Month: March 2019 (Page 2 of 3)

Sunday, March 17, 2019 (Court Day #247)

What an absolutely gorgeous day! Amazing. I arrived at Derby Park at 8:55 a.m., a bit later than I wanted. As I walked up, I expected to see the two City-provided portable nets all set up and ready to be moved into position . . . but my worst fears were realized: GONE! Both nets were nowhere to be seen. Disappointing.

Cal

There was a local tennis instructor named Cal Honda who has been teaching pickleball classes through the City of Santa Cruz. I’d never met him, but he appeared today. As the SCPC site coordinator, I broke away from warming up and walked over, greeted him and I asked his name. He said, “Cal.” I told him that I was the site coordinator—”Oh, Andrew!” I asked if he was the Cal teaching classes and he said that he was. I asked if he’d played at Derby before. He said he hadn’t, so I had him sign the waiver. He mentioned something about the nets being left at the court, how it was a bad idea, and that he had taken them. Ah. That’s where they went! I guess we’ll hear later if he had the City’s permission to remove their property from the courts. At least we know where they are and that they weren’t stolen by some lowlifes.

Dave Cox, Adrian (left) taking on Eric and Greg (right).

There was a new guy, Eric. He played a lot of tennis and this was his fifth time out playing pickleball. He plays decently—excellent for just starting out—but there’s plenty to clean up and adjust.

Videos

I recorded a handful of games. Not that they are particularly noteworthy or even particularly entertaining . . . unless you enjoy seeing me hit an occasional shot in a completely random direction. I figured it’d be good to have a record of my skill level playing left handed.

Here’s one of Chris and myself playing against Tony and newbie Eric. Chris and I did win this game.

Here’s another match, a 20-minute battle of relative ineptitude. (No offense to my court-mates!) Though Adrian and Jeff both were serving very well. It’s hard to make out just how fast their serves were coming, but you can get a sense that from the high number that get returned into the net or returned very poorly—my lefty play withstanding.

I left the courts shortly after 12:30. The last one out, as typical for a site coordinator.

Overall

My serves are getting so much better. I believe I missed less than half a dozen in 3 1/2 hours of play. That’s on par with my right hand serves! On the topic of serving, I need to work on serving from a more upright position, there’s nothing to gain from leaning over, and in fact, it’s detriment in terms of ball angle over the net. The higher you hit the ball from, the harder and faster you can hit it.

Later

After talking to someone today about exercises to improve tennis elbow and how the doing twists with the foam roll were so painful that I couldn’t do them, I decided to get out my green Theraband Flexbar and try the “Tyler Twist” with it again. While it was still a little painful, it was tolerable. I opted to do a few twists. I’ll try again soon.

Tuesday, March 19, 2019 (No Play)

With the 3 1/2 hours of play on Sunday, my left forearm is sore . . . particularly along the top inside of the back of my forearm. The “tennis elbow” muscle on the outside is also a little sore—that worries me, to be honest—but doesn’t seem to be significant.

Number of days on a court: 247
Number of total hours: 680.5

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Thursday, March 13, 2019 (Court Day #246)

I couldn’t leave work early, so I got to Scotts Valley at 7 p.m. It was a chilly evening, I spent the entire evening in my sweatshirt, though I did get pretty warm at one point.

My tennis elbow, while improving, still has a way to go. Shaking hands will people still hurts, but not enough to cause my eyes to water in pain.

I played a few games, winning one.

Walking off a court to the waiting area, an errant ball approached and I instinctively switched my paddle to my right hand and tapped the ball back over the net. Mistake! That was unquestionably painful. So much for my secret hopes of switching back to my right hand soon. Nope. Not even close.

The fun stretch of the night was Mark C. (Maree’s husband) and me playing three games against Binh and Greg. Binh is getting quite good, he gets balls back that most local players would not. I could tell that he was taking it slightly easy on me—his serves were gentle deep serves.  I need to work on those. My left handed serving is getting far better. I was able to get some deep into our opponents courts. I got an ace tonight too, but that was purely a fluke of me trying to even get my serve in! Mark and I won the first game and lost the next two by close scores. In the second game, I did miss a couple of low backhands to my right side.

Greg commented on one shot. “I saw that…” He went on to talk about how I’d volleyed his dink out of the air swinging low to high applying topspin to the shot when hitting it toward Binh. It’s a “beyond newbie” shot and not all that easy to do with the weak hand/arm, but I was successful executing it. A nice surprise.

Bruce, Mark Dettle, Janet (Bruce’s wife), and Marie in the last game of the night.

As we walked out, I chatted with Binh. He admitted that he was sometimes avoiding hitting to my backhand, “I’ll do that when you get better with your left hand.” Binh is a great guy and I appreciate him looking out for me, but I’d rather get beat and get the practice on shots that need work. Plus I like an “honest” game. Hit me! Pull out the stops! Take advantage! Push me! That’s how one gets better.

I check my phone in the car, 8:43 p.m.

So?

My serving is continue to get much better. It’s still inconsistent and I can’t very accurately place balls, but I’m getting the vast majority of them in now.

I’m dying to switch back to playing with my right hand. It’s aggravating! I know that in the long run, it can only help my game, but it’s miserable. I hate it.

Saturday, March 16, 2019 (No Play)

My right wrist and forearm are causing me elevated pain with certain movements the last few days. It’s really odd. I’m continuing to ice my elbow most evenings. I’ve talked to a few people who said they’ve had tennis elbow but when I tell them that even shaking hands was excruciatingly painful, they say, “Oh. That’s much worse than I had it.”

Number of days on a court: 246
Number of total hours: 677

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.

Wednesday, March 13, 2019 (Court Day #245)

It was a beautiful day. I had let my staff know that I’d be coming in around noon to meet with a sales rep. But the morning was mine. I arrived at Derby Park at 9:10 a.m.

A somewhat active morning at Sgt. Derby Park. It topped out somewhere between 25-30 people—on the light side.

There were a couple of younger guys that I didn’t know. It turns out that they are both firefighters, one named Trevor. I’m guessing around 30 years old, give or take 5 years. I didn’t meet Trevor’s friend.

After my first game—Tom S. and I against Ted B. and Trevor, Ted said, “You made all your serves in!”
“Oh, that’s right, that’s good!”
“You only got to serve about three times,” added Ted. Ha! Well, still, a good start. Tom and I did lose and it certainly wasn’t all Tom’s fault either!

Big SCPC Announcement

Dave Allenbaugh stopped all the games and made an announcement. He said the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club is working on becoming a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and that should be complete in a few months. At that point, they are planning a $20 annual fee to be an official club member. (Right now, you sign up for the club emails and you are a de facto member.) Also, Dave announced, the City’s Parks & Rec Department has allocated $55,000 to redo the court surface—vegetation is starting to grow up through cracks—and will add two permanent pickleball courts in the process! They also are going to leave two City-owned portable nets at the courts. Some of us are concerned that these nets will be either stolen maybe even vandalized by tennis players. When Brommer added their four permanent pickleball courts, the support wire for one or two of the nets was repeatedly cut.

We went back to playing. The last few times out, my back has been really tired. With all the rain, it’s like going to back to my early days of pickleball where my body isn’t used to the leaning, crouching, squatting and gets fatigued and sore.

I checked my phone: 11:23 a.m. Time to hit the road. On my way out for the day, one of the two parks employees was posting a sign outside the gate.

“Attention park patrons:
On a trial basis,  Sergeant Derby courts may now be used for tennis and/or pickleball on a first come, first served basis. Sunday and Wednesday pickleball reservations will still hold true, as demarcated on permanent signage. Additionally, the City of Santa Cruz Parks & Recreation Department has provided two portable pickleball nets here at Segreant Derby Park for public use. Any questions and/or concerns should be directed to…”

What did I learn today?

I did ok. People still have a certain awe when you can play with your off hand. Craig made the typical comment today, “I couldn’t play left handed.” I take that with a grain of salt. I think most people, with enough practice, could play left handed. It’s easier for some than others, of course. Some do it. Wayne will switch hands on occasion for a shot and did so today. So will little Barb.

I should practice at home. I still need to get more paddle control. I had some very nice shots along with some shots that were just completely wild. Even bouncing the ball up and down on my paddle would be helpful.

I still get massive amounts of satisfaction winning a net battle left handed. Granted, it’s typically against 3.0 players or maybe a weak 3.5, but nonetheless, it’s that thought of “yeaaaaaah”.

I’m missing tournaments. And I can’t sign up for any since I have no idea when my right arm will be better. And I’m not about to waste people’s time by signing up and playing left handed.

The good news is the weather report calls for clear skies at least through the weekend. This afternoon, Sharyl—the coordinator for Scotts Valley—sent out an email saying that they are back to free outdoor play for this week. Awesome. I think I may go.

Oh, a fellow named Doug—Hi, Doug!—joined my new forum and replied to a mass email I’d sent out to members. He stumbled across my blog while searching for online education and has been a regular reader since. See what happens when you don’t just share photos of your pets and your meals? People actually look at what post! LOL!

Number of days on a court: 245
Number of total hours: 675.5

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.