Thursday, June 27, 2019 (Court Day #277)

37th day out playing lefty. Tennis elbow.

I posted to the Pickleball Forum on Facebook this afternoon asking for a used “tennis elbow” paddle to buy. I got a couple responses via FB Messenger. Maybe one of those will pan out.

I texted my son Nicholas to see if he’d be interested in joining me for pickleball. To my delight, he said he would.

I picked him up about 6:30 after work and he headed to Scotts Valley. We got to the courts about 6:45. I was immediately given an offer to be a fourth in the game just inside the gate. That was quick! I asked Nicholas if he’d be ok for me to play and he said it was fine. He’d watch first. Little did I know that I wouldn’t play a single game with my son this evening! But he got into some games and only once did I see him briefly sitting on the bench. When I asked later, he said he had a good time.

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Nicholas (light gray, left) partnered with Joshua against Eric (yellow) and Joshua’s dad, Andrew.

Nicholas ended up playing repeated games with Eric, Andrew and his son Joshua. While Eric—who came from tennis—has been a regular the last few months, Andrew and Joshua we’re visiting from Modesto. Joshua is a student at Cal Poly Pomona in Southern California. They were in town since Andrew’s wife was at some textile “maker’s fair” a bit north in the San Jose area.

Being that my left wrist was aching a bit and my right arm isn’t nearly as bad as it was six months ago, I figured I’d try playing right handed. I strapped on my tennis elbow band to my right forearm. My right arm wasn’t too bad. I did end up doing an overhead smash with my right arm and that definitely hurt some. Not as bad as it hurt when I did it back in December, but it still hurt. I need to avoid that.

Rochelle had a ProKennex ProSpeed paddle. It’s one that’s recommended for tennis elbow. I asked if I could borrow it. She said she’d only just received it this week—brand new! She agreed to let me play a game with it. I loaned her my Prince paddle. I have to say that I very much liked the ProKennex. One of the offers I got today via Facebook was a used yellow on of these. Sharyl and Rochelle both have these yellow ProSpeed paddles. I’d prefer blue, but I can manage yellow since it’ll save me about $60.

ProSpeedPaddle

Beth Black was there and said a paddle for tennis elbow was being used at Nationals which made noise when you shook it. She was having trouble remembering the name but said that Chris Yoder was using it. Oleg said Chris is using a Gearbox paddle.

I took to holding my paddle very symmetrically between my hands using my fingertips when receiving then committing the paddle to whichever side the served ball headed toward. No backhands. In a game with Kristin L. there were a couple of cross-court serves to my left that I was unable to return properly over the net and they sailed wide of the left sideline. I need to swing sooner. Being too late sent those 2-3 balls out.

When at the net with my partner receiving on the left, I would hold my paddle in my left hand in the middle of the court.

I will say that I managed to confuse myself a few times when trying to swap paddles consciously in the middle of a point. It’s one thing to do it automatically or during a slow dink rally. It’s another to do it during groundstroke rallies. I’ll probably continue to experiment with it—if I can’t get it down, I’ll just abandon that idea and limit switching to times where I’m fully confident.

Later in the evening, Shawnte called over that he was looking forward to playing with me since I was back to playing right handed. I’m rusty after not using my right arm for nearly seven months. But I will say, it’s great to serve right handed again. I won a few points off of my serve that problematic for my opponents. Serving righty, I almost picked up where I left off. After mishandling one of my serves, one of my opponents said, “Enough of those serves!”

We wrapped up play a few minutes after 9 p.m.

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Yep. Nicholas is taller. He’s over six foot and I’m definitely not!
(You can see my protective glasses moved up on my hat. I wear eye protection all the time now—unless I happen to forget, but that’s very rare.)


Sunday, June 30, 2019 (No Play)

So . . . playing with my right arm may not have been such a hot idea. Shaking hands with people has proved to be painful again. Lifting up a couple of coat hangers with a jacket and pants was painful. My right arm is NOT ready. Such a disappointment.

Number of days on a court: 277
Number of total hours: 763

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