Friday, September 23, 2022 (Court Day #551)

René arranged a private games session between myself and her against her friend Rick and Jason. I told René I could get there by 4 p.m., and Jason said that he could get there at 3:30 p.m., so René and Rick opted to meet with Jason little bit earlier.

When I got to Brommer Park at about 4:10—after getting stuck in rush hour traffic!—they are playing a 2 on 1 game. They were happy to see me. With a tournament coming up in about a week together, René and I were partners in a game against Rick and Jason. We fell behind. René was not moving very fast in the heat. It was in the mid 80s, we had no shade, and had the sun in our faces. Partway through the game René said she was not feeling well and stepped out of the game, went over to the wall at the edge of the courts, and laid down.

Without a word, Rick jumped into a game with three unknown players who were happy to have a fourth.

Eventually, we made another attempt at a game, but again René only made it a few rallies before she felt really sick again and had to stop.

&#$@%!

On her way to the wall, René passed behind the court of a man playing with his young son. At that, the man got angry and gave an expletive-laced objection—in front of his child—to René about interrupting their game. She hadn’t done it before and she wasn’t inside their court. I don’t know that the guy’s problem was. Yes, René should have waited for a break in their play, but did it really deserve a that kind of reaction? I don’t believe so.

Across the divider John Funky (Hugh’s friend) and Peter (who I met at the Chamisol tournament two weeks ago) were playing against two other players who I don’t know. One ended up taking off and Jason played with the remaining guy who had seen before but I didn’t know his name. They played against Peter and John. René and I waited.

After about 10 minutes Jason and I took on Peter and John. I played consistently very well in that game. I hit an ATP gentle lob outside of John and it landed in the corner of the court behind him. John was impressed, “That was a sick shot!” Others voiced similar praise. During one rally at the net, Peter and John were slamming down but I was getting the ball back anyway. Watching, René exclaimed, “Andrew has super fast hands!” Nonetheless, I lost that rally anyway after a few shots when I couldn’t reset the ball well enough.

Back Down to Earth

Jason and I switched sides and Rick replaced Peter who was done for the day. It would have been hard to play as well as I did in the first game… and I didn’t. An example was me calling off Jason to my right for a high ball then me hitting what would have been a winner long out past our opponent’s baseline! Duh. That and hitting “out balls”. That is a killer for me.

And Out!

Jason had head out and that was that, shortly after 6 p.m.

Tennis Elbow?

My right arm is bothering me a bit. I’m still religiously using my Bandit forearm strap—I never hit shots with my right hand without it. But this discomfort is worrisome. Hopefully, it’ll just recede, but it’s been bugging me after the last few outings.

Saturday, September 24, 2022 (No Play)

The big talk today is USA Pickleball banning the spin serve for 2023. Now, what I used to always call a spin serve—a ball hit in a fashion to spin the ball—will still be legal. What will not be legal is imparting spin on the toss before the ball is struck. I kind of figured this would be coming. I never bothered to learn an “on the toss” spin serve. I’m happy to see it go. I know there are players out there who vehemently believe it’s a disservice to the sport to ban it. In my opinion, it changes the dynamic of the serve too much. In table tennis (ping pong), finger spinning was banned in 1937 after the serves became extremely difficult or impossible to return—even for experts. Even without finger spinning a pickleball, serves can be done that are nearly impossible to return, though they are a high risk for a service fault.

Number of days on a court: 551
Number of total hours: 2,490

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