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Thursday, January 30, 2020 (Court Day #331)

I emailed Mark Dettle to see if people were meeting at Skypark tonight. (I’m the last few weeks someone told me that they weren’t meeting there anymore—I figured it was mostly a weather thing where they were meeting indoors instead.) I didn’t get a reply after a few hours so I emailed Sharyl instead and she replied within 5-10 minutes that they were. Excellent. My legs and body were a little sore from yesterday’s mini tournament, but I wanted to get back out and play.

Skypark

I arrived just before 7 p.m. The four permanent courts were in use. (A fifth temporary net was briefly set up later.)

I got into a few games. Stuart was there. I was hoping to get a game in with him since one could argue he was the strongest player there. I did get a game against him and it was telling. His ball placement was excellent. For one point, he hit a sharp crosscourt shallow shot and I really had to stretch to get it and ended up popping it up which his partner slammed for a winner. Arrrgh! Stuart is good with those angle shots.

Husband Ryan

Jenny—who I’d usually see at Derby—brought her husband Ryan. He’s tall and fit, with short gray hair. Wayne and I played against them. It was a good game. Ryan had the perfect answer for Wayne’s drives from the baseline—drop it short at an angle off the court. He did this several times. (About a month ago, I did something similar, but I just dropped the ball right over the net where it just died, impossible to reach.) I earned a few points with spin against the two of them. At least three deep back spin drives were hit into the net. I had a great forehand slice drive. Spins are coming along left-handed.

Jennifer

A woman I’d never seen before named Jennifer was there. I played against her while she was partnered with Shawnte. I had Maria as my partner. After I messed Jennifer up with my serves and spin, I figured that she wasn’t the strongest of players so I told her I’d dial it back a bit. There was a funny moment of Jennifer assuming that Shawnte was younger than she was but he’s 42 and she’s 39. I thought both were younger than that—well, I learned a while ago that he was in his 40s.

The lights clicked off at 8:30. It was mentioned that the City of Scotts Valley neglected to reset the automatic timer after the time change. Oops.

Heading Out

Walking out, I told Ryan, “You need to keep playing. You are going to just get better and better. When I switch back to playing right handed, you’ll be a formidable opponent.” Jenny said, “Oh, yeah. You are playing left handed. You are playing awesome.” “Well, awesome is relative.” (Remember, I’d just placed 7th out of 8 players in our mini tournament yesterday!)

Number of days on a court: 331
Number of total hours: 935

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