Wednesday, January 9, 2019 (No Play)

Tennis elbow is miserable. M-I-S-E-R-A-B-L-E. I’m taking is very easy and haven’t played since New Year’s Day. At least I can say that I’ve played in 2019. Counting my blessings, I got tennis elbow in winter during the rainy season. Most of the club dates in the past week have been rained out. Another blessing to count, is I am forced to rest my problematic right ankle.

Over the weekend, I drove my son Nicholas—for what may have been the last time—back to school at UCLA. (He’s a senior in Applied Mathematics.) On the way back, I listened to hours of pickleball podcasts.

Tonight, somehow, I ended up watching this video—maybe it came up as a YouTube suggestion for me—it’s a good explanation of a good drill:

 

Thursday, January 10, 2019 (No Play)

I was hesitant to mention it yesterday, but it does seem that my elbow has made some improvement. It’s still painful with certain actions, but it’s maybe 5% or 10% improved. I still believe it’s going to be a long haul. I haven’t played for 9 days now.  It’s still quite painful to lock my elbow and bending my hand up at the wrist and spreading my fingers out increases the pain. It’s still bad, just slightly better. It’s a good sign anyway.

Since, I can’t play, or at least play normally, I looked back at a couple of my old matches. The first one is from 11 weeks into me playing pickleball.

This second one is 17 months in, from six months ago.

Comparing the two games, the difference in skill is stunning. In the second, Eric and I look like we can play this sport. Yes, we lost the game—on two lame shots by me—bu we easily could have held our lead and won. (Actually, the first lame shot by me was set up by Eric’s very short return to Jeff who smacked it in my direction.)

Hopefully, I can get out and play lefthanded soon.

Number of days on a court: 239 (No change.)
Number of total hours: 659.5 (No change.)

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