Skypark Puddles, Pirated Skill Chart?

Thursday, March 27, 2025 (Court Day #785)

A message sent to the board of the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club shared that Val Rathbone and her husband Stan replaced the fabric mesh of the nets that need it at Derby Park. Great. Upgrades are good even if I only rarely play at Derby these days. Also, Stan and a man named Larry installed a desperately-needed new cable along the fence for the players to hang up their backpacks. The old cable had been removed by the City of Santa Cruz when they replaced the windbreak fabric along the fence there.

Rain

Rain was predicted, but I was hoping against hope that I might be able to play tonight so I hedged my bets and loaded my pickleball gear into my car at lunchtime. It was looking pretty decent until 4 o’clock rolled around and it started absolutely pouring rain. Fortunately, I didn’t last long and the clouds broke up and there was even a little bit of sun for a brief moment. I figured the odds were decent that the Skypark courts could be dry enough to play on.

Shoes

This morning I was taking a good look at the bottom of the shoes I typically wear for pickleball. They’re getting very sad and there is one spot where I felt I could probably even push through the sole with my finger, but I didn’t want to break out a new pair of shoes right then. I like to wear new shoes around for just short stretches over a week to start breaking them in versus running out and playing in them for a full session. That’s asking for blisters!

Trip

One week from today, I’ll be in Seattle for a tradeshow. My plan is to fly in one day early so I can spend part of a day on Bainbridge Island, the birthplace of pickleball. There are some courts on the north side of the island called Founders Courts. I’m hoping to play there. More south, the very first pickleball court is secluded on private property that includes the home belonging to an elderly couple. Understandably, they don’t advertise the location or promote public tours in their private and somewhat rural neighborhood.

Scotts Valley

I arrived at Skypark at about 6:50 p.m. It was pretty easy parking in the lot which meant there were not going to be as many players there.

And no kidding. I walked in, and there were no portable nets set up. Games were going on three of the courts, and David L. and Mo’s husband Frank were hanging out waiting. I asked David and Frank if they wanted to warm up and while David agreed, Frank said he was going to wait for Mo. We moved over to the open permanent court and warmed up until we could get into a game. I was teamed up with a woman named Megan—whom I’ve seen before on rare occasions—against David and a shorter lefty named Eric whom I’d had never seen before. It was a close game and, honestly, I can’t remember who won.

I was told that before I got there one of the players had slipped in a wet spot on the court and fell. I was playing a game with the new guy Eric—maybe a 3.5—against Josh and David. We were losing that game by a wide margin and, unfortunately, while going for an ATP, my partner pulled his calf muscle and had to discontinue the game. But that had nothing to do with any problem with the court surface.

I ended up playing three games with tall tennis Josh as my partner against lefty Aaron B. and David. We played four games.

Josh and I won the first game then we switched sides and David and Aaron completely cleaned our clocks. We lost 0-11. It was crazy. Josh and I were both making far too many errors.

Then we switched sides and Josh and I were ahead 8-2 but then Aaron and David made a run and tied up 8-8. Shortly thereafter, Josh and I closed out the game and won.

We switched sides and played one more game. This time Josh and I made a better showing, winning 11–5. We wrapped up that last game a few minutes before the lights went out.

And?

I felt my play was on again and off again. Over the course of the evening, I hit at least half a dozen returns too deep, giving my opponents a point. They were also a few drop shots that were far too short. Granted, they were volley drop shots which are more difficult, but still, those are frustrating. In the end, as I drove home, I was satisfied with my play. I definitely played better in that last game.

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Saturday, March 29, 2025 (No Play)

The Kitchen Pickleball, which has a newsletter, posted to their social media the following diagram:

To some, the chart looked familiar, including to the author of the original version of this chart, Ann Mayer!

Does this look similar?

As you can see, The Kitchen simply copied Ann’s work—ignoring the copyright right on it—and shared it as their own creation. Not cool.

Now, I’m a total data nerd and was wondering about how Ann got these percentages. I reached out to her and had a conversation, which included her explanation:

“I took the majority of the info from the USAPA & UTRP Rating Systems. The percentages came from a discussion with a pro and are a general guideline. The purpose of the diagram was to give players a realistic visual to gauge their progress. Many players think they are much more advanced then they actually are. And depending on your preferred style of play, you could be at two different levels. For ex: you might be a 4.0 Classic player, but a 3.5 Modern Competitive.”

Of course, it begs the question. Most players are playing just rec play. They don’t really care about ratings and don’t plan to do tournaments. Most of these players are 2.5, 3.0, and some 3.5 players. The higher the rating, the more likely a player is going to be doing tournaments of some form. The vast majority of people belonging to USA Pickleball are tournament players. That means that the membership of USAP will be skewed to higher rated players and is not representative of the entirety of players. So USAP/UTRP/UTR-P will give you pretty accurate percentages at the top but become less and less accurate the lower the ratings. In other words, I’d believe that 3.76 and above is fairly solid in terms of the ratios of the percentages, but the actual percentages might be suspect. In my experience, 4.0 and above is top 10%, not top 15% (10%+4%+1%).

Anyway, something to “nerd out” speculating about.

Number of days on a court: 785
Number of total hours: 3,113
Number of paid coaching hours: 126.5

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