Sunday, February 23, 2025 (Court Day #773)

Today was the first day of my two new sets of 4-week classes. For my Advanced Beginner class, five of the eight students are people who have taken my classes before. That’s fun.

As a matter of course, I pulled out my phone fairly frequently during class to check the time. Aside from knowing how many minutes we have left to cover my material in the class, I check my phone—especially during the first class—to make sure that there’s no one canceling out of the second class. If they cancel out, I need to scramble to line up in a replacement to keep balanced pairs. While checking the time, I noticed that Conner McNicholas was asking if I could join him at Derby Park to drill. I told him that I was teaching, but I could join him around 5 p.m. He said that would be fine. I also explained that my doctor told me not to play until I have no pain. (My left hip is still sore after straining it last weekend moving a very heavy dumpster in the mud!) He shared that his foot was bothering him. That will make us a good pair!

I was demonstrating a technique to one of my students and whatever that motion was, it was pretty painful in my hip. I have to take it pretty easy. At least the pain was mostly there and gone.

When I left Skypark after classes were done, there were six courts in use. Busy for Sunday afternoon, especially when only four courts are permanent and groups had to bring their own nets for the other four!

Drilling

When I walked up to the courts at Derby Park, I was a bit concerned that Conner and I would be able to get a court to drill. It was 5:05 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, nearing sunset, and yet all the courts had people on them. Fortunately, one of those people on the court by themselves was Conner!

Conner and I started with some straight ahead dinking, periodically interrupted with speedups. We moved on to crosscourt dinking. Conner backed up to work on his transition shots. Then I moved back and he came up for me to work on my transition shots too. We spent about 10 minutes doing hard drives from the baseline. Conner did a few serves to me which led to some baseline rallies. I did a few serves to him as well. For the last five minutes, Conner wanted to work on his backhand flick.

Then a few minutes after 6 p.m., it was time for me to head home… I’d promised my wife that I’d be home for dinner! Plus it was getting dark anyway.

It was a really good drilling session. Conner and I are very similar skill levels.

Wednesday, February 26, 2025 (No Play)

Today, I pulled up my left leg to punch down on the parking brake and… that did not feel good. It has been eleven days since I heard that pop in my left hip moving a very heavy object. It’s continuing to improve, but I have more time to go for a recovery.

Andre Agassi

This popped up on YouTube. It looked fun, but I haven’t had time to watch more than a minute of it… later!

Number of days on a court: 773
Number of total hours: 3,091
Number of paid coaching hours: 114.5

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