Thursday, August 18, 2022 (Court Day #533)

On Tuesday, someone posted this online. I thought it was funny.

Skypark

I got my brother to close the family business so I could leave a little early. I was expecting to go to band practice tonight, but the leader of the pipe band cut his finger and it required stitches so he canceled practice. That meant that I could go to play pickleball, but I needed to go home first, change, and get all my gear.

I arrived at Skypark at 6:30 p.m. There are no tennis players to be seen and there were six courts going for pickleball. Eventually there were eight courts set up with a number of players waiting. There were about 35 people at the peak.

Daniel B., who has been there the last few weeks but I have not seen for quite a long time prior—like a year or two—partnered up with me for a number of games.

Ouch!

In a game against Paul and his friend Matt, Paul served and the ball hit me on the tip of my index finger. The ball did go back over the net crosscourt and was unreturnable for a winner. However there was a cost for that mis-hit. I had broken the end of my finger nail on my index finger, and it was mildly bleeding and slightly painful. I keep Band-Aids in my wallet so it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience. My biggest concern was ripping off the rest of the broken part of my nail—that would be quite painful!

Nice

Tonight was a really good night for challenging play. The weakest game was me playing with “Swoop” against Daniel and Sharon. (I’m almost certain that Swoop and Sharon are part of the local Derby Girls roller derby team.) It was still a fun game. A amusing moment was when I served to Daniel as Swoop’s partner and she blurted out an “OoooOooo” when served hard to Daniel. (I was serving less hard to Sharon.) I don’t think she’s used to speedy serves.

The other weaker game was me and Aaron against Daniel and the “other Mike”—not Texas Mike.

The rest of the games were all at least 3.5 level. Daniel and I played Casey and his dad Tim, losing a very close first game, winning a second game fairly decisively, and then losing a third game. Anytime you can beat Casey and Tim do you know you’re playing a good game.

In the game where Daniel and I beat Tim and Casey, after one rally, Tim said, “Really, really nice play, Andrew.” And he was very sincere. It was a solid compliment. I was playing reasonably well tonight.

Weaknesses

My two biggest weaknesses tonight were hitting balls that otherwise would’ve flown out of bounds, and also returning low balls to my backhand short of the net. Another issue that made itself known when I was playing with Shanté as my partner, was me taking balls in the middle to my backhand when I should’ve left them for my partner’s forehand. That’s definitely something I would need to look out for in a tournament—leaving balls for my partner’s more powerful forehand.

Play wrapped up at 9:30 p.m., with the lights clicking off less than a minute after we finished a last game.

I got Daniel‘s phone number so that we can maybe connect up for a tournament later on. Daniel is a good player.


Number of days on a court: 533
Number of total hours: 2,438

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