Thursday, August 31, 2023 (Court Day #607)

Yesterday, I weighed in at 179.8 pounds, breaking into the 170s after starting my diet and exercise plan at the very end of May at 196.8. I’m sure I’ll pop back up into the 180s over the next week or so, but I’m hoping to dip down permanently soon.

Skypark

I arrived in Skypark shortly after 6:30 p.m. I must have good karma this month, since again, like last time, a car pulled out just as I arrived, so I was able to park right up against the courts in the main parking lot.

Things are fairly busy, but nothing like it was on Tuesday. Tuesday was crazy.

I was playing relatively poorly tonight, though I got better and better as evening went on.

Sometime in the last two days, the City of Scotts Valley fixed the three burnt out lights over the courts. This is great because it was quite dark on Tuesday night. Thank you, SV!

Blind serving

For one game, Kristin L. and I were matched up against Mark Dettle and a new player named Melissa. We took a quick and significant lead, so I told Kristen, “I’m going to serve with my eyes closed.” Which I did and got the serve in easily. A few points later, I told her, “I’m going to see how fast I can serve it with my eyes closed.” I served to Mark and making a good and fast serve. Kristin was funny: “You should serve with your eyes closed more often!”

Over the course of the entire night, I had about a half dozen of my serves returned into the net. At least my serve is making life harder for my opponents.

Katie

I played a couple of games with a blonde-haired woman who I had not previously met named Katie. Katie, like me, went to Harbor High School, though she graduated 12 years after I did. She said her husband graduated in 1992. I shared that brother Mike graduated from Harbor in 1991 so I told her that her husband might know my brother. She asked what his name is and I said, “Mike Lenz.” She told Charles later that she can be sarcastic, but I didn’t see that. Katie is an upbeat and amusing person.

La Madrona

In a conversation I overheard between Katie and Tim H. (the tennis coach), La Madrona came up. I asked Katie if she belongs to the La Madrona Athletic Club and she said she did. I asked about the pickleball courts there and she said that while they have lights there, it’s hit or miss if there are enough players to make it a worthwhile visit. She said that with Skypark, you are guaranteed to get into games. Katie must have had some tennis background. We partnered for a game then later I played against her when she was partnered with Charles. She has strong drives—she’s a lefty—though she still has work to do on other aspects of her game. I’d put her at a solid 3.0. She’s not a 3.5 yet.

With my wife pushing to join the La Madrona club, I’ve been recently thinking about what their guest policy is. If my wife and I are members, I wonder if I can invite three people to come play with me at the club as guests. I’m not sure what the protocol is, but I guess will likely be finding out. I suspect it’s not an unlimited open invitation for guests of members.

Games

The last three games were the games of the night. I was playing with a young guy named Ralph against David (still with no Minori) in a tall guy named John. John and Ralph I didn’t know. Ralph turned out to be far better than I was expecting, and John was almost as good. David and John beat Ralph and me by significant margin in the first game. In the second game, we got closer, it was 11-7. And last game, Ralph and I were leading 10-9 when the lights clicked off. “Awwwwww!” Those are a lot of fun.

A few of us hung out and talked. David said I was playing well. Perhaps in those last games. But it took me over two hours to get dialed in, hopefully, that’ll shorten as I knock off the rust.

And I got into my car at about 10 o’clock after chatting with the guys after play. I realized that I had accidentally left my pants and my shirt at work. That’s a first! I had changed out of them and left them in a prominent place on a counter so I wouldn’t forget them, but then I exited a different way. That was annoying and amusing at the same time. It did mean a pitstop to pick up my clothes, but fortunately, it only added about five minutes to my total time getting home since it’s only a few blocks out of my way.

Pickleball in the News

My wife belongs to a book group of all women and pickleball somehow became a topic of conversation in their group text strand. Kristen shared an article with me about a woman in San Francisco (about an hour north of us), who is complaining about the noise of pickleball from across the street from her house. What is kind of ironic and hypocritical is the fact that her $36 million house has a private pickleball court in its backyard!
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/pickleball-court-presidio-heights-18336716.php
Understandably, the woman has received some public criticism.

Unrest

So, this isn’t brand new news, but it’s been building up. There was a merger agreement between MLP and PPA in November last year, but MLP never signed the agreement to validate it. Now, it seems, that each organization is independently scrambling to exclusively lock up pro players.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/08/25/major-league-pickleball-and-ppa-merger-in-jeopardy.html
We’ll see how this hashes out in the coming months.

Friday, September 1, 2023 (No Play)

I’m feeling my knee a bit this morning. Since returning to work after my knee surgery about three months ago, I’ve been icing my right knee at least once a day and often twice a day.

Why Positive Partner Communication Matters

I definitely want to share this short video I ran across this morning.
If you want your partner to do poorly, criticize repeatedly.
If you want your partner to do well, encourage repeatedly.
Here’s a perfect example from another sport:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CwTbCdbJ1s1/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on a court and had criticism result in even worse play by me. Sometimes, I’ve even just been intimidated by my partner’s higher skill level and had it mess with my head and consequently my play.

Goals

I haven’t mentioned this before, but my two recent goals have been to make sure my drop shots clear the net and also to better shadow the ball, that is, tracking even more side to side and thereby not leaving a hole down the middle.

I believe I’ve been doing better on those. Watching a pro match a few weeks ago , I was surprised on high some of the drop shots were from the baseline to the net. If that drop shot didn’t work, they’d try again. Eventually—though not always—the drop shot would work and the team would work their way to the net. Too low and the rally is over, too high and there’s another chance.

College Pickleball Classes?

An email pickleball newsletter this week shared how a college in the San Diego area is offering pickleball classes as if this was some new thing. Well, Cabrillo, our local junior college has been offering such classes for years now. In fact, they are on their second instructor (Tony) after the first one (Kim) retired 2-3 years ago. I looked up their current list of classes.

Cabrillo is on a semester system, so by offering pickleball classes “Fall, Spring, and Summer”, that’s all year around.

Number of days on a court: 607
Number of total hours: 2,668
Number of paid coaching hours: 2

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