts were thinning out and coming down and I was done at 12:06 p.m. Home, then work.
Podcasts
A couple months ago, at the Concord tournament, I spoke briefly with Morgan Evans. Morgan said he was working on a podcast under the Selkirk umbrella and it’d be out before too long. Well, that time is now—well, a couple of weeks ago, actually, September 26, but I just found it. “Selkirk on Serve” is the name of it. Tonight, I listened to the only episode, which was Morgan interviewing his tournament partner, Tyson McGuffin, also sponsored by Selkirk.
The other podcasts I’ve been listening to are “Pickleball Kitchen” by Barrett Kincheloe and his co-host Jana and “Pickleball Problems” by Mark Renneson. As an aside, I typically listen to these on the 1 1/2 speed setting, so they take less time but are still intelligible.
Tournament in two days!
Number of days on a court: 213
Number of total hours: 584.5
To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.
Leave a Reply