Wednesday, May 29, 2019 (Court Day #272)

Day 33 playing left-handed. (33rd day out.) Tennis elbow.

Tournaments

Yesterday afternoon, Binh texted asking if I had Art’s contact information. I let him know that I didn’t. He said Art had asked him to be his partner on Saturday at the San Juan Bautista tournament. SBJ tournament? I knew nothing about it! In a later text, Binh “confessed” that he is signed up to play with Mark G. in a tournament in Sunnyvale in August the week after Binh and I are to play in the Cabrillo Tournament. I emailed Jen, the organizer for the SJB tournament, asking for details. It turns out men’s doubles is on Sunday, not Saturday. I forwarded that information to Binh’s email.

Derby

I got up and my back was sore. I arrived at Derby Park at 9:15. Dave Allenbaugh had jury duty so he got Tom S. to be the site coordinator in his stead.

Binh talked to Art and Art said he was fine with Binh playing with me this weekend. Good news for me.

Greedy

I played a game with George as my partner. There was one shot down the middle slightly to his side where I got greedy and took the shot. I should have left it for his forehand so he could slam it instead of me simply getting it back over the net with my overly-stretched weaker left-handed forehand. George gave me a polite “talking to” afterward on the bench. He was most certainly right. Truth is, we were losing and I decided to be more aggressive on my shots—the problem was I may have cost us a point by not letting George attack a shot that should have been his.

Binh and I played a game against Karen Long and Gary. Karen, of course, is an advanced player, and Gary is a 3.0 on a good day. Binh and I lost. Karen felt bad after she beaned me in the left shoulder. A “chicken wing” shot is hard enough with your natural arm, let alone trying to play using your non-dominant arm! Afterward, Binh apologized to me for taking it easy on Gary. I laughed and told him that it was fine. (I didn’t take it easy on anyone though I’d made an effort to intentionally hit shots to Karen now and then.)

Binh and I lost several early games in sound fashion. Unfortunately. But we got better. Binh and I beat Eric S. and Grita 11-5. That was impressive, though Eric wasn’t playing his best game.

We went on to beat Wayne and new Dave 11-5. We had a rematch and beat them again, 11-0. (Bagel!) They got just one serve. We scored 5 points on my only service then the rest on Binh’s only service. Game. Binh is doing better with employing a soft game. Wayne likes to bang the ball and our style of play was a very good match to that.

Then we played Eric S. and John P. We lost 11-6. Expected, but we still gave them a fight.

I noticed my ankle between points once or twice. It’s still causing pain at times. I’m not sure why the injury has come back. (I rolled my ankle . . . maybe 18 months ago now? It’s been a while.)

Things to Work On

Low backhand. Serving. Trying to dink volley low semi-drive shots back over the net—I’m taking far too much off the shot and the ball is dropping well short of the net. I noticed today that I did far better serving if I lobbed it a bit more than hitting low over the net, I think I’ll use that more frequently.

I was done and off to work at 12:06. I had a plumber meeting me at work at 1 p.m. Little did I know at the time that he’d be 40 minutes early and would be already asking questions when I was about to step into the shower at home!

San Juan Bautista Tournament

Later, I emailed Jen and told her to sign Binh and me up for 3.0 and to try to give us as much time as possible since we’d be driving down right after Binh got off from his RN job at 7:30 a.m. She confirmed and even said she’d give us a first round bye. Nice!

Dave Allenbaugh responded quickly to my email asking if he’d cover Derby for me so I could play in the tournament. He said since he’s stuck in jury duty instead of playing pickleball, he was happy to cover!

Number of days on a court: 272
Number of total hours: 749.5

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