Friday, May 14, 2021 (Court Day #375)

I had one of my staff close our business for the day and I was able to get to Skypark in Scotts Valley at 6:25 p.m. There were two tennis players but other than those two, the courts were completely empty. I don’t think I’ve ever been there when there are no pickleball players.

Terry (who likes to play barefooted) arrived a few minutes later, so she and I started dinking back and forth. Allan K. arrived then the three of us warmed up. Since we didn’t have a fourth yet, we opted to start a rotating 2 on 1 game, with the 1 having to protect only one half of their court, all of us changing positions after each service was broken, rotating as the “1”. Kind of like skinny singles on one side, doubles on the other.

At 6:45, I texted Alain to see if he was still coming. The funny thing was, he was in the parking lot when I texted! We were soon in a full doubles game and rotated through partners after each game.

That’s a ‘Pickle‘

While we were playing on a nearby court, two couples arrived to play doubles—one in their early 30s another in their 50s, it appeared. At least one of the men knew the game, as he was explaining it to the women. I’d never seen any of them before. At one point, the man told the women that something was called a “pickle”. I thought it was weird, as there really isn’t any universal convention as to what a “pickle” is. In fact, I’ve never heard it used locally—or in any of the venues I’ve traveled to—over the last four years. Sure enough, Allan walked over to me amused and quietly said, “Did you hear that? He said something was a pickle. I’ve never heard of that.” Terry said, “I’ve heard of a ‘golden pickle’.” I had too, just not a pickle. When Allan asked Terry what a golden pickle was, she gave a good explanation, “When the game is won with only the first server ever serving.” Based on what I heard later, what he was calling a “pickle” was when a member of the serving team volleyed a third shot violating the double-bounce rule. But maybe I misheard. I didn’t ask.

After three regular doubles games, Allan said he was tired from playing pickleball in the morning and swimming in the afternoon, so he called it a day.

With only three of us, we reverted to 2 against 1. This time, we didn’t rotate after each service change but after a complete game.

Singles

Terry wanted to drive home before it got dark, so that left Alain and me. We went on to play three games of singles.

Playing singles is exhausting. I lost all three. It’s hard when you have a fit 20-something who can run a 4.4 40-yard dash and a 50-something who needs to lost 30 pounds that hasn’t been getting near enough exercise! And, yes, I’m still playing left-handed from right shoulder surgery, but still… For the last game, I was leading 7-2 but ended up losing 11-7 . . . go figure! Alain is quick. I’d hit the ball to one corner, he’d race there, get it back over the net, then I’d hit it to the other corner, he’d race there, get it back over the net. Sheesh. Singles is so different and it takes some time for me to adjust—I suspect many people have that problem of adjusting, especially when you don’t play singles much. Even my strategy and experience advantage wasn’t enough to keep Alain at bay. Hats off to him.

It was getting late and I was beat. We grabbed our things and walked to the parking lot. Alain asked about Sunday. I told him that I’d be playing but that I had to leave by 11 a.m. It sounded like he’d come. I turned on my car. The clock read 9:11. “Home, James”, as they say.

A bright side of singles was that even with the demanding starts and stops, my right knee wasn’t bothering me. After the MRI on it, the surgeon was ready to go on the minor tear, but I’m going to wait until it really needs it.

Sunday, May 16, 2021 (No Play)

I had a meeting this morning at 11:15, but figured I could get in a couple hours of play. That was before I woke up around 2 a.m. and tossed and turned for about 3 hours. I was going to get up at 7 a.m., but after losing that much sleep, I reset my alarm to 8:30. But I didn’t even make it to that. At 8:28, a smoke detector went off at work alerting my phone and prompting a call from the monitoring service. I scrambled and met the fire department for a false alarm. Miserable. At least it wasn’t in the middle of the night. Thes dirty looks from the firefighters weren’t as bad this time. (I’m going to see about fixing this issue. We’re having a smoke detector false alarm on average every 5-6 months. It’s super annoying.) But with the time I got home—approaching 9:30—and with a bit of drizzle and lack of sleep, I decided to give pickleball a miss today. Bummer.

Tonight, I emailed John P. and Eric S. to see if they were interested in playing an evening this week at Skypark. With COVID, they’d been playing singles with just the two of them. Eric has said that once I was fully vaccinated, he’d play with me. I’ll be three weeks—only two are required—past by second shot as of this Wednesday.


Number of days on a court: 375
Number of total hours: 1,066

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