Thursday, September 5, 2024 (Court Day #712)

My car dashboard read a toasty 82°F as I drove through Scotts Valley on my way to the courts. It was a warm day, however I spent all of it inside working, like normal.

Game #1

I got into a game with Conner against Sean and his brother Danny. That was great. However, I wasn’t playing super sharp plus Sean and Danny are better than all of the players that I play with on a regular basis. Conner and I lost that first game, something like 11–6.

Game #2

Connor and I were the best of the available players so Danny and Sean played against us again. This time it was a slaughter. Conner and I lost 11–1. Sean was hitting drop shots to my feet and I was popping up the ball then Danny was crashing the net and slamming the ball for a winner. This happened five or six times. Conner couldn’t’ have been super happy with my play—I know I wasn’t.

Advice

Sean asked if I wanted a piece of advice. Being that evaluating your own play on the fly is one of the most difficult things to do, I told him that I would be happy for any tips. He told me that there are shots that I’m taking from near my feet but I would probably have better luck stepping back with one foot and taking the ball higher off the bounce. Of course, duh. I’ll have to work that into my game.

Game #3

After we finished our game, with the mix players, Sean and Danny decided to go with us again, however this time Sean said he would play with me. (This would help balance the teams.) This time was much closer. Sean and I did lose 11–8 and it was not Sean‘s fault. Sure, he made some errors, but I made two—or even three—for every one that he made.

In the game with Sean as my partner, I was speeding up shots that would either work against more intermediate level players or at least cause no damage… but my speedups were not working against our opponents and, instead, often gave them a winner. As I told Sean, “I’m so used to playing with weaker level players. It’s taking me some adjustment.”

Danny got at least a couple of ernes on me in those games. He’s a lefty which means he can pull them off while I am on the left side which I’m not used to at all. I think he’s the first lefty to ever pull off an erne on me or even try an erne on me for that matter.

Moving On

I got into a game with Kenny against Paul and Brandon. Kenny is a 3.0 level player. We lost 11–5 or 11–6 and I was surprised we even scored that many points. After the game, Kenny said, “It takes me a while to get used to that caliber player.” Having just lived through that in an earlier game, I told him, “Oh, I completely understand, believe me!”

Matt, Paul, Tim

I had two games with Paul Winn against Matt Babb and Tim Feickert. Those are back-and-forth fun games. We won both. I was playing reasonably well in those, though I missed some under the lights and some more simply due to being tired.

Our second game finished up at 8:26 p.m., four minutes before the lights are scheduled to go off and that was not enough time to start a new game. We started breaking down some empty temporary nets.

Number of days on a court: 712
Number of total hours: 2,949.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 69.5

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