Sunday, September 11, 2022 (Court Day #547)

After the tournament yesterday, it was back to the ordinary. I arrived at Derby Park at 8:50 a.m. to find all the courts set up and most in use. Tom Sherwood had not received my message saying my pipe band performance was canceled and I would be at Derby after all to carry out my regular site coordinator duties. Tom had arrived quite early and set up everything well in advance of opening time. He must be a morning person . . . unlike me!

Today was pretty routine. Casey F. made another Sunday Derby appearance. Apparently, Casey had a good enough time that he decided to come back. His dad Tim had other obligations and couldn’t make it today.

Brothers from a Different Mother

I’ll admit I sometimes get Nate and Hugh mixed up. They are about the same height, thin build, fair skinned, roughly the same age. For now, though, Nate is the much stronger player.

Jenna

There wasn’t a ton to note today. I will say that Jenna—whose husband James is back in Britain for now—played very well today. I’d say it was a 3.5 level. She and I took on Allan K. and Ted and we beat them 11-3. She demonstrated very quick hands at the net, returning fast volleys: “I don’t know how I got those!” We’ll see if she can keep it up, but Allan said she’s been getting better and better.

Ying

Also Ying is starting to utilize the soft game a little bit. She still has a habit of driving shots at net-positioned opponents when she should drop and drives shots into the net with too much frequency, but she’s showing improvement. She’s got a reliable block volley drop over the net that’s very effective when her opponents are too far back to get the ball. I told her, “You’re developing a soft game, that’s really good.”

Appreciation from the Bench

I played a game against Scott (usually seen in Scotts Valley—though not in the last few months) and Jenna with Martijn’s wife Sarah as my partner. She said, “I’m not an ‘advanced’ but I’m filling in as a fourth.” Since there was no fourth player, Scott had asked her. I picked the least strong player of the group as my partner. Sarah and I still won. I got some “ooos” and “aaaahs” from the full bench when I hit a low backhand ATP right in front of them. “He probably doesn’t even know he did it,” someone commented. Though I was aware. This was a particularly nice ATP, but yeah, I’m well past the days of getting excited and keeping track of them.

The crowd thinned out early. I think a bunch gave up and didn’t want to wait to play.

“One More Game”

By noon, especially after playing a tournament yesterday and today being three days of solid play in a row, I was tired and going to leave but got talked into a couple more games, these against Charles and Ted with Jeff as my partner. Jeff isn’t super consistent, but occasionally pulls off some amazing angle shots with his ping pong background.

Ted and Charles helped me count the donations and we were all off by 12:30, leaving an unfamiliar man teaching a boy—probably his son or grandson—how to play.


Number of days on a court: 547
Number of total hours: 2,479.5

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