Tuesday, August 22, 2023 (Court Day #603)

I left work and arrived in Skypark at 7 p.m. Things were hopping with players all over the place waiting to get into games. It was one of the busiest nights I’ve seen. It was a warm and unusually muggy evening and, being summer, the sun was still out for a good chunk of the session.

I am still a little sore from Sunday’s outing. In particular my right glute muscle. Fortunately, my knee seems to be fine. The back of my right hand is sore, however.

It was nice to see a lot of people that I hadn’t seen in three months. Tim, Rachel, Paul, Max, Nicole, Shawnte, Casey, Aaron . . . there were a bunch of people. Noticeably absent were Matt and his young son Lucas.

Most of the games tonight are pretty uneventful. The best games were the last two which involved Paul and myself battling Shawnte and Rachel. Paul and I lost the first game but then we won the second. Shawnte has a wicked backhand roll volley/slap which has speed and accuracy.

We wrapped up at second game about five minutes before the lights clicked off at 9:30, Rachael, Paul and I helped take down portable nets. Afterward, I ended up hanging out for another 45 minutes chatting with various players in a partial darkness.

DUPR

Shawnte mentioned that his DUPR rating was over 4.0 when playing regularly with 4.0+ players in the San Jose area, but after playing with lower rated players, his rating dropped: “You’d think that the system would understand that your opponents are going to hit most of the shots to the weaker player and take that into account.” We both went on to complain about DUPR no longer using score differential in its calculations. A game of 11-0 has the same weight as a game of 20-18. Why throw away useful data? Hopefully, they’ll revert and reintroduce that differential feature that was a strength of the DUPR system versus UTPR.

Newbies

I wrapped up the evening talking to two new players, Mauricio and his wife Shaye. They said they’ve been playing for three weeks. It turns out that they live only about 12 houses down from me! Super close.

Wednesday, August 23, 2023 (No Play)

I went to the hand specialist this morning. He’s a PA (physicians assistant) named Steve. Nice guy. He poked and prodded, twisted, bent, asked questions. He wasn’t sure what was going on with my wrist and hand, but referred me to get my hand X-rayed. He said if that doesn’t show anything, the next step is an MRI. I told him if I get an MRI done, I may as well do my left knee and right ankle while I’m at it!

Prime Time

My uncle Jerry texted me a photo of his TV this evening. He was surprised to see pickleball on “primetime”. I told him that the guy on the right of the box is Tyson McGuffin and that I almost walked up and met him . . . if I hadn’t been so intimidated by his intense look at the Golden State Championships 4-5 years ago!

Yep, pickleball is moving up the entertainment food chain!

Number of days on a court: 603
Number of total hours: 2,653.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 2

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