Thursday, January 9, 2025 (Court Day #757)
I left work early to copy a special key before the locksmith shop in Scotts Valley closed, then I popped right over to Skypark around 5:30 p.m.
There was a crowd there tonight, but the times waiting for games weren’t too bad.
My first game was with Jax against Sam and Spencer. I lost with Jax, but it was close.
We mixed things up and I played with Spencer and we won.
Next, I played with Sam against Spencer and Jax. Sam and I won 11-0. (They had an off game!)
There were a couple of highlight-worthy rallies in two different games with Spencer, Jax, and Sam that I really wish were recorded. They were kind of amazing. After one, Spencer told me I had really good hands.
Natural Debris
There were a bunch of leaves on the courts. In one game on the night, my right foot slipped out from under me. I didn’t fall, but it caused short term discomfort in my back.
And you can see the junk on the courts.
Youngsters
I signed up with Alex and a name I couldn’t read. Alex is a good player—yeah, except this was a different Alex! I played with Daniel Borlean against two 8th graders from Scotts Valley Middle School! I didn’t know that they were 8th graders until we got onto the court and saw how young our opponents were. One was Aydan and his friend was Alex. They wanted to play together. Daniel and I beat them 11-0. I will admit that they did have a handful of shots that were far better than I was expecting. I could see them becoming very good with time and practice. Afterward, Aydan muttered to Alex, “We were outclassed.” Yeah. Just a bit. For now. Watch out in a couple of years!
Yeah… no.
Daniel and I played against a man named Sonny who lives at the summit (Santa Cruz Mountains), but he said that he often plays at Mitchell Park in Palo Alto.
Sonny and David played against Daniel and myself and the first game was very close, though we lost.
And… Down.
It felt really good about my play tonight and until the last two games.
Daniel and I played again and this time was a little bit more lopsided in favor of Sonny and David.
We mixed it up and I played with Sonny against Daniel and David. This was a disaster. We got clobbered. The final score was something like 11–5 and that was closer than the game actually felt. David was on fire.
Somewhere in all of that, David hit a drive that hit a knuckle on my paddle hand. Ouch. It bruised some and was sore on my way home.
We finished that last game at 8: 24 p.m. I didn’t hang around long, just said my goodbyes, and headed home.
Friday, January 10, 2025 (No Play)
Pickleball has made it to all seven continents. Well, kind of. There was no net or court, but a pickleball was knocked around in Antartica for the first time ever. Pilot Lt. Col. Jared Wood of the U.S. Air Force Reserves was down there in October last year and posted a video about it at the time, but the news is only now making the rounds. Wood lives in Seattle, so he’s used to cold nasty winter weather!
The video:
The later resulting article:
https://www.dupr.com/post/pickleball-in-antarctica-how-the-sport-is-taking-flight-with-lt-colonel-jared-wood
And here’s a brief part of an interview with Col. Wood:
https://www.instagram.com/duprpb/reel/DExSZ86tTYj
Tennis Pro Bummer
In this article from late December, “bad boy” of pro tennis, Nick Kyrgios said he’d be partnering for pickleball with Jack Sock at the PPA Australia Open this month:
https://www.tennis.com/baseline/articles/nick-kyrgios-make-pro-pickleball-debut-2025-jack-sock-australian-open-nothing-major
But that won’t happen after all. Kyrgios was picked to play for Australia in the Davis Cup which is happening the same weekend as the PPA event. Alas.
Pickleball Female Pro Pay
A few weeks ago the PPA/MLP people issued a press release about how the top 60 female pro pickleball players are making more on average than female pro basketball or female pro soccer players.
Here’s an article I found about it:
https://nypost.com/2024/12/20/business/professional-female-pickleball-stars-earn-more-than-wnba-nwsl-athletes
Of course, this is “average” salary, not minimum or median value.
Hypothetically, let’s say the top female player is making a $2,000,000 salary—Anna Leigh Waters doesn’t make that in salary, maybe with endorsements, but not salary—and a #2 player is making $100K/year, then the remaining top 10 make $50K/year. Take a look at this chart I threw together in Excel:
As you can see, this averages out at $250,000 salary for the top 10 players, but the vast majority are making only $50,000/year. We just want to be careful what we take away from press releases. It’s probably not as bad as my hypothetical chart, but it may not be too far off. We don’t know. They didn’t give us a median and we do know there is disparity in performance and pay of the players.
Then the other question is, is this sustainable? The WNBA pays their players not a lot. Caitlin Clark, the rookie phenom—off her record-setting college career—makes about $70,000 as a pro basketball player. The highest paid WNBA player makes about $250,000/year. The WNBA can pay as much as that because it is subsidized by the NBA to the tune of $15,000,000 per year. According to this article, the WNBA has lost money every year since its first season in 1997:
https://www.sportspro.com/news/wnba-losses-2024-media-rights-deal-cathy-engelbert-adam-silver-caitlin-clark-nba/
The PPA and MLP paying their pro players $30,000,000 annually. Being that the UPA (PPA and MLP parent) is borrowing $10,000,000 this first quarter of 2025 (“bridge loan”), it does make one pause and wonder. Will it succeed? The APP is quietly being successful, so you’d think that the UPA should be able to pull it off, but the numbers in and number out have to be in balance.
Number of days on a court: 757
Number of total hours: 3,059.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 102.5
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