Month: June 2025 (Page 1 of 5)

Sunday, June 29, 2025 (Court Day #822)

My wife is out of town helping pack up my daughter’s belongings in Tucson and getting ready to move her home for the summer before she starts her fourth year of medical school. I have been responsible to keep the dogs alive and that included making sure they got fed and taken care of this morning.

It was 63° and sunny when I arrived at Brommer Park just before 10 a.m. I was ready to try to work past that one horrible game yesterday at the mini tournament.

There were four games going on and OG Leslie McGarvey was leaving just as I arrived. I was the odd man out with no one to warm up with, so I sat on the wall waiting.

After a few minutes, lefty Dave Van Ness showed up and I asked him if he wanted to warm up. It wasn’t before too long before two people asked to join us and we were into a game. Dave has excellent fast serves and is really good at driving and speed ups. He’s a better player than I am. Christine said that he’s been the tennis instructor at Cabrillo College for 20 years. Racquet court experience definitely helps the learning curve when coming to pickleball.

It was a light crowd. Christine said that a number of players went down to the new courts that opened up in Watsonville. She said that they are really nice. I’ll have to get down there at some point, but I don’t think I want to spend an extra half hour of my day on the road on a regular basis, getting down there and back.

The last three games of the day were Evan and myself against Conner McNicholas and his dad Jim. The first game was close, with Evan coming off of the wall cold and needing to get warmed back up again. Our margin of victory was larger in the second and third games.

In the last game, Conner made a leaping poach and slammed the ball in my right leg leaving a red mark. Nice shot, Connor!

I left at 1:08 pm.

Invitation

Just before 3 p.m., young Ben David texted me asking if I’d like to be a fourth for a group playing at Skypark at 5 p.m. With my wife out of town, and no teaching this weekend, I figured why not? Well, they’re probably a number of reasons why not, such as I was icing my knee when he texted! Plus I had already played for three hours this morning!

I stayed up late watching a movie—The Boys in the Boat—and got less than my full allotment of sleep last night. I had the luxury of taking an extremely rare nap for 30 minutes this afternoon to recharge. (I found out later that Ben and Frabrizio had both napped too!) Between the cat nap, icing my knee, some water, some Advil, and a few hours of downtime, I felt I was ready for more pickleball.

Skypark

Few minutes before 5 p.m., while I was on the road, I texted Ben to let him know that I would be about 10 minutes late. Ben, Scott Anderson, tall Mike were all warming up when I arrived. I hit a few shots and we got into our first game.

Games

Ben and I took on Mike and Scott. It wasn’t before long that we found ourselves down 0–6. It became very apparent that they were targeting Ben. We did come back, but it wasn’t enough it we ended up losing 9–11.

We had a rematch and this time, Ben and I won 11-9.

We rotated partners, so I played the next game with Scott. This was not Scott’s best game and for whatever reason, he kind of imploded. I could tell that he felt bad about it. It happens to the best of us. (Including me yesterday in a game at Frabrizio‘s event at Derby!) Scott and I lost this one 3–11.

We had a rematch and this time the outcome was similar with Scott and myself losing 4–11. There are two shots that I would want to have back and those were the two short lobs against Ben that he was able to slam.

We rotated partners again in this time we had the two strongest players together, Mike and me.

Mike and I won 11-0 on a quick game. 

Mike and I played together again but this time the game was closer, at least at the end. Mike and I won 11-7.  We had them down 9-2 but then they went on a run. Scott had two great higher-risk crosscourt sharp-angle winners. 

Frabrizio

Frabrizio arrived and Scott opted to sit. Scott did end up getting invited into a game across the divider with a group of lesser-skilled players. He spent the rest of our time there playing with that group.

Mike and I teamed up against Fabrizio and Ben. It was a fairly balanced game that Mike and I won 11–7.

We change sides and play it again but this time the outcome was pretty lopsided with Mike and a winning 11–1.

Frabrizio and I partnered together and we lost 7-11 versus Mike and Ben. 

Where a rematch in this time, it was a disaster with Frabrizio and I losing 0–11.

We changed the partners with Ben and me teaming up. We lost 7-11 and also lost the rematch 3-11.

There was an offer to mix up the partners, but I was happy playing against the strongest possible opponent combination, so Ben and I stuck together for one more game.

Ben and I were in the process of redeeming ourselves with the score of the game tied 8–8. Unfortunately for us, Frabrizio and Mike went on a run of the next three points and finish out the game so we lost 8–11.

By this time, it was 8:15 p.m. and we’d been at for over three hours. I had sucked down almost 2 complete water bottles. It was time to head home.

And?

I’ve never played pickleball for over six hours on a given day before. Sure, I’ve been a tournament where I’ve been at the courts for that stretch of time but there’s a lot of breaks in between. Today was pretty much nonstop at Brommer this morning and then Skypark tonight was definitely nonstop.

How did I feel about my play in Scotts Valley? Mostly unsatisfactory.  I hit the white tape half a dozen times. Though, sure, I had some great shots. Ben called the speed of my hands “insane.” Then, later, “F – – – king fast”. A bit later when Ben sped up to my forehand and I immediately hit a winner off of it, Mike told him, “Speeding up to Andrew’s forehand is probably not the best idea“ and used some words to describe how good my forehand reaction time is to speedups.

The last few games I was completely exhausted.

Global

On The Dink podcast, a guest stated that 178 million people are playing pickleball in Asia alone and those are defined as “frequent players.” Of those, China has 60 million players and that is still second to India which has the most players. Vietnam’s number of players is large and growing fast.

Legal Paddle?

Someone posted their great idea, adhering sandpaper to the faces of a paddle to increase grip to get better ball spin. Legal? Heck, no!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Pickleball/s/mYIZ8SqqoL

Number of days on a court: 822
Number of total hours: 3,209.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 147.5

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

Saturday, June 28, 2025 (Court Day #821)

Today was Frabrizio’s mini tournament. The game results would be entered into DUPR, so this outing would affect people‘s ratings.

It was overcast and cool. Perfect for pickleball, though I expected the fog to burn off. 

I arranged with Tony to arrive at 9 a.m., half an hour before the event was planned to start, so that we would get some time in together to warm up. As I was about to leave, Tony texted me saying that he would be about 10 minutes late. This give me a few extra minutes.

I pulled into the neighborhood outside of Derby Park at 9:04 a.m.

Warm-up

When I walked in the gate, Tony had already beat me there. That was a surprise. He explained that it took less time to get there than he thought. We got right into warming up, which we did for about 20 minutes.

Around 9:30 a.m., Frabrizio called everyone over to get things organized. Yesterday, Frabrizio asked us to download the Swish app to help organize the event. We were all hovering over our phones trying to get things figured out. I’m not a Luddite by any stretch, but I had to get Tony to help me navigate to where I needed to be in app. After not too long, things got squared away and started.

Game #1

Our first game was against lefty Ben David—who turned 20 years old this month—and Scott Anderson, both of whom are frequent visitors to Skypark in the evenings. 

While I wasn’t expecting it to be a complete cakewalk, I wasn’t expecting it to be nearly the challenge that it was. We won, but it was very close, with us winning 12–10. Tony was still warming up and made the majority of our errors… but that role would switch soon enough!

Game #2

Next, we played Linda and Gene. I’d heard that Alex and Frabrizio had beaten them 11-0. Tony and I won 11–2. It was quickest game of the day.

Game #3

Next, we played Frabrizio and Alex. This was a shocker. We lost 0-11. I guess the one consolation is that Frabrizio shared later that he and Alex had discussed that the rallies in our game were good in comparison to others. Alex was getting balls back that I was not expecting to be returned. And me coming off a game where I could be a bit sloppy and still win the rallies didn’t help things. I was making so many errors in this game. It was depressing.

Here’s the full analysis I did of this game:
(Click on the image for a higher resolution version.)

Absolutely horrible on my part. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Playoffs

We waited for a one last game to finish up then Frabrizio figured who would be playing who in the playoffs. The top two teams from each pool would advance and the remaining teams would play in the consolation bracket.

Frabrizio and Alex having gone undefeated, were the #1 seed. (Frabrizio said their average margin of victory was 10.5 points—they were playing well.) They would be playing the fourth seed which was Hugh and young Zac. I don’t believe that I had ever seen Zac before.

Semi-Finals

Since Tony and I were the #3 seed, we would be playing against Rob and Austin the #2 seed in a game to 15.

Hugh surprisingly made his way past our court between rallies partway through our game. Hugh stopped just long enough to explain that Alex had tweaked his back and couldn’t play anymore so Hugh and Zac had won their match by default.

Initially, Tony and I were down, but then we came back and took the lead 14–12, but then they pulled off a 16–14 victory to move to the Gold Medal match.

Here’s the full analysis I did of this game:
(Click on the image for a higher resolution version.)

Tony started out strong, then a few rallies after we switched ends, I had the cleaner game. But it was Austin’s performance that took the cake. He played brilliantly.

Rec Games

With no more games in the event, Tony decided to leave. I teamed up with Frabrizio to play against Didier—whom I finally formally met—and Mark—whom I didn’t know—for fun. We got clobbered in the first game but the second game had some great rallies. We did still lose, 9-11, but it was an awesome game.

Event Outcome

Rob and Austin went on to play in the Gold Medal match against Hugh and Zac in the best to of three games to 11. As Rob and Austin gathering their things to leave, they shared that they had won 11-1 and 11-4. That was quite a decisive win.

I left the court a few minutes after 12 o’clock. 

While I played much better in my last game with Frabrizio against Didier and Mark, my outing today was spoiled by that one game with Tony against Alex and Frabrizio. I really need to look hard at what I need to improve. 

Epilogue… DUPR

DUPR decided, with their reliability score for me so low, that after that 0-11 game, that my rating should be 3.376 instead of 4.044, which is absurd. My son was amused and told me that I can now sandbag in tournaments and collect medals. Not that I would ever do that. I’ll continue to sign up for 4.0 tournaments where I believe that I belong… horrible game against Frabrizio and Alex notwithstanding.

Then there’s the imposter syndrome. “What if I’m not a 4.0? What if I’m really a weaker player?” Regardless, I know for a fact that 3.3 is ridiculous.

Number of days on a court: 821
Number of total hours: 3,203.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 147.5

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

Thursday, June 26, 2025 (Court Day #820)

Yesterday afternoon, I was invited by a friend to go sailing. I was able to leave work a couple of hours early. I only knew two out of the five others on the sailboat, but it was a easy-going group. It has been at least a couple of years since I’ve been out. Funny for a family that at one point owned 3 1/2 sailboats… one Olson 25 keelboat and some smaller boats—an El Toro dinghy, a Laser, and split ownership with another local family of a CFJ. They say with boats, the happiest day is the day you buy the boat and the second happiest day is when you sell it! These days, we happily own zero boats!

Pickleball

With Tony Sloss and myself playing together in the mini tournament on Saturday morning, we wanted to play more together in preparation for that. (We played together some on Tuesday evening.) Tony said he was going to arrive between 5:00 and 5:30 p.m., so my goal was to be there no later than 5:30. A few minutes before I was going to leave work, Gary W., who had been a store manager for our family business 40 years ago, called out of the blue from the East Coast and we ended up speaking for about 20 minutes, catching up on my parents and relatives and his kids and my kids. It was a nice surprise and a pleasant conversation… although it did make me behind schedule to get home and feed the dogs—my wife is out of town—then change and get out the Skypark.

I texted Tony about 5:50 p.m. to let him know that I was on my way. He said that he had just arrived at the courts. I pulled in the parking lot at 5:59 p.m.

Skypark

Tony and I played against Frabrizio and Kirby and we won 11-4. We played again but lost a close one. Another rematch resulted in another close loss. But our fourth game resulted in a 11-1 win for us.

Tony and I ended up playing seven games against Kirby and Frabrizio. Tony and I won the last game 11–2.

With the electric lights off but enough natural light to play, I convinced Manda and David L. to play one more game. I ended up on the same side of the court as Kirby so he and I ended up playing together. We were a force. We won 11–4. Often, with David a strong player, it would be Manda making most of the errors, but for tonight, there was a good balance of mistakes by David and him.

We wrapped up that last game at 8:44 p.m.

Today was lighter in attendance and the whiteboard came out only briefly. That’s when I signed up our group, we only had to wait for one game to finish before we could go on… and for next game, by the time I finished writing all four names on the whiteboard we were already on. The whiteboard was stowed away by the time that next game ended.

Evaluation

Tony and I didn’t play perfectly together, however, it was as an improvement over our teamwork on Tuesday night. We had better communication.

There is one shot with Tony to my right where he hit a shot a little bit too high and Kirby ripped it back down the middle between us. That meant that I was a little bit out of position. I should’ve been more to my right. Oops. I will say that generally I’m in the right place.

I had a few drives into the net tonight, and a few of my drop shots were too short. But generally, I drop shots were pretty good. Tony and I adjusted the game and stop doing as many speedups, we did better. Tony was repeatedly impressed with the speed of my hands during firefights. I told him that hand speed is generally not one of my problem areas. The hardest thing for me is judging quickly enough while at the net which balls are going out when they’re hit from the kitchen line across from me.

Overall though, I felt satisfied with my play tonight.

Pain in the Neck!

In that last game, there is a rally where Kirby and I were getting stretched on the court. The ball was popped up. David jump sideways and hit the ball out of the air and smack into the right side of my neck. That was the second time in two outings that I’ve been hit in the neck! Weird.

Olympics

Pickleball took a step closer to the Olympics with the merger of the IPF and WPF:
https://theipf.org/assets/pr/Press-Release-16.6.25.pdf

Member countries unanimously approve the merger of IPF and WPF to establish a fully democratic, IOC-compliant global federation headquartered in Switzerland

In a historic move for the sport of pickleball, member nations of the International Pickleball Federation (IPF) and the World Pickleball Federation (WPF) voted unanimously at Special General Meetings (SGMs) held on 14 June 2025 to unify into a single international
governing body. The unified entity will uniquely continue to champion “One Country One Vote” – ensuring proper representation for all nations.

The new organisation will initially operate under the name World Pickleball Federation (WPF) and is established as a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) entity registered in Illinois, USA. It will combine the assets and resources of both federations into one unified structure.

To align with the global sports community and meet the highest standards of governance, the new WPF will also be registered in Lausanne, Switzerland—home to the International Olympic Committee (IOC)…

The trick will be getting the GPF to merge with the new combined IPF/WPF governing body. USA Pickleball left the IFP (later the IPF) and later joined the GPF. It’s all politics. I’d like to see one global governing body as soon as possible. This fracturing is unnecessary and detrimental to the sport on the international stage.

Number of days on a court: 820
Number of total hours: 3,200.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 147.5

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