Sunday, April 13, 2025 (Court Day #789)
A bit of a surprise, my wife Kristen mentioned that a friend of hers invited her to play pickleball at La Madrona Athletic Club. Kristen has been swimming regularly up there since she joined about a month ago. Now, the surprise isn’t that she got invited to play yesterday afternoon, it was that this morning she suggested that I would need to get her back up to speed on how to play. So, there she is, after nearly a decade of me suggesting that she play, she seems open to the idea and even suggested I show her how again. Now, we’ll have to see if it really happens!
Clouds
Well, it was sunny on the westside of Santa Cruz, but on my way to Brommer Park I drove into a massive cloud bank cloud bank starting in downtown Santa Cruz. And with the temperature reading 48°F in my car, I was suddenly regretting not bringing a sweatshirt! But I was holding out hope the cloud cover would burn off before too long.
Brommer
My new series of classes was starting early this afternoon, which meant that I couldn’t stay as long as I prefer at Brommer Park.
I pulled in at 8:43 a.m. and it wasn’t long at all before I was in a game.
Kyle called me over and I played with him against Fernando and Stuart. (This is a new Stuart, not the “OG” Stuart who lives out of state these days.) It was a very close game. If I recall correctly, we won.
Tall young Dave and I played against Stuart and Kyle. We lost 10-12. Dave got hit in the eye by a ball that flew off the edge of his paddle. “It feels like a brick in my eye!” And that, my friends, is why I always wear eye protection! Fortunately, Dave seemed ok. Maybe a minor eye scratch.
I played with Kyle against Kelly and another Kyle. We split the games.
OG Game
Kent and I played against Leslie and Dan Bliss. This was a game of “OG” players. I’ve been playing for over 8 years and they were all playing before I started! Kent and I lost 7-11. I played pretty well in that game, but it wasn’t enough.
Leslie and I played against Mike Sullivan and little Linda. We won 11-8.
Chayton
Chayton and I played against Nick and Antonio. We won 11-1.
Chayton and I then played against Evan and Mike Sullivan. Surprisingly, we lost the first game 4-11. (In that first game, I was making a bunch of errors.) But in the second game, Chayton and I took a big lead and ended up winning 11–5.
I checked the time, it was 12:04 p.m. Time for me to go home and have lunch and get ready to teach.
Surprising for Brommer, the games were not that great. The last two games are really good. I have to say, Mike Sullivan has improved a great deal since he retired four or five months ago.
When I left, it was 63°F and sunny. I was sweating quite a bit. So much for that big cloud bank!
New Nets at Willowbrook
Yesterday afternoon, after some organizing by Mike sullivan, four brand new heavy-duty rolling Dominator nets were installed at Willowbrook Park in Aptos. It’s a far cry from the two dilapidated cheap nets that were provided by Rec.us a couple of years ago. The county of Santa Cruz paid a good portion as did an anonymous donor. A smaller remainder was paid for by the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club.
Monday, April 14, 2025 (No Play)
UTR Sports, which operates the UTR-P pickleball rating system for USA Pickleball, announced a change today.
There has been confusion ever since this new UTP-R system was rolled out a year ago. The UTR-P goes to 10—I can’t help but hear line line in my head from the movie This is Spinal Tap, “These go to eleven”—but DUPR and the old USAP system (UTPR) both maxed out at 7. (The original USAPA system went to just 5.0 but as the game exploded, that became too cramped of a ceiling.) A standard 4.0 DUPR player would typically go and play in a USA Pickleball tournament as a 5.0 under the UTP-R system.
Well, today, UTR shared that they are knocking all their current ratings down by 0.5. If you were a 4.7, you are now a 4.2, which is closer to what your DUPR rating would be. I still don’t know if it’s a good solution, but time will tell.
Here’s the announcement:
https://support.universaltennis.com/en/support/solutions/articles/9000267476-utr-p-ratings-update-april-2025
Number of days on a court: 789
Number of total hours: 3,121.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 129.5
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