Thursday, September 16, 2021 (Court Day #412)

I had a non-profit board meeting tonight via Zoom and attended it from my house after leaving work a little early. Once it finished at about 7:40, I was on the fence about going to play and had decided to stay home, but my wife said, “Go ahead and go play.” Ok. Nothing like a kick in the pants. I arrived to at dark Skypark a few minutes after 8 p.m. The lights were already on. We’re heading into fall!

Arrival. Terry and Larry on the near court. The “boys” on the other courts.

I quickly got into a game with Terry vs. Mark G. and Kristin L. It was a good game. We lost. That’s not a big surprise with no warm up and me playing lefty—my tennis elbow is acting up still. It’s minor still, but I don’t want to make it flare up again.

There were three courts full of the 30-something and 40-something guys. When my normal group of players all left, I wandered over and asked some their group—who were between games—if I could jump in. They were agreeable and I went on to play another 3-4 games with their group. I played with bald Dan against Matt and Paul. Then with newbie Dan against Matt and Paul. Then me and Josh against newbie Dan and Paul . . . Paul commented that was I taking it easy on Dan . . . even playing lefty, I could have ended points quickly and easily. Matt and Paul and still mostly raw bangers, but they hit hard, are quick, and are good at getting the ball back over the net. It’s different going up against unorthodox players. You have to kind of expect the unexpected.

We played until about 9:40. The lights hadn’t gone out—yay! fixed!—but it was late and people were tired after a long day.

Friday, September 17, 2021 (No Play)

I found this to be a very interesting video. I haven’t explored these serves yet, but boy, they look deadly. At some point, it’ll be good for me to experiment with these types of serves. There has been talk of outlawing the chainsaw serve which has been allowed under 2021 rules due to a COVID-directed change. But with the technique shown in this video, it would comply with the old rules too and would be difficult to enforce it being eliminated . . . they could say “no spinning the ball on serves” but that will be very difficult to call by opponents or a referee. Or I suppose they could say we can only drop a ball with no upward tosses. We’ll know in about three months!


Number of days on a court: 412
Number of total hours: 2,071.5

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