Monday, June 8, 2020 (Court Day #347)

I arrived at Derby at 9:15. Eric and John P. were there. They were playing singles, but I was very confused watching them. “You are playing singles, right? Isn’t the goal to hit the ball away from your opponent?” Now, Eric mentioned on a pickleball group Zoom conference that he’d been playing singles with John lately and it’s his “new favorite thing”. I was impressed. I like singles too, but it’s very demanding physically and harder on your body. But what they were doing today didn’t make sense. Then Eric explained. They were playing “Skinny Singles” but diagonally. “Oh, we wouldn’t play full court! That’s too tiring!” Ah! That makes much more sense—both in what I had been observing, plus their managing the physical demands!

Binh blows off the courts in an unofficial pickleball gathering.

Mark G. and I played a game against Chris and Binh. It was my first game and I was making a lot of mistakes. I got a little better as the game went on, but it was not a stellar performance by any stretch, in fact, it was pretty bad.

In a later game, I was playing against Binh and Wayne. My partner and I were up 10-5. Our opponents crawled back 10-8. Now, my partner at the time is a very competitive intermediate player and takes games very seriously. (Too seriously, in my book—I look at rec play as enjoyable training and wins/losses generally aren’t a big deal to me.) He more or less told me to stop making mistakes since they were catching up. I’m a pretty easy going guy, but that annoyed me. Pretty much for two reasons. It assumes that I’m not trying. Secondly, I playing left-handed! Seriously. That I can hold my own in a game with intermediate players, that’s an accomplishment right there. Regardless, I kept my irritation to myself. We went on to win 11-8.

11:30 and I were done. Chris, Mark, Wayne and Binh were still playing, but Mark and Chris had said it would be their last game. There wasn’t any point of me sticking around.

Number of days on a court: 347
Number of total hours: 977

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