Month: January 2025 (Page 2 of 5)

Monday, January 20, 2025 (Court Day #763)

I arrived at Brommer Park at 10:21 a.m. Today was to be our Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board meeting. I had to do some prep for it this morning and that kept me from playing earlier—well, that and just being tired!

Games

When I got to Brommer, harder games (blue, 4.0+) appeared to be difficult to find, so I signed up in just red (Advanced) instead. Tom Sherwood and I played against short Chris and another guy I don’t know. Tom and I won pretty easily. It was a lazy warm up game.

Tony Sloss and I won 11-4 against friends named Adam and Chris.

In a game against Josh, there was one shot from the kitchen where he slammed it near my right hip, and I whipped my paddle to my right and returned the ball. Afterward the rally ended, he exclaimed, “Wow! Where did those hands come from?”

While playing in a game with Tony, I said, “I got it!” but then I hit the ball off the edge of my paddle and it flew up and nearly hit the fence behind our opponents. Oops!

Tony, Ying, Mo

My last game was with Mo against Tony Sloss and Ying—mixed doubles. We lost 11–7. We were down quite quite a bit but then we worked our way back and we were getting closer but ran out of time. Mo and I were not playing our best.

Tony was back at the baseline and I hit a very short shot, but Tony managed to sprint up to the ball and drop it over the center of the net. Nice get and nice hit, Tony!

Meeting Time

It was 11:54 a.m. when I got back out to the club’s court scheduling board and, by appearances, there is no way I would get an additional game in before our board meeting starting started at 12:15 p.m.

It turned out that there was some confusion amongst the board regarding the date plus president Mark Dettle was at the ER with his elderly mother, so after about 20 minutes of club business discussion, we decided to postpone the meeting.

Pro Paddle Sponsorship Fiasco

Recently, Selkirk told their sponsored pro players that they were only allowed to play with the 008 paddle in competition. Apparently, this was with short notice, and this particular paddle behaves differently than the selection of paddles the players were allowed to choose from before the mandate. One pro player, Quang Doung, was traveling in a different country and playing in a tournament. Midway through, he had enough of trying to adapt on the fly to this new mandated Selkirk paddle and switched to a Proton brand paddle.

Understandably, Selkirk was very unhappy about this and sent him a letter not to do it again. Selkirk pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to sponsor athletes. If an athlete doesn’t use their paddle then that is a breach of contract and Selkirk is not getting their money’s worth. This was especially damaging to Selkirk and was unexpected positive publicity for Proton. Selkirk may need to tighten up their contracts but also consider making sure they give enough notice to their sponsored players regarding having to switch paddles.

Volleyer’s Eye

Something interesting that Colin John’s mentioned on a podcast is something he referred to as “the volleyer’s eye”. He compared this to the batter’s eye, which refers to the color of the background that the batter sees past the pitcher on the mound. For instance, you wouldn’t want to have a white background because it obscures the baseball being thrown by the pitcher. In a similar way, you wouldn’t want to have a light colored wall or a window without opaque blinds beyond a baseline of a pickleball court.

Number of days on a court: 763
Number of total hours: 3,071
Number of paid coaching hours: 108.5

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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

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

Friday, January 17, 2025 (Court Day #761)

My wife flew out for her “girls’ weekend” in Palm Springs this morning, which means that I am on dog duty for the next few days. My brother John texted me this afternoon asking if anyone was playing tonight. I told him that it would have to be 7:30 p.m. for me and he said that would work for him. Fortunately, the Skypark lights stay on until 9:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.

When I got home after work shortly after 6:30 p.m., our younger dog Pepper was slightly freaked out and shaking. (They are demolishing a house three doors down that was destroyed in a fire a little over a year ago.) She also wouldn’t eat her dinner. So I took her for a walk. Pepper was on a mission, walking the fastest that I’ve ever seen her. I was feeling the burn in my calves as I tried to keep up! She was on a tear for about 20 minutes. When she led us back to our driveway, she circled for a minute and then apparently decided that she wanted to do the same walk again! I let her go halfway down the block but then I stopped her and carried her back home. She was no longer shaking and ate her dinner. Finally, I could get to pickleball!

Skypark

I pulled into the Skypark lot at 7:47 p.m., there were a few empty spots.

When I walked in, there was a game going on between Jax and Sam against Diego and Spencer. Those were the only familiar faces. There was also a group of 20-year-olds on one court and three people on another court. When John arrived about five minutes later, it didn’t make much sense for John and myself to go ask a group of three if they’d like to play, so we opted to drill.

We started with straight-head dinking and then crosscourt backhand dinking. I was coaching him through the process.

Spencer’s group wrapped up their game and headed out.

Serve Drilling

I then had John work on serving and I took the opportunity for myself to try out a drop serve with an intense slice. I have to admit, if I’m going to do a slice like that, it’s going to take a whole lot more practice! Most of my chop serves ended up in the net!

Drive Drilling

At this point, I gave John my protective glasses and I had him stay at the kitchen and I was hitting forehands and backhand drives at him as hard as I could. He did a pretty good job making contact with the balls. He got most of them back over the net and into the court, but some landed in his side of the net or flew out. Most were not in great control… yet!

Skinny Singles

Next, I had us play a game of skinny singles where for even scores we played diagonally and if one of us was serving with an odd score we shifted over after serving and just played straight across from each other.

I did win 11–0, but there were three or four sideouts. Mid-game, John had shared, “Even though I’m losing, I’m having fun!” That’s what we want!

After the skinny singles game, John said he was burnt out, so he called it a night. (John is an early riser.) I checked the time and it was 9:15 p.m. We’d been there for an hour and a half.

It was an enjoyable and productive outing.

Once we were in the parking lot, we stopped and chatted for 15 minutes or so, then we went our separate ways, never to see each other again. Dun, dun, dun! Kidding. I see John all the time! Ha ha!

Number of days on a court: 761
Number of total hours: 3,067.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 105.5

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