Sunday, March 5, 2023. (Court Day #582)

I was woken up by rain around 3:30 this morning. That almost certainly guaranteed a delay or cancellation for club play today at Sergeant Derby Park. around 8:30 a.m., I sent out an email delaying play until 10 a.m.

My hand was still a bit sore from play yesterday morning, but it was better than last night.

I left my house at 9:30 to partly cloudy skies. Sun is a requirement to dry the courts!

Derby

When I was pulling up, Larry and his wife Jacquie were leaving in separate cars. I asked Larry how the courts were and he said that they were doing OK. But once I got to the courts themselves, there was standing water in multiple places. The good news is the sun was out and doing a good job drying the courts where there weren’t pools.

There were three players there who were about to warm up, but I told them that if I didn’t get their help toweling off the courts at that moment, I was going to cancel play for today. They weren’t to keen about that so they immediately got to work helping me. By the time 10 o’clock rolled around, the courts were playable.

A few minutes after 10 a.m., there were only 9 of us there to play. The number of players they topped out a very low 20 today.

Lefty

I was playing all my games left-handed. It started out a bit clunky but I got better.

Matt Smith showed up along with a guy named Paul who I hadn’t met before but turned out to be Paul Swiencicki from our SCALPEL league. Paul is a pretty good player. He’ll be a challenge when it comes to playing games in the league.

I played a game with Rick Abend against Paul and a woman whose name escapes me and I played lefty.

Harder Games

I won all my games lefty . . . until . . .

I played with Rick against Matt and Paul. We were crushed. It was 10-3 before they eased up and let it become 10-7 before finishing us off 11-7.

I opted to play the next game right-handed and Rick and I didn’t fare much better, a little better, but not much.

We played a third game which was closer, but Rick and I still lost.

Paul wanted to change things up, so he and I took on Matt and Rick. The game was never in doubt, Paul and I took a very big lead and never gave it up. I believe we were ahead 8-1 before they scored a little run of points.

It was 1:10 by the time I left the courts for the day.

OMG. Work to Do.

I was hitting balls that would have otherwise flown out of the court. Matt and Paul took to just driving balls at me knowing that I’d nearly always just hit them regardless. This is a major Achilles Heel for me. I suppose I need to drill for this or somehow change my mindset and be more aware of out balls.

Pro Loses Cool

At a recent PPA tournament, on February 25, pro player DJ Young expressed his disgust of losing a game by throwing his paddle to the ground. The only thing is, the paddle bounced off the ground and into the spectator stands two rows back!

I get it, as a competitor he was upset, but we have to control our emotions and keep people safe. The PPA fined him. I believe I shared it here before, but locally a player threw a paddle last year after losing a game and it hit his opponent in the face. He didn’t intend to his opponent, but these kinds of things happen when you start throwing paddles or slamming balls after the game is over. This local incident resulted in blood and a hospital trip, but no permanent damage—luckily.

Monday, March 6, 2023 (No Play)

Tomorrow is my first league match. I’m a bit excited.

I made up a couple of memes. This one I posted in the Pickleball Forum on Facebook:

And I had made up another that I posted to The Pickleball Clinic on Facebook:

The life of a pickleball player…

Number of days on a court: 582
Number of total hours: 2,581.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 2

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