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.

I had to make an appropriate thumbnail image for this video!

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

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