Month: July 2024 (Page 5 of 5)

Thursday, July 4, 2024, Independence Day (Court Day #682)

There was a mild ache on the inside of my right knee as I walked around getting ready this morning. This is a common state of affairs that simply comes and goes, but, fortunately, it doesn’t seem to bother me on the courts except in rare circumstances.

I left my house at 8:45 a.m. It was already 66°F and I was betting that it was going to be in the 80s today . . . but I’d rather have hot than get rain on a holiday!

I arrived at Brommer Park right about 9 a.m. and there were about half a dozen parking spots left.

Game

My first game was with a man named Tom, whom I’d never met. He came with a group, but the rest apparently weren’t ready to play. We took on Tony Sloss and Alan Cable. Tom and I lost. I wasn’t playing great, but Tom made some shots where his inexperience or lack of strategic acumen showed. Afterward, Tony told me that he was making an effort to hit to me to keep the rallies going. I told him that I hadn’t noticed, but I believe him.

Better games

My second game was with Alan against Tony and Paul, a regular at Brommer, bit older, whose last name I don’t know. Alan and I lost. Alan and I were both not playing our best.

We played a rematch and while it was much closer, I believe we lost that one too . . . after having a significant lead, to boot.

Alan had to leave, so we all left the court and went to get hydrated along the wall.

Patty

Patty D. showed up and there was an empty court at the end. Patty asked if I’d help warm her up and I agreed.

After about 10-15 minutes, we went back to the wall and Patty asked Pauly and Mike O’Brien if they’d play. Mike said he wasn’t here to play but we got Ofer instead in addition to Pauly.

Patty and I lost our first game against Pauly and Ofer. It was close, but we lost.

We played a second time, but this time the outcome was very different and we won 11-1. Patty was getting warmed up! A scary moment, I hit Ofer in the face and knocked his glasses off onto the ground. He—and his glasses—were ok, thankfully. While the speedup was intentional, hitting him in the face was not, believe me. Ofer is a nice guy.

Patty and I went on to also win the third game 11-6.

It’s only 70° but it felt really warm in the sun.

Laura

At this point, we all headed back to the wall to mix things up and also get water. It was warm on the courts.

I got into a game with René against Pauly and a woman named Laura. Laura is a good player.

That first game Lauren and Pauly went up by a few points, but then René and I went on a big run to take the lead. Serving swapped back-and-forth then René and I pulled off the win.

We played a rematch and again Pauly and Laura went up with the lead, 5–1. René and I came back to win 12–10.

It wasn’t until I was about to leave when René said that Laura had just moved here and I realized that Laura might’ve been the woman who played a couple weeks ago at Skypark who was also a strong player. I caught up with Laura in the parking lot and confirmed with her that she had just moved to our area. Then I asked her where she was from, and she answered “Visalia.” I remembered that being the exact same city of the other other woman was from, so the “other” woman was also Laura! So I explained to her we had actually played together Skypark a couple weeks ago and that I didn’t recognize her today either . . . she had not recognized me when we introduced ourselves on the court before our game across the net from each other.

At 12:05 p.m., it was time to go and get ready for the big annual holiday gathering at my parents’ house. Unfortunately, my daughter Charlotte will not be there today since she is shadowing orthopedic surgeons up at UCSF for the rest of the week. She’s heading into her third year medical school and UCSF is great experience for her.

Overall

I didn’t feel that I was playing stellarly today, but I felt I was playing reasonably well and definitely not poorly.

While I have some execution errors today, there were also shot selection errors. Shots that you would get away with while playing weaker players, but not stronger players.

Number of days on a court: 682
Number of total hours: 2,879
Number of paid coaching hours: 49.5

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

Tuesday, July 2, 2024 (Court Day #681)

After driving from work, I parked at 6:45 p.m. It was sunny and hot in Scotts Valley.

Walking along the path to the courts from the remote parking lot, my right knee had mild pain with every step. Though once I was on the courts and playing, I didn’t even notice it, fortunately.

First Game

I immediately got into a game. Binh called me over before I even had time to hang up my backpack. They were two courts down and were missing a fourth. I don’t know exactly what happened but from what I understand fourth was a newbie and wasn’t comfortable taking on strong players.

Binh and John Funky are playing together in a tournament down in Newport this weekend, so it was Rachel and me. I got in about a dozen warmup shots, then we rolled right into the game. They scored a few points, we broke their serve, they broke ours, they added a few points . . . this repeated until Rachel and I were shut out 0-11. Ouch. It was miserable.

My next game was partnered with a middle aged man, about 5’11”, stocky but not fat, named Gabe. I had never seen him before. I played better in this game against Binh and John. We scored a few points, they broke our serve, we broke theirs, we added a few points . . . this repeated until Gabe and I won 11-1. Binh commented, “You feel better about this one, eh, Andrew?”
“Yeah!” Redemption!

After that game, while waiting, Binh told me that his fiancé Laurie enjoyed my pickleball class and even asked Binh to go to drill with her. Binh said that he was too tired after work to drill though. But that Laurie wants to drill is a fantastic thing to hear . . . especially given the fact that Binh had texted me before that class started, “Take you out to dinner if you can get her to like pickleball.” I think he may owe me dinner!

Tennis but no Tennis

While waiting for my third game, I noticed that both tennis courts had pickleball on them! There was a man and a woman hitting a pickleball over one tennis net plus there was a group of seven people who appeared to be family or friends on the other tennis court hitting pickleballs around. That was a first. I’ve seen folks use one court for knocking a pickleball around, but not both tennis courts!

I wrote my name up on the whiteboard and ended up in a game with Gabe again along with Mo and a tall woman named Christina. When we got to our court, Kristina asked who the best player was. Gage immediately pointed to me and unequivocally said, “him!” Christina said, “Okay, I’m not that good, I’ll play with you.” And I was perfectly happy with that. I think we lost that game 3–11. There’s only so much magic I can pull off!

The lights clicked off in the middle of a game at 8:30 p.m.

Mo and I had played a few games together and were walking off the courts after the lights have gone off. Marco convinced us to play a game with Ofer and him.

Marco and Ofer clobbered us in that first game.

Marco wanted to play one more. Of course, Mo and I said yes. Can you say, “Addiction”? It continued to get darker and darker. We came back and won that second game 11-9.

I played again with my Players Rogue 2 paddle tonight. As I drove home, my right elbow where the bones meet was stinging a little bit. I really didn’t like that, that’s worrisome.

I was not particularly happy with my play tonight.

Home

When I got home, I intended to ice my knee, which has started to bother me. But after a dinner, it wasn’t until I was snuggled in bed and my wife was asleep, that I remembered I was going to put the ice pack on my knee. Oh, well.

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Wednesday, July 3, 2024 (No Play)

Driving to work this morning, my right knee was aching a little bit. Par for the course.

Holiday tomorrow!

Number of days on a court: 681
Number of total hours: 2,876
Number of paid coaching hours: 49.5

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

Sunday, June 30, 2024 (Court Day #680)

At 8:40 a.m., I was on my way to Derby Park to open up the courts. My house, which is at a higher elevation, was sunny, however, as I drove down to Derby Park, I drove into a fog bank. But my car thermometer read 59°F. Generally, if it’s anything close to about 60°F, it ends up being a pretty warm day.

Erin, the daughter of some close friends, graduated from UCLA recently and her parents were throwing a party to celebrate today from noon until 4 p.m. With me teaching two classes in Scotts Valley this afternoon starting at 1:30 p.m., if I left Derby Park at noon there will be no way I can make an appearance at the party so I arranged for Rick Abend to take over as site coordinator mid-session to close up for me so I could leave early.

Games

There’s a young woman named Janaye, who is from Seattle but staying in Capitola the next two months, who was here playing. I teamed up with her against Allan Klass and another fellow who I don’t know. Janaye is very athletic and makes great contact with the ball. She obviously has a tennis background since she drives nearly every shot and stays back at the baseline unless the ball is short and forces her to come forward to get it. She’ll figure out pickleball with time.

The clouds burned off and the sun came up out sun came out midmorning, bringing the temperature up to 68°F. Pretty pleasant, really, for pickleball weather, although I prefer a little bit cooler . . . and with clouds, ideally.

Skill Creep

After about a 6-month absence, Adrian was there today and he pointed out the nearly everyone was signing up in red, the “advanced” level. I told Adrian and Barb G. that I was tempted to remove the red Advanced pen and just leave the black and green pens for 3.0 and lower. Red is supposed to be 3.5 rating or higher but almost all of the players signing up in red are 3.0 or lower.

There were no games in my two hours of play that had all four players of 3.5 or higher. And the thing about frequently playing with weaker players is you tend to get sloppy and lazy. I don’t mind now and then—it’s “paying it forward”—but doing it a lot makes you get comfortable with strategies which will not work against stronger players.

Party

I left just after 11 a.m. to head home, prepare for teaching, then drive out to the party in Aptos to the party. It turns out the husband Richard told people a 1 p.m. start and the wife Laurie was telling people a 12 p.m. start! At about 12:10 p.m., I was the first one there. I help set up and Richard barbequed a sausage for me. At 12:55 p.m., I launched into Highway 1 North traffic to get to Scotts Valley.

Teaching

Today was the last day of the 4-week classes. The first class (Beginners) was uneventful and the second was too . . . until about 20 minutes before the Advanced Beginner class was done, Katie unfortunately tweaked her right leg during an instructional game and was hobbling. She sat out the rest of the class, so I jumped in and played a few rallies with Lindsay against the two tall guys, Todd and Glenn. During one rally Glenn had a great lob to our baseline, I ran back and hit the ball back over the net. Once the rally was done, Lindsey complimented my speed. “You spend a lot of time just standing around coaching, but you can move!”

My Advanced Beginner class went until 4:37 p.m. . . . I let them run long to finish up games.

After that, I did a final class wrap-up said my goodbyes and I spoke individually to a couple of people who came up to me after. Lindsay, who is a PA for a living, said that she’d be happy to talk to my daughter Charlotte anytime, if it could help her with her medical school studies . . . but Lindsay figures that Charlotte is “already way past” her.

It’s always bittersweet when classes end. You get to know people and some you may rarely see or even never see again.

Bonus Games!

As I was packed up and getting ready to go, there are three young guys asking if I wanted to join their game. I texted to see if my wife was still at the party, which she was, though she was leaving soon. There was no point rushing out to Aptos to get to a party that’s breaking up. I agreed to play.

There is Jonathan—who plays now and then at Skypark on Tuesday and Thursday nights—and he had a couple of friends there, Cody and David. I put the three of them at about 30-years-old. Cody is tall, has brown hair and sports a matching full beard. David is a taller, slender African-American man. He can really rip his serves. Cody is quick, getting to a ball that’s hit very short even when he’s starting at the baseline.

One of my Advanced Beginner students, Glenn, was sitting on the bench nearby watching. You always want to do well when your student is watching! He chimed in before I started, “They are really good players.” He’d been watching them.

Cody and I teamed up against David and Jonathan and lost a very close game. I played well, but made a few mistakes . . . it was my first game, after all. After they hit a winner, I caught Glenn’s eye and said, “That was on me. That was a positioning error, I should have been half a step to the right to cover the middle.”

We played a rubber match and this time Cody and I blew them out 11-5. I made very, very few errors.

At 5:15 p.m., my water bottle was empty and it was in the 80s and very hot in the sun on a court surface. I was dripping sweat and I was feeling very warm. I decided it was time to go.

Those are a couple of good fun games. It’s a sign of respect when your opponents hit the ball more to your partner than you!

Added Lesson

I stopped Glenn in the parking lot and pointed out what my opponents could have done to get a better result. One of which was, power does no good if the ball ends up in the net! “Placement over power.” A saying that I share a lot on the courts.

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Monday, July 1, 2024 (No Play)

From Reddit … humbled by senior citizen … yeah …

So funny! These stories pop up not too infrequently!

Number of days on a court: 680
Number of total hours: 2,874
Number of paid coaching hours: 49.5

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