Thursday, November 4 , 2021 (Court Day #430)

I was able to get one of my staff to close at work so I walked into Skypark at 6:20 p.m. It was dark. It was busy and I helped set up a seventh court, it was a portable net out of the pickleball storage bin.

Busy night under the lights.

So, a little better tonight. Only a few of my shots ended up in the white tape and more of my drop shots cleared the net versus Tuesday.

Ego Check

Kristin L. and I took on Larry L. and his wife Jacquie. Larry played the best I’d seen him play and Kristin and I both played poorly. Jacquie had a wicked topspin passing shot in that game. I think we lost 11-3 or 11-4. It was stunningly bad. Embarrassing and frustrating.

I guess the bright spot is that Kristin and I went on to win the next two games against similarly decent intermediate opponents.

Casey

Damn, if Casey didn’t try two Erne shots tonight! One, he didn’t get to attack since the ball went the other way and the other (which was in a game against me) he did attack, but he hit it too high and Paul—my partner—hit the ball back into the opening that Matt had left between himself and his partner Casey. The thing with Erne shots is you need communication and awareness between partners.

Lights off at 9:30, but I hung around with Paul and Matt and their circle of friends for another 20 minutes yapping.

So what?

I hit some of my service returns too long. I still had some drops that didn’t make it to the net. But outside of that bad game, I played well enough.

Rally Length

Kristin L. made an interesting comment. There was a game where Scott and I played against Mike B. and Tim. That was a good game. Kristin said that she was counting the number of shots from the serve to the point was over, and generally it was 6 shots. A fascinating observation. The fewer the shots before the point is over, the worse the player(s)—it only takes one! I’m a data kind of guy, so I find this kind of stuff very interesting.

Number of days on a court: 430
Number of total hours: 2,123.5

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.