Sunday, January 19, 2025 (Court Day #762)
My wife is still on her girls’ weekend with her monthly book group friends in Palm Springs, along with our daughter Charlotte and her medical school compatriot… they came out from Tucson. That means I’m still on dog duty which also means I can’t more or less crawl out of bed and go play pickleball. Instead, I have to feed the dogs, then take them out on a leisurely walk. By the time that was done, it was about 10 a.m., and that is when I was on my way to Brommer Park under cloudy skies and surprisingly chilly 48°F.
Today is a teaching day for me, so I couldn’t stay much longer than noon. I like to be comfortably early to my classes—it’s bad if the instructor is late!
Brommer Park
When I arrived at Brommer, there was plenty of parking and not all the courts were in use at about 10:15 a.m.
I was alone waiting on the wall with no one to drill or warm up with. It took me about 10 minutes to get into my first game.
Games
I played a game with Kim against a guy name Haung and little Linda S. Before the game, Gary told me to watch out for Haung since he hits really good shots. And watching him in the game before, I’d agree that he looked really good. And I would say that he played like a solid 3.5 player—yeah, power and angles, but even with me going out of my way to hit more shots to him, Kim and I won 11-1. Maybe it was an off game for him, I don’t have enough data points to judge.
Manda and I played against Kirk and Gary and I was completely not paying attention during that game. They had to constantly remind me that I was serving and what the score was… it was the most unfocused that I’ve ever been in a game. I was just not into it. And, no, I don’t remember the final score.
Linda and I played against Marco and Kim and we won the game. I wasn’t perfect, but I was playing pretty sharp.
The last game was Gary and myself against Manda and Linda. We lost 8–11. Even with less than two hours of play, I was tired. I was a little more focused, but still not really into it.
And Out…
I checked the time, 11:58 a.m. It was time for me to go home and get ready to teach. I was thinking, “Hopefully, I can pay a little bit more attention when I’m instructing!” (Instructing did go great later, by the way!)
Today was a bit of a disappointment with regard to the strength of the games. Don’t get me wrong, all the people were enjoyable and fun, but there was no game with all strong 4.0+ players. It’s harder for me to be focused in those kinds of games.
In the afternoon, students were late in my Beginners class, so I had to fill in for warm-ups and, later, I played against two women by myself. I played lefty and tried to hit everything backhanded… maybe I should have let them score a point…!
Number of days on a court: 762
Number of total hours: 3,069.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 108.5
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