Sunday, August 18, 2024 (Court Day #703)

By 8:45 a.m., I was in my car and on my way to Brommer Park. It was sunny and already warm. At least, warm for a warning in Santa Cruz, that is, in the high 60s.

I had to be a little more careful about how long I stayed since I had the first day of my new classes at Skypark. I have an Intermediate class starting at 1:30 p.m., which is a class that I have not previously taught. (I also have an Advanced Beginner class starting at 3 p.m.) There is no curriculum provided by Rec.us—which is contracted with the City of Scotts Valley—it’s entirely up to the instructors to come up with material to teach. I’m kind of surprised that my Intermediate class didn’t sell out. There are so many local players who would benefit from the instruction. Oh, well. Not everyone is serious about getting better.

This week, on Tuesday and Thursday nights at Skypark, I felt that I was playing subpar. It was a little depressing. As I drove to Brommer Park, I was hoping that my play would return to more of a common level for me.

Games

Aside for one or two games today, all the games were pretty decent—though mostly games with 3.5 players.

I got the games with Ying, Pauly, Trevor Fish, one game with Art. There were players that I wish I had gotten been able to get into games with such as Oscar, Binh, Conner, and some others.

I left the courts feeling that I played ok. Not horrible. Not great. But ok. Satisfactory, leaning towards ‘blah.’

I played a few games with Hugh, those are fun. He was a mix of great angle shots for winners combined with inexplicable shots into the net. He was just really inconsistent, though his play got better over the course of the morning.

Aaron

Aaron Hicks came today. I’d never seen Aaron at Brommer and very rarely ever see him outside of Skypark. He played pretty well today . He’s come a long way since he started.

Mistakes

My mistakes today included driving short shots into the net. Serving returns too long. Not staying focused and thinking about other things in the middle of the game and thus adversely affecting performance. I generally did a pretty good job of handling speedups at me while at the net, but there were a couple—maybe three—that either I couldn’t handle well or didn’t handle at all. There is a speed up from Hugh across from me while I was on my left, and I did hit the ball back down, but it landed about 3 inches outside the sideline, so my partner and I lost the rally.

I mentioned it before, but I really need to get out and drill. Playing only gets you so far when it comes to improvement. The problem is chunks of time. A 6-day workweek doesn’t leave a lot of free hours.

I will share a simple thing that brought me some satisfaction. In one of the games, we were in a dink battle with me on the right. And I dinked crosscourt and my opponent had to adjust and take the ball near the back of his right foot. Satisfaction was knowing that his return shot had to be entirely defensive and there is no way he could attack that ball. I was thinking, “That was a extremely effective dink.”

Sean Promotion

On the Nextdoor app, I got a notice that popped up about pickleball. It was Sean Lynch sharing a photo of himself in advertising pickleball lessons. Good for him. I know he’s been trying hard to get additional private students. I’m too busy running a company to have the free time to do that. One day per week teaching is plenty for me.

Monday, August 19, 2024 (No Play)

Here’s humorous reel about how to become a pro pickleball player:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C9x4ooaPohA
“Genetics, height, D1 tennis background, no job, private court, drilling partner with no job…”

Number of days on a court: 703
Number of total hours: 2,928.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 66.5

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