Sunday, May 4, 2025 (Court Day #798)

I set my alarm for 7:45 a.m. with the original plan of getting to Brommer Park by 8:30. But between talking with my wife, checking email, tweaking my lesson plans for this afternoon and printing those out, I didn’t leave my house for a while.

It was sunny with some small clouds here and there. My wife Kristen—my resident weather reporter—said it would likely be hot in Scotts Valley when I’d be teaching this afternoon.

One thing I haven’t mentioned, my right knee is been periodically bothering me a little bit over the past month. Nothing too serious. Nothing requiring a brace. I don’t even think I broke out my ice pack for it. A scale of 1 to 10, it’ll put it as a 1 or 2 or sometimes a 3, but it doesn’t last and once playing, I don’t notice it.

Brommer

I pulled in at Brommer Park at 9:04 a.m. The parking lot seemed unusually light—maybe there was a tournament going on.

Games

I was stuck with no one to warm up with.  I ended up in a game with lefty Aaron B. against Kim and Sunday morning regular 3.0 John. Aaron and I started a little slow but then took control of the game and won by a solid margin.

Kim was playing pretty well today. There was a shot that I expected her not to get back over but she did.

I played three games with Kim against Oscar and Diana. We split the first two games and I can’t remember the result of the rubber match, other than it was fun and close.

UCSC Students

Brandon and I played a game against the UCSC computer engineering student named Ben—who was at Derby last week—and his friend Owen, who is a UCSC chemical engineering student. Owen is obviously pretty new. I will put Ben as a low 3.5. If he could reduce his errors from trying/hitting too hard, he could become a 4.0 without too much effort. As it was, Brandon and I won by wide margin. Brandon is still doing post-doctorate research in biology at UC Berkeley. I will say, Brandon is growing his hair out and has an amazing Afro going.

Last Game

I checked the time, 11:45 p.m. I figured I could squeeze in one more game if I wasn’t picky. I randomly threw my paddle into the rack with a group that needed one more player. I ended up playing with Cary against Kirk and tall, bald Andy. They went ahead by quite a bit, but then Cary and I went on a run and won the game 11–9. Cary was the weakest players so I had a lot of ground to make up in that game.

I finished up my last game a few minutes after noon. They were definitely some people with money parked in the lot. There are five Teslas, an Audi, and a couple of BMWs!

Today I felt like I didn’t have a lot of energy. I never got into a game with all 4.0 level players unfortunately.

Hopefully, I can get some better games on my next visit.

I left to go get ready for my three hours of teaching. After some back-and-forth, my wife decided that she would fill-in it might be beginner class to knock off some of the rust. 

More on ALW Outburst

Here’s more discussion about the recent verbal altercation between Anna Leigh Waters and Hayden Patriquin.

Monday, May 5, 2025. (No Play)

Franklin got back to me with the new USAP Ambassador discount code and so I went ahead and ordered 100 yellow Franklin X balls today. Now I have a quiet paddle, plus 100 balls coming in a few days… I should be ready for the ball machine to arrive. I still need to come up with a ball pickup system so I don’t have to lean over to pick them all up. (Though maybe that’s a good exercise too!) 

Pro Pickleball Pullout

On Friday last week, Ben Johns and his brother Collin pulled out of the MLP event in Columbus—mid-event!—citing bad lighting inside the building. This is a very unusual occurrence.

Pro Sports and Pickleball

Pickleball is getting more and more popular and is making appearances in professional baseball, Formula 1, and elsewhere:
https://www.miamiherald.com/sports/article305718491.html

Number of days on a court: 798
Number of total hours: 3,141
Number of paid coaching hours: 135.5

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