Month: May 2024 (Page 5 of 6)

Monday, May 6, 2024 (Court Day #655)

Today is the Dinko de Mayo event hosted by the club for members. I arrived at Willowbrook Park about 8:40 a.m. Parking was tricky, resulting in me circling the street twice until I gave up and parked on the side street. Registration had started at 8:30 a.m., so I wasn’t early. As requested by Pam, I carried in two metal padded folding chairs that I borrowed from work. She was super happy to see the chairs! “There his is!”

All five courts were full of players warming up. What was kind of wild was how many players that I didn’t know. Sure, I probably was acquainted with three-quarters of them, but the rest I’d never seen before . . . either they play at Willowbrook or maybe at Brommer or Derby on non-club days so we have different schedules.

For the event, the players were broken into two groups, the Notorious Nachos and the Taco Titans. I was in the Nachos group.

One of the two groups would play for a 10-minute period—games completed or not—then the other group would play. A horn would sound to start and also to end the 10-minute period. This would repeat for six games for each group for a total of twelve 10-minute periods. The players accumulating the most points would advance to the event’s playoffs.

Game #1

My first game was with Terry Rayburn against Amy Glasgow and her husband Mike Glasgow. Mike looked vaguely familiar, but don’t really know him. Amy and Mike are high 3.0 players. We went up 3-0, they came back to lead 9-7, we tied it up 9-9, then we went on to win 11-9. As with most games today, our opponents were targeting my partner.

Terry told me, “I predict you’ll be in the final four.” She was impressed with my play, obviously.

Game #2

I played with Carol Foster against René Baker and Lou Ann Lyon. It was back and forth and a close one. It was a fun one of a bit longer rallies. They scored a point just as the 10-minute horn blew and therefore won 9-8.

Game #3

Nancy Bennett and I played Stan Rathbone and Mike Fong. They scored the first point, but once Nancy and I got going, the outcome was pretty obvious. The horn blew and we were up 10-4. Mid-game, I started targeting Stan’s backhand. He’s a lefty, so I couldn’t just go on “auto-pilot”.

Game #4

I was paired with Sharon Rooney against Steve Bontadelli and Moe Rishi. They were targeting Sharon relentlessly. So much so that when the ball was coming to Steve’s forehand along his right sideline, I crept to my right, toward the middle, expecting a crosscourt shot to my partner but Steve took advantage and hit a passing shot to my left out of my reach. Oops. “I saw you moving.” Indeed, he did!

On another shot, Steve whipped a backhand sideline shot for a winner off of a low drive I was not expecting to come back. Sharon and I got creamed 11-4. Sharon, feeling bad, apologized to me after the game. Hey, it’s just for fun! As for me, I was disappointed in my play for this one, though I didn’t play badly—I just was dwelling on those two shots in particular that I misjudged and gave them those rallies.

Game #5

Amy Glasgow would be my partner against Paul Springer and Dina Schillings. Paulie, I know well. I’d never seen Dina before. Paulie was serving really well. I returned one of his serves long. Sometimes skills don’t match up between teams and one team has an unexpected advantage. We lost 11-3. Things were not going our way. The ball would clip the net and would drop over out of reach or bounce unexpectedly without time to properly react. Not that that was why we lost, but it didn’t help! I was disappointed in my play. This was the most challenging game of the day.

Amy said, “I hope I didn’t ruin your chances of the playoff.” I told her that Paulie and Dina played very well and it wasn’t all on her. And it wasn’t. Like I said, I missed a return. I popped up at least a couple shots. I didn’t adapt quickly enough to their style of play. It happens. Hats off to them.

Game #6

For the last game, I was paired with Moe Rishi against Melissa Fowler and Nancy Bennett. We won 11-2. That was a quick game. We decided to start a second game for fun with the extra time.

Playoffs

There were to be two playoff games. The top four point-getters of a respective group would play against each other and advance to the final. I wasn’t even in the top seven point getters of the twenty players in my group. With only six games, you only play with five partners out of a possible nineteen, so it’s far from a scientific evaluation of skill.

Each playoff game was very lopsided. I believe one game was 11-1—Jackie and Mauricio won—and the other game was 11-2 or 11-3, René and Rich won.

Dinko Championship Game

René and Rich Wilson (Nachos) played against Jackie and Mauricio (Tacos) in the final game. It was a well-played, closely-matched game. The final score was 14 -12. It was a fun game to watch. René and Rich pulled out the victory, but it could have gone either way.

Lunch

When all the festivities at Willowbrook were complete, we gathered at Beer Thirty in Soquel—which doesn’t serve food—for lunch. Mark Dettle went and picked up a whole bunch of burritos elsewhere for everyone as promised. People ordered their own beers at the bar, then took over the empty outside bench-style tables.

Midway through lunch, Pam asked how everyone felt about the format of the event. Generally, people liked it. Everyone gave Pam round of applause for her hard work organizing. She’ll be leaving the board this year; she’s already mostly moved to Paso Robles. I hope she likes heat, it gets darn hot down there during summer!

At 1:20 p.m., as I was about to leave, I thanked Pam again and shared that my preference was for the format used at the somewhat recent volunteers tournament of moving up a court and splitting when you win and moving down and splitting when you lose. I told her with the format used today it really depends on who your partner is and how much your opponents are going to target your partner. Pam told Mark—who was standing next to me—and me what she was thinking when she saw the results, which was, “Andrew isn’t gonna be happy about this.” We all laughed. I shrugged my shoulders and said. “Yeah, I was a little disappointed. But, hey, It’s only a recreational event.”

Drilling Appointment

Mauricio suggested we drill this week—our second such drilling session. We settled on Wednesday morning.

From the group lunch, it was home, shower, then off to work!

Tournament Saturday

René and I will be playing in the tournament hosted by John Connors and Eddy at Brommer this weekend. We tentatively planned to meet up on Thursday evening at Skypark to play as a team in preparation.

I paid my registration—John reminded me!—tonight, by Zelle transfer.

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Later Tournament Analysis

So, you might wonder about how I—and perhaps other stronger players—didn’t end up in the payoffs for this tournament. That’s not to say that there weren’t strong players in the playoffs, there certainly were, just probably not the optimal selection of players. And—who knows?—given the day, maybe I even didn’t deserve to be in those playoffs.

And why is it not optimal?

Let’s do some analysis. So, there were 20 players in my group. We played 6 rounds of 5 games for a total of 30 games. But just how many games would you have to play to make sure all possible combinations were exhausted and also the most fair?

First off, here’s what I got from ChatGPT…

But you can’t always trust ChatGPT and when I shared this with my UCLA cum laude Applied Mathematics son Nicholas, he wasn’t convinced that this was the correct answer.

Soooo…

Let’s take a look at possible games for just 4 players (labeled A, B, C, and D):

So, with just 3 games, you’ll cover all the possible combinations for 4 players.

Now, let’s expand the pool to 6 players instead:

So, you there would have to be 45 games played to cover all the combinations for 6 players. That got really big really fast. We added just three players and it went from 3 needed games to 45 needed games. Given that we played only 30 games for 20 players in the Dinko tournament, we can already see that there’s no way we covered all the combinations.

Now, let’s move up to 10 players, then some extrapolation:

Using math and a formula, we can extrapolate the number of games required for a given number of players. I added groups of 8, 10, and 20 in additional to the 4 and 6 already shown above. Since the formula counts “AB vs. CD” as a different game than “CD vs. AB”, we have to divide the total game combinations by 2.

What we learn is that to make the Dinko de Mayo tournament 100% fair and to completely evaluate 20 players so all possible pairs play each other, there would need to be 14,535 games played! If we did “2 out of 3” games, to get the best sense, then we’re back to 29,070 games.

In math, there is talk about “exponential growth”, but combinations like this are “factorial growth” which gets crazy big very fast. It’s a field of mathematics known as combinatorics. I did get an “A” in my college combinatorics class, but that was decades ago, and so I had to look up a lot of this!

Number of days on a court: 655
Number of total hours: 2,806
Number of paid coaching hours: 33

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.

Sunday, May 5, 2024 (Court Day #654)

My right knee is bothering me a little bit, giving me mild pain while walking around this morning. Tomorrow morning is the club’s “Dinko de Mayo” event—I guess you could call it a tournament. Everyone has been assigned a team, though I’m not sure how many players are on a given team, each one is named after some kind of food like the Notorious Nachos or the Taco Titans.

As I was driving to Derby Park at 8:45 a.m., I was noticing that there were moist areas on the road from precipitation since last night and the front deck of our house had standing drops of water on it. That made me wonder about the condition of the courts at Derby. I was really hoping that we’d be past the season of wet courts but we may not be.

It was partly cloudy and 52°F.

Derby

When I arrived at Derby Park, there are some players warming up on a court and Mark G. was blowing off the courts with his own blower. You got like the guy!

Quite unusual, two of the city nets had been partially disassembled and pushed off to the side . Apparently, some tennis players came to play and decided to make things more difficult for pickleball players later. It wasn’t outright vandalism, but it was obviously and very intentionally annoying.

As feared, there were puddles on the courts, but they were small and the sun was now shining. Between three of us with towels plus the sun, they were dry in about 10-15 minutes.

Once I’d set everything up and blown off the courts more fully, it was 9:15 a.m. and I got about to getting into a game.

Play

Today was a far better day for game play. Tall Charles O. and Dave Cox came today.

Dave started a blue (4.0+) box which had Dave and Mark G. and Ted and I added my name to the box. Dave and I are generally similarly skilled followed by Mark followed by Ted. When our box was called, we went to a court and Dave partnered with Mark. I think they might have a tournament together, but I’m not sure. Regardless, it’ll be Dave’s M.O. to pick the strongest player to play with as a partner since he doesn’t like to lose—even rec play. Dave couldn’t have picked me, Ted would have probably complained about balance. Ted played well enough for the game to be fairly even. Still, Mark and Dave ended up winning by several points.

After his performance in that game, Ted decided to sign up in a lower level instead. The rest of us signed up in blue and waited for a fourth to fill out our box. That fourth player turned out to be Charles which made me super happy. That would be a good game.

The first game was very close. Charles and I lost. It would be hard to place a blame either of us. We both were playing reasonably well, though we did make some errors.

Between games, Dave Cox asked if I was ready to drop $600 on a pickleball workshop. That’s definitely a big chunk of change. However, I do have extra income coming from teaching. The problem was, the 4.0+ camp is less than a week away. It conflicts with a tournament René and I are playing on Saturday morning.

In the next game, Charles was saying he was falling apart, but then we came back took the lead. But then Mark and Dave came back and won the game. Still it was super fun with good rallies.

In the last game, we won 11-7 and we lead the entire game.

I left at 12:15 p.m. I had to get home, eat, and get out to Aptos to teach.

Family

My brother John texted me a couple of photos showing that they were using the pickleball net that I gifted to him and his family.

I could tell that they were at Skypark.

Up and coming young players!

New Rec Beginner Class

Today is the first day of my new beginners group that includes—surprise—my wife and some of her friends from teaching. One of my registered students—another educator—got injured and couldn’t come to the first class and ended up dropping out altogether. Fortunately, I had friend and staff-member Julia step in and fill out as the fourth for the second court.

Class Notice

In the evening, sent out an email blast to my former pickleball beginner students letting them know that I’m teaching an Advanced Beginner 4-week class at Skypark. It’s already half full, but I figured I’d let my former students know about it and give them the opportunity to sign up if they wanted to.

Number of days on a court: 654
Number of total hours: 2,803
Number of paid coaching hours: 33

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.

Friday, May 3, 2024 (Court Day #653)

Ted B. had invited me a few days ago to come play at Derby with a group of guys. They start at 9 a.m., but I arrived at 9:15 a.m. Eric had texted me asking if I was coming. Yes, just moving slowly. It was a partly cloudy morning with the sun peeking through.

Derby

As I walked up to the courts, I was quite surprised. Every single court was being used! Matt Smith, the retired firefighter, was there as was Terry and her husband Gary who are both back from Mexico where they spend the colder months. She said they got back on Sunday and this was her third time out playing since then.

I got into mid-skill games today. I was playing pretty well until a little bit past 11 a.m. when I started to fatigue and the lack of breakfast started making itself known.

Grrrr…

There was a game where Eric S. and I played against John P. and Ted. I hit a winner down the sideline. I was looking right down the line and it was unquestionably landed on the middle of the blue line. I even smiled and pointed down to John indicating it was in. I went back to the baseline expecting a sideout. But Ted and John switched places taking a point. I asked, “Did you call my shot out?” They said it was out. Aside from commenting to Eric about it, I didn’t say anything more, but I was quite annoyed. Yes, it’s their call, but I know my shot was in, I had the best view. There may have been an older guy off on the side who made a call for Ted and John. But he wasn’t looking down the line like I was. Yes, it’s only a game, but I was annoyed by the injustice of it all! Eric and I went on to win the next few rallies, but we ended up losing the game. We shouldn’t have lost but we did—I’d take Eric over John or Ted with no question. I don’t think my annoyance was part of the loss . . . while it wasn’t my best game, I was playing better than Eric in this one.

Eric was there for about an hour and a half before he decided to leave. Matt Smith left not long after. Too bad, they were some of of the stronger players there.

In a game against Allen and Rick A., I scored 3 points in a row off of my serves. It can be embarrassing for me . . . it’s hard to explain. I don’t like to stick out. Rick was asking later about my serves, “It hits the ground and speeds up unexpectedly.” I explained that I come up over the back of the ball to apply topspin.

When tapping paddles after a game later in the morning, Stoehr told me, “You’re a pro.” Oh, yeah, I can totally take down Ben Johns whenever I feel like it. NOT! Though once I was warmed up, I did feel that I was the best player there today. I don’t think I’m conceited, though nearly everyone feels that they are better than they truly are. While playing at Skypark or Brommer, I’m often either just one of a number of good players or even second tier.

The rallies today typically didn’t last more than 3–5 shots . . . long rallies may 8 shots. The rare, very long rallies might be 10 shots.

By 12:35 p.m., I was in my car and pulling out to head home. It turned into a really warm day . . . and unusual for me, I had some sweat stains on my T-shirt. It was home, shower, eat, then to work.

Work

Being I work six days a week, I took a little time to finish up the new dry erase board needed for the new club day at Skypark on Saturdays. I had been going fast and my educated guess on the spacing left a slightly larger box for the right column. Oops. Oh, well. That’s what you get for volunteer labor sometimes! But hey, most players are righties anyway, it could be helpful actually.

Evening Dog Walk

I was out walking the dog and took another crack at the USA Pickleball Player Rules Test. Yep. Another 100% score.

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Saturday, May 4, 2024 (No Play)

Apparently, there was a controversy this past weekend. A female player fell during a mixed doubles match and a male opponent pegged her with the ball—for a winner—while she was still down. Not very chivalrous, but all’s fair in love, war, and pickleball tournaments! Within the rules, of course. And it was. And it was a relatively light hit, not a full-power slam shot. If he hit the ball near her and it bounced off the court, it could be returned by her partner. The only way to easily guarantee ending the rally to his benefit was to have the ball touch her . . . other than her paddle hand. Tournaments are cutthroat. The weakest player will be targeted. No mercy. It’s all out.

Controversial Pro Pickleball Shot Hit At Fallen Opponent Sparks Debate Over Unwritten Rules

Number of days on a court: 653
Number of total hours: 2,800
Number of paid coaching hours: 31.5

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.