Sunday, September 22, 2019 (Court Day #309)

First day back playing fully right-handed.

I was at the courts early, a little after 8:30. Walking in, I noticed that they’d trimmed the edges of the grass growing over the walkway. It looked very nice! As I stood in front of the storage bins, the lids were covered with little gravel-like rocks. I’d never seen this before. When I walked into the courts themselves, the courts were covered with an amazing and frustrating amount of little jagged rocks of all sizes. I did my best, but my battery died before I got all of them off. I can only figure that the edge trimming and the rocks all over the place are related.

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Newbie Jan (black) Tom B. (nearest), Art (white) partially blocking Dale from Santa Rosa, George (purple), a couple newbies, a regular whose name I forget, Rick, Patty, woman sitting, Bruce (yellow), Ray (blue), and Maria who regularly plays in Scotts Valley.

Tom B. and I played a game against Tristan and Cal. Tom and I had a solid lead, but ended up losing by a few points. Hats off to Cal and Tristan for a good comeback. It was a fun game. Tom didn’t play his best as the game went on, but those game happen. Just look at my game with Grita recently where I made a ton of mistakes. I will say that my tracking placement was off a bit. Cal hit 2-3 winners down the middle off to my left. With the paddle in my left hand, I would have had the reach, but with it in my right, I left a hole!

George asked if I was getting good hip rotation now that I was back to playing righty. I thought so, but George is good at objectively spotting that. I did tell him about the tracking problem and he commented on needing to relearn hold to play right-handed.”

Cal and I played a game against a couple of players. I can’t even remember who they were. Ted and Tom, maybe? In any case, it was a good close game that Cal and I won. The frustrating thing about that game was my errors. My spin serves are not working—I’m missing probably 3-4 out of every 5. I also slammed a ball into the net. Two of those today, unfortunately. And a couple of shots that I hit too hard/too long in other games. I need to work the rust out of my shots.

I expressed my frustration at one point on the bench. Mark G. had some good perspective. “You haven’t been playing with your right hand for almost a year, it’s like starting over. Think of that.”

Cal started his class with about a dozen students. He told me he’d need three courts, so that’s what I arranged for. Two of the city-provided nets and one club net until we got around to swapping it for his personal net.

Around 12:30, Tom B. dove for a ball. He cut open his hand pretty good and scraped his knee. Shawnte is a paramedic for a living and asked Tom to stay where he was, instead he walked over the bench, dripping a trail of blood from his hand. We got the First Aid kit from the storage bins and I just got out of the fray and let the pros go to work.

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Tom B. getting treated by Shawnte and others. Bihn, a RN, stood by.  Eddie (white visor) helped along with the woman whose name I can’t recall!

Tom rode off on his bike once he was all bandaged up.

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12:45. Cal leading a clinic on the three far courts. The three near courts are regular players still at it. Binh checking his phone. We’re waiting to get on a court to continue to play.

Binh said he was very happy to see me playing right-handed again. Maybe we’ll do some more tournaments together.

I was finally off  and walking to my car at 2:01 p.m. Five and a half hours, but I’m calling it four and a half for my record keeping. There was a fair amount of waiting around today and some of the time was prepping the courts.

On the upside today, about half a dozen of my serves were not successfully returned. That was exceedingly rare when serving left-handed!

Later

Tonight, I filled out the new club injury report form and emailed it off to the SCPC board. Karen Long followed up and emailed Tom to make sure he was ok. He replied that he “some road rash, or court rash” but that’d he’d be fine and he closed his email with a link to a YouTube video:

 

 


Monday, September 23, 2019 (No Play)

I’m down to one more day of antibiotics for my abscess tooth. The pain is subsiding. So good there.

The bones right at my elbow are a little tender and sore, but not super bad. There’s not much pain in my forearm, so that’s a delight. Though shaking hands causes a wee bit of discomfort but no tears in my eyes like months ago. Pressing on the tendon does give a “charlie horse” sensation, so something is going on there.

My right knee is back to bugging me, just to the inside of the kneecap. Lying down, it hurts when I move—like when I’m trying to get to sleep!

Number of days on a court: 309
Number of total hours: 861

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