Month: August 2022 (Page 3 of 5)

Sunday, August 14, 2022 (Court Day #532)

As with most Sundays, I was the site coordinator on duty at Derby Park. I arrived about 10 minutes before 9 a.m. to unlock the bins and set up. There is already a group of four warming up on one of city nets when I walked up.

I had typed up and printed three signs to post today:

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From your SCPC Sunday Site Coordinator:

SIGNUP SKILL LEVELS

Last Sunday, things got a little fast and loose regarding who was signing up in what level . . . in particular, intermediate players signing up as Advanced. The ideal is to break up skill levels approximately 1/3 “mellow/beginner/lower intermediate”, 1/3 intermediate, 1/3 advanced. This keeps games competitive.

If you have never played in a tournament—or if you have, but only at a 3.0 level—you are almost certainly not an advanced player yet. If you think you are ready, I’m happy to get a game together of strong players and see how you do. At Derby, Advanced is at least 3.5 and up. (At Brommer, they like to see 4.0 and up.)

It’s best to privately and quietly ask a known advanced player—or, better, PLAYERS—for an evaluation of your skill level. (And keep in mind that strong players will sometimes ease up on their play during the 9AM-10AM social hour so opponents don’t get mad at them.)

If you are thinking you want to try out the Advanced group, please ask permission instead of just adding your name to an Advanced box. And please do not start a new Advanced box yourself until you are unquestionably an advanced player.

If the Advanced group gets watered down, the advanced players get bored and stop coming to Derby—this is ALREADY HAPPENING. You want those players around when you do develop strong skills and want more challenging games.

Also, if you have a fair number of unforced errors—failed serves, popping up balls, missing the ball with your paddle, can’t consistently place your shots, you can’t reach shots—you really should be in the base group and not the Intermediate group.

The goal is to keep everyone happy. Some are looking for casual games. Others are preparing for tournaments and are looking for equally challenging strong players to sharpen their skills. 

I really hate being the “bad guy” and informing people they need to move down, but I will if I am forced. Please be courteous and humble and “police” your own game.

Feel free to approach me with any questions.

Thank you!!

Andrew, your trusty volunteer club site coordinator

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Erased

Mid-morning, I started a new Advanced box by writing my name down in red pen. A few minutes later when I looked, a woman had added her name as well as a man. Both super nice people, but small problem. The woman is a stronger intermediate player, but has no soft game to speak of and generally drives everything. She’s not an advanced player. The man I consider a moderate intermediate and certainly not at all an advanced player. Upon finding those two names written in the box under my name, they were eliminating any chance for me to have a truly challenging game. I was annoyed. I debated what to do. I could either leave my name but that would validate their decision to add their names . . . or I could risk being viewed as being a jerk and erase my name. I chose to do the latter, and walked over and wiped my name from the box leaving the other two players listed. Later, the woman mentioned that I had removed my name to which I replied, “no offense.” She said, “no offense taken”. It appeared that the two of them from then on wrote their names down as intermediate, and not advanced. So, in that sense my decision was successful. Instead of that weaker game, I got into a stronger game with Matt and Paul from Scotts Valley and George.

I do feel a bit bad about the episode. I don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. But I do have a tournament coming up and need to get in the best games possible in order to prepare.

Rachel, Steve, and La Madrona

My last game wrapped up about 1 o’clock. There’s a game with Jeff is a regular, Brianna, who is pretty new, and a woman named Rachel who, it turned out, is my wife’s acupuncturist. Rachel‘s husband‘s name is Steve and apparently I had met them before but I didn’t remember.

Rachel mentioned that they are both members of the La Madrona Athletic Club, and she said that there is pickleball up there regularly although most of the pickleball players are not very strong and come from a tennis background. They apply tennis strategies instead of pickleball strategies. Rachel said that if I ever wanted to come up on a Thursday night for their social pickleball night, I could come as her guest. She said I could bring my wife Kristen as well, although I would say there’s almost zero chance of Kristen ever coming.

Last Games

Toward the end of the session, I started an advanced box, but there were few players left. Kim asked if I was willing to play with her, Jerrianne, and Charles. I said I would. Charles was playing left-handed, I imagine he has some kind of injury going on with his right arm. For our game, I decide to play left-handed as well. So it was two strong players playing lefty against Kim (who is the intermediate player) and Jerrianne who is a little bit weaker of an intermediate player . . . somewhere in the 2.5 to 3.0 range. Charles and I did win that game even with the two of us playing left-handed. Charles said he was getting pretty frustrated playing left-handed today. I told him that I could feel his pain, given that I had played left-handed for two years as a result of severe tennis elbow in my right arm.

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Wednesday, August 17, 2022 (No Play)

Facebook has this new ”shorts” videos feature. Of course, it knows to feed me pickleball video clips. No big deal, right? Well, I watched one with a title of “dirty shot”, figuring I might learn something new. I’m watching dinking going on and there’s a sharp crosscourt dink to the left to the nearside left player…who—rather than dinking the shot back, speeds it up and drives it at the body of the opponent directly across from him for a winner. I smiled. In the past week, I pulled off this exact shot myself for a winner from the same type of sharp crosscourt dink. Satisfaction! I’m in good company!

Number of days on a court: 532
Number of total hours: 2,435

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Tuesday, August 30, 2022 (Court Day #539)

After work, I practiced bagpipes for 15 minutes, then drove and imposed on my mother to give me a haircut—which she is done my entire life and is quite good at it! (The price is right and we get to visit too.) Fortunately, my parents’ house is on the way to Scotts Valley, so it was a short hop from there to Skypark and I arrived at 7:30 p.m. The parking lot was completely full and even overflow parking was completely wonky … but there was a street spot nearby.

First Game

I jumped into my first game tonight without any warm-up. I was partnered with Charles against Texas Mike and retired firefighter Matt Smith. This was a great game to get into with all pretty good players. Charles and I won handily. At one point we were leading 8-0. They did end up scoring a few points, but the game was never in doubt.

In that first game Charles asked if I got a haircut. I told him he was the only one to notice. Charles said he was sorry that no one else noticed, but I explained that I had my haircut about 15 minutes before he appeared at Skypark.

Mike and Matt wanted to rematch of course, so we did that. This time I didn’t play nearly as well. I hit some of my service returns too deep. I hit my drop shots too high. It was overall not nearly as good. We ended up losing by only a few points, but that was mostly Charles’ stronger play and not me, otherwise it would have been worse.

Ouch

In the second game of Texas Mike and Matt Smith against Charles and myself, Matt hit one of his crazy hard drives and the ball smacked me in the right index finger of my paddle hand. It was hard enough that it broke the skin and caused some bleeding. I didn’t feel like it warranted a Band-Aid, but a few points later blood ended up on my left hand also. Charles asked if I needed to stop for a Band-Aid, but I told him no. After the game is over, however, I did put a Band-Aid on my finger. The downside with the fabric Band-Aid, is that my index finger was now slippery on the handle of my paddle. It was annoying but I still had three fingers and my thumb so things went OK. I don’t think I want to ever play in a tournament tournament like that however!

Easier

Nearly any game would be a step down after those. I played a game with the Hispanic fellow named Mark against TK and his friend Ryan. TK said, ”It been a while since we’ve played together, you need to tell me if I’ve improved.” He was the very first server and promptly served that ball into the net. I kidded TK, ”Nope!” I was the strongest player on the court but it was not enough to make up for Mark. We lost.

More Losses

I played with Darrell against Matt B. and his friend Paul W. Darrell and I were not playing our best, he was tired and I was also tired. We got blown out the first game 11-1 or 11-3 … regardless it was a very lopsided game. Matt and Paul played well. We went on to have a rematch, however that loss was quite a bit closer, 11-9 or 11-8. We played a third game in this one was back to lopsided—I think we lost 11-6 or 11-5. We lost all three games.

For the last game of the night, Paul stepped out at allowed Aaron to get in as Matt’s partner against Darrell and me. Even in this game while it was closer, Darrell and I still lost. I was playing a bit better than Darrell in this one, but still far from stellar. We finished our last game a few minutes before the lights clicked out at 9:30.

“Beer-30”

Matt B. had brought some beers so we share those were talking about pickleball for another 45 minutes.

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Wednesday, August 31, 2022 (No Play)

A few years ago, my brother John bought a cabin in Arnold, California, about three hours east of San Francisco in the Sierra foothills. I’ve never been there. My sister went up to stay this week and texted a photo to a few of us this morning. Yep, a pickleball court!

Arnold has a population 2,099. The City of Santa Cruz has a population of 65,000. If Santa Cruz had the same ratio of permanent courts to people, it would have 31 courts. Santa Cruz has 0.

Number of days on a court: 539
Number of total hours: 2,454.5

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

Thursday, August 11, 2022 (Court Day #531)

This morning, it appeared on social media that CBS would be broadcasting pro pickleball (the PPA summer championships) on their television network:
https://www.pennlive.com/sports/2022/08/cbs-will-broadcast-the-professional-pickleball-association-summer-championships-live-this-month.html

The article is a week old, but I just saw it. Too bad I’ll be working while it’s being broadcast live on Saturday afternoon.

Night Ball

I left work and arrived at Skypark at 6:30 p.m. and discovered a giant pile of mulch blocking the exit from the parking lot. All the regular parking spots were full so I ended up pulling in between a couple of trees.

When I arrived, there were no tennis players to be seen but all eight pickleball courts were full and 10 players were waiting to rotate on. There were more players than courts for a good couple of hours. I got in a variety of games, some were weaker games and some were stronger games.

Losing Mike

Some sad news, “Texas Mike” Ballard is moving to… well… Texas. He’s expecting to be there by the holidays. He’ll be very much missed, he’s one of the stronger players to be found at Skypark.

Games Tonight

The best games were Avery and myself against Charles and Dan—the strong player Dan, not the weaker Dan. Avery and I lost both of the games that we played against them. The first game was probably more on Avery than me, but in the second game I had my share of “less than stellar” shots. Charles and Dan were formidable. When I complimented Avery for his great ATP, he said, ”That’s all I’ve got.” Avery has the smoothest motion for dinks I’ve seen outside of pro players. He just needs a bit more experience. It’ll come.

The lights clicked off at 9:30, just a few minutes after I finished playing against John (the ceramicist, husband of Peggy) and Aaron with younger Dan, who is still a weak player, as my partner. As one would expect, we lost the game and the previous with the same player partnerings.

Before that game, Dan said he was the weakest player and asked to play with the strongest player, John looked at me and said, “Probably Andrew” then he moved to play with Aaron. A compliment.

After the last game, I gave Dan some advice about making sure to return the serve deep, as well as some advice about his positioning on the court so as not to leave a gap between him and his partner. In the case of those last two games, his partner with me.

Chattering

After the lights popped off, seven of us hung out for a while and talked quite a bit about pickleball tournaments, workshops, etc.

Matt said that he follows the San Jose Pickleball Club on social media, and they have addressed the skill discrepancy issue found when signing up for courts by using the DUPR app. By using that, each person gets a rating and there’s a determination where they should be playing or not playing. Personally, I think that’s brilliant and would be really great to help place players properly into appropriate skill groupings. There wouldn’t be much argument—it’s hard to argue with facts and data.

Toward the end of the evening, my back was getting kind of tight and fatigued. I was also pretty tired. I got up early for an 8 a.m. dentist appointment… meaning I didn’t get as much sleep as I normally get. That left me a extra beat.

At 10:45, I finally left the courts with John, Matt, and Paul.

Tournament

Mike, the tournament director for Chamisal, fixed my entry for next month, so I’m in the right event and now matched up with Jason.

As you can see, my UTPR rating (rounded down to 3.0) is followed by my “challenging up” event rating, 3.5. If someone sees this and thinks they’ll have an easier time of things since I’m a “3.0”, they are in for a shock. Jason signed up as a self-designated 3.5, so he gets no parentheses.

Drill Video

Tyson McGuffin had this good dink drill video:

Number of days on a court: 531
Number of total hours: 2,431

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