Thursday, March 14, 2024 (Court Day #636)

Today, I saw the social media post on Instagram slamming a pickleball product:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4dW6dNL72G/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D
The post is a “slap down” on Joola paddles. I haven’t heard of problems with them, but based on the comments, some people believe there are.

Coaching Scam?

On Tuesday, I received a message through the PPR website:

“Name
Juliet Briones

Email
[email removed]

Message
“Are you available to coach my son?“

I replied within a few hours with my experience, availability, and hourly rate. Then I received this reply the yesterday:

“Thanks for your email,I’m delighted to know you are available to coach my son with his lessons, he is 17yrs old. We reside in London (Lutton),I’m into Real estate and Hotel Management work here, My son Brian will be relocating temporarily to my sister house in your state, less than two week from this date and I’m hoping the lessons can begin.

What we really want for Brian is to improve on his Skills and strength and he has had a few lessons here in Lutton but nothing too concrete I must say so I guess you will be taking him partly as a beginner too though he picked up interest since he was about 7yrs old thereabout.

I would like the lessons to hold two times a week for 1hr each day of the lessons for a total duration of six weeks.how much would that total to? 

Brian’s time is very open so we would have you plan for lesson days and times that suits you.Thanks again for your email, do get back to me on this and we can proceed on arrangements then and Brian schedule is fully open now so anytime and day work.”

Now, I started getting very suspicious. I performed a few Google searches and could find nothing online about a “Juliet Briones” working in real estate near London. I checked and there’s a Luton that is very close to London, but Lutton is a good 40 minutes outside of London proper. While the grammar isn’t overly bad—some errors—there is some odd capitalization and odd vagueness in the email, such as “in your state” instead of just “California” or more likely “Santa Cruz County”, and also “two week from this date” instead of “end of March” or “first week of April”.

I replied with a very brief message about an hour after she sent it, breaking down the rate and giving the total, followed by my nonsensical trap:
“How long has your sister been here in Nevada?”
I also removed my location from the two email signatures (one from my previous email) that appeared in my message.

Then I waited… and this morning I received her message…

“Hello Andrew 

That Sounds Good.

My sister has been in Nevada all her life but I’m always in and out it there.

I’m delighted to know we are in agreement and I spoke to my husband about your rates and at this point, I’m most delighted to say we have a deal! I am willing to pay your asking price.I will be paying you by wire check as its the only way i can pay you at the moment.

If this is OK, I’ll need you to provide me with your full name as to be written on the payment, your contact address (where the payment will be sent to and your phone number.

Truthfully, I must say Brian is excited about meeting you as he has been telling his friends over the phone about his new coach in the states! and that he will going to the states to meet his new coach OK then have a great one and get back to me and i can make relevant arrangements then ,please extend my greetings to your Family.”

Ah, ha! Trap sprung. I’m not in Nevada. She reached out to me telling me her sister lives in my state, that is, California. SCAM!

Pickleball impacts Golf

It came out this week that 66-year-old two-time Masters golf champion Bernhard Langer had to drop out of his last-ever tournament before retiring, but tore his Achilles tendon going for a lob while playing pickleball.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/03/13/bernhard-langer-pickleball-masters/#
Ouch!

Skypark

I was able to arrive at Skypark at 6:18 p.m., since I had one of my staff close the family business for me. I had to park down the street and around the corner—I knew this was coming with the city restricting parking at the courts.

There was no tennis going, only eight full courts of pickleball players.

There was about an hour of sun after I arrived. It was a nice evening. The wind gusts that had been happening all day had died down, so they was no longer a factor.

Denied

Tim and his son Casey walked out to an empty court that one active foursome hadn’t shifted to. I hadn’t played yet, so I walked out with them. I asked if I could join them, and said in a self-deprecating fashion, “I can subject Casey to me.” Casey paused and looked back across to the waiting area and said, “I thought Sean and Danny were going to play.” I could tell Casey wanted more than an Andrew “warmup” game. I politely left the court and returned to the waiting area. Puzzled, Sean asked me, “What happened?”
“I got booted.”
So, Sean and his brother Danny took my place.

Great Game

But the game I did get into was a blast. I played with Avery against Markus and Oscar. It was a really good one. We had a lot of long rallies with resets, firefights . . . it was great. It was a close game that Avery and I lost by a small amount, but Avery and I shared the blame. This one was far from all on me. That was the game of the night.

Although I was losing end of a lot of games tonight, I felt like I was playing a little bit better tonight. Maybe the rust from last 6 months is starting to come off. I still feel like I’m missing shots that I should be making. On the other hand, I will say my drop shots are getting really reliable.

By about 8:30 p.m., I was dying. I was so tempted to just go home but I ended up playing for another hour. I had packed a protein drink and a snack bar, but I had forgotten to eat them. I downed the protein drink right about 9 o’clock, and, of course, it would take a while for it to kick in, but at least took the edge off of the hunger. Boy, I was dragging. Moving around on the court seemed like a big effort. I noticed myself being out of position after winners hit by the other side. Part of that may just been from the fact that I just didn’t want to make the effort to move.

The lights clicked off about 9:30 p.m. and I headed home.

I took two ibuprofen, put the ice pack on my knee and crawled into bed.

Backpack Quest

While continuing to research my ideal pickleball backpack, this product was mentioned for carrying shoes. It looks pretty good:
https://klitch.co

On Tuesday night, I saw that Binh had a Gearbox backpack. I liked all the pockets. That’s a possibility for me.

Number of days on a court: 636
Number of total hours: 2,750.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 21.5

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