Thursday, November 23, 2023 (Court Day #610)
It was a beautiful day, mid-60s, sunshine, no clouds, no breeze. My daughter has asked a few days ago about me perhaps joining her, her boyfriend Aidan, his mom Trish and her boyfriend Bill in some pickleball on Thanksgiving. My knee is still not 100%, but honestly, I don’t know if it’ll ever be 100% again.
Trish and Bill opted for the courts at Cabrillo. I’d never played there for rec play, only one tournament and helping at the recent Newman Camp.
We had a sit-down breakfast at my house then Aidan and Charlotte headed to the courts. I drove my son Nicholas along with my wife Kristen and our second corgi Pepper, who my wife would be walking while we played. We also invited my younger brother John who said he might come.
Cabrillo
When we arrived just after 10 a.m., there were two doubles games going on. I recognized two players, one was Rosie, a woman who I’ve seen at Derby Park.
“I haven’t seen you for months!”
“I had knee surgery.”
There was a man and a young woman on the adjacent tennis court. The problem was that tennis court was also occupying the only remaining marked out pickleball courts. The man figured out what I wanted and offered to move to one of the empty tennis courts over the fence, which they kindly did. He and I chatted for a moment. He teaches horticulture at Cabrillo once a year and the young woman is a current Cal Poly student.
It was then that Charlotte and the Aidan clan arrived. Also there were Aidan’s younger brother Jordy and also their cousin Robby. Jordy’s girlfriend arrived too and she later on joined a game as Charlotte’s partner.
We set up the net I brought. Trish then asked for help setting up their net. It was a pretty serious net in a bag with rollers. The net itself is portable, but with heavy-duty flattened tubing and locking casters. Not cheap!
We rotated through partners then my brother John arrived and I played a few games with him. This was his third time out playing. He‘s gotten better. He still needs to work on getting to the net, but he’s getting his serves in. (He had good success with the drop serve.) He was a mix of rookie moves and some shots that were impressive.
Charlotte has good hand-eye coordination. With more practice—I’m sure medical school gets in the way!—she could be really good.
Just about everyone left about 11:40 to get ready for activities of the day—Thanksgiving, after all!—though John and Nicholas stayed to play a game against me, with me covering only half the court. They are too good, particularly Nicholas, for me to try and cover the whole court. I won by a sizable margin, as you’d expect. We left a little bit after noon.
Later on, on John’s house with two big tables full worth of family, he mentioned, “The first couple of times that I played, I didn’t really understand how good of a player that you are.” Nice compliment, thanks, bro!
In The News
An article about the new drive for pickleball sound mitigation…
https://www.businessinsider.com/pickleball-court-noise-driving-us-all-crazy-scientists-trying-solution-2023-11
Saturday, November 25, 2023 (No Play)
Not a big surprise, my knee hurting from the playing on Thursday. It’s not to the point of limping, just hurts the most going down stairs and aches with my leg in certain positions.
Work Visit
A player that I taught a few years ago at Derby, Allison, stopped in at work today. We chatted for a few minutes. She’s been playing with a group of similar-skilled woman in the afternoons a few days a week. Good for her. I mentioned that I’m teaching a beginner class for the county and she said, “You’d be perfect for that. You are so patient.” A nice vote of confidence.
This video popped up tonight while cruising on YouTube. Zane Naratil explains the “banana shot” popularized by Rafael Nadal. This is what I’ve used for years in my serve arsenal, not knowing that it has a name.
Tennis Legend
Andre Agassi on pickleball:
So, “take that” tennis players making mocking videos of throwing pickleball paddles in the trash!
PPR
I finished watching the PPR Pre-Certification videos. It wasn’t that bad, less than 2 hours. There are other instructional videos that are not required for certification, but are helpful. Those total about 10 hours of run time. I’ll be spending time watching those, but I have to finish reading the PPR guidebook first.
Paddles
Zane Naratil and Thomas Shields host the Picklepod podcast. It bring in some top players and key movers and shakers in the pickleball world. In this episode, they talked with Carl Schmits of USA Pickleball about the testing of paddles. As a techie nerd-head, I found it fascinating:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/picklepod/id1584931417?i=1000633411228
Or you can watch the podcast episode on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/D9gYG82GDGQ?si=HNivf817zTLiV02A
Carl did a fabulous job representing the association.
Linked from the website of Pickle Pro Labs—an independent testing service—is this commentary by Ben Johns about paddle testing and fairness in competition:
https://www.thedinkpickleball.com/ben-johns-paddle-drama-explanation/
Searching around, I found this PDF, marked “confidential”, but it looks like it’s been shared in similar formats elsewhere intentionally:
https://assets-global.website-files.com/612cb6513c086138fe5d1faa/6440162dda36cc4c889ba269_2023.04.19%20-%20PPL%20Paddle%20Testing%20Report.pdf
Mentioned in the podcast was YouGov, which they said claimed that there are 30,000,000 people are playing the sport in the USA. I found an article from January . . . maybe I shared it or a similar one before, but here it is:
https://www.theapp.global/news/app-reveals-36-5-million-adult-americans-played-pickleball-in-2022
Here are more results from YouGov:
https://business.yougov.com/content/47161-pickleball-understanding-demographics-and-key-behaviours
Sunday, November 26, 2023 (No Play)
I didn’t mention it, but it appears that the original “Pickleball Forum” on Facebook started by pro player Aspen Kern was deleted sometime in recent months and replaced by a new Pickleball Forum on Facebook that I had to join again to participate. All posts to the original group are now gone. It’s a total drag. It provided history and I’m sure I have links here in my blog to a now-deleted Facebook Group. I know Aspen had turned over most (or all) of the moderator duties to others, but perhaps he got tired of whatever remaining obligations that he had or perhaps the ownership was transferred by Facebook to some other individual. This sometimes happens and the original owner/moderators lose any control over the group and it can turn into a haven for spam posts and blasting members with spam. I never saw any spam, so who knows. All I can do is speculate.
Number of days on a court: 610
Number of total hours: 2,677
Number of paid coaching hours: 5
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