Sunday, July 27, 2025 (Court Day #834)

Today is the annual “Wharf to Wharf” race. This year, my wife, our son, and her friend are participating. I would say “run” it, but that’s not really true. They registered for the race and have bib numbers, but they are joining the race somewhere in the middle and will be walking it.

Brommer

I dropped them off where they asked to be, then I headed the few blocks to Brommer Park to go play. The bad news is that as I drove up the hill next to the park at 8:15 a.m., I was surprised to see, off to my left, a line of apparently circling cars in the parking lot. After I turned into the lot myself, my newfound fears were confirmed. The Brommer Park lot was completely full of race participant cars—and the sides of the roads in the surrounding blocks were full of their parked cars as well! I was very annoyed. I spotted a few players on the courts from my car, but with no place to park, irritated, I decided head back home and then onto Derby Park for club day.

Last year at this time, I was still the long-time Sunday site coordinator for Derby Park and therefore was never at Brommer on a Sunday. I will have to keep in mind for next year that on race weekend, the Brommer parking spaces will all be snaked by runners not using the park.

Derby Park

After driving back to Santa Cruz, I walked into the Derby courts at 8:52 a.m. The courts were already full.

As is typical at Derby Park, it started out overcast. Then the fog burnt off, and it got sunny while still being cool. 

Most of the games this morning were uneventful, however there were two games that were of interest. Both were against a guy named Frank who was sporting a PPR (certified coach) cap—like the one I own—and his friend named Tim. Tim is tall and thin with white hair and Frank is about my height with short-cropped hair and a fit build. I’d never seen either of them before and I’ve never heard of Frank as a local coach. I suspect that they may have been visiting.

Tim and Frank both returned shots that I would otherwise not expect to come back. They were worthy adversaries. In the first game, I was paired up with Jeff’s brother Scott against them. Scott imploded in the middle of the game and we couldn’t recover and lost.

It wasn’t entirely on Scott. Tim hit a rocket, which was passing near my head and I tried to pull my paddle down out of the way in time, but unfortunately the ball clipped the edge of my paddle in careening off into a neighboring court. I guess I can say that at least I was pulling my paddle down and out of the way and trying to do the correct thing. Had I simply gotten out of the way, that ball would’ve easily hit the fence behind us at least 3 to 4 feet above the ground.

Scott apologized later. My right hand hurt. He had popped up a ball and it was slammed down onto my hand. “If you were my brother, I wouldn’t apologize!” (That’d be Jeff who arrived later in the session.)

In the second game, I was paired up with Marin who is Soji’s husband. Marin is originally from Glasgow, Scotland and sports a Scottish accent. It is pronounced “MAR-in”. Marin is a good player. I’m kind of surprised that I hadn’t run into him previously. I think we won, but all I can remember is that it was a good game.

At 11:40 a.m., there are too many players waiting for me to get onto a court and still be done with my next game by noon. I needed to get home to eat lunch then go teach my classes. So I called it a day.

And?

Overall, I felt good about my play, but aside from the games against Tim and Frank, the competition wasn’t particularly strong. Even against him and Frank I still got at least four or five points from serves that they returned into the net or out. Yes, serves can be a weapon.

Referee Tom

Tom Sherwood is working his way to become a certified referee. I spotted him talking to Maree—who has been refereeing at tournaments around the country for years—a few times this morning. 

Monday, July 28, 2025 (No Play)

Fake A.I. generated videos are still a novelty—”1984″ is arriving—and sometimes they are hilarious, like this one…
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMp92l9MSMZ/

Number of days on a court: 834
Number of total hours: 3,240
Number of paid coaching hours: 156.5

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