Tuesday, September 9, 2025 (Court Day #850)

Conner McNicholas started a small text group of players that live on the westside. Being that today I had to leave work around 3:45 p.m. for a non-profit board meeting, I figured I’d take that opportunity to not return to work afterward and instead get some play or drilling in. I reached out to Conner’s text group, but none of them were available to drill and instead Conner and Alfred said they were heading to Brommer to play.

My meeting ended early and when I went home and offered to walk the dog, my wife told me I should go play. I was pleasantly surprised that the traffic was light on Highway 1 South as I headed to Brommer. 

Brommer Park

I pulled into Brommer‘s parking lot at about a quarter to 6 p.m. It was sunny and 73°F. It was kind of a weird day today, it lightly rained this morning.

Not the best parking job. [Little did I know at the time, this car would be like this for days and days!]

Alfred was sitting on the wall when I walked in. He said he had been at the courts for about half an hour. While we were both sitting sitting there, Monica asked if we wanted to play. I was up for a warm-up game. And Alfred was agreeable.

First Games

Alfred teamed up with Monica and I played with a woman named Rose. Rose asked if we had played together before and I told her, “not that I remember.” She said that I looked familiar. I told her that I was the vice president of the pickleball club and that I also teach classes locally and that maybe it was from one of those. It wasn’t until later that I realized that maybe she had seen my photo in the newspaper from one of advertisements for our family business. Who knows?

Rose and I had a significant disadvantage with the sun low in the sky behind our opponents. There were several shots that I lost in the sun. While our opponents did a good job of not lobbing us, the sun was still annoying and at times very frustrating. Had are opponents lobbed, I would’ve insisted on a side change at 6 points instead of keeping the challenge of hitting into the sun. We did end up losing that game 9–11… not bad considering our opponents had an advantage of at least 2 to 3 points with the sun. The sun was a complete nightmare on our side. 

Once that game was done, Alfred wanted to get into a game with a couple of his friends, Ryan and Jonathan, who were in a game against Tim Feickert and Pauly.

Once that game ended, we joined their court. Alfred and I teamed up and came away with a very lopsided 11–2 win, even though my team was once again playing looking into the sun. But at least the sun was getting lower and starting to get blocked by trees.

We switched sides and had a rematch, and once again the outcome was not that different. This time Alfred and I won 11–5.

More Games

I teamed up with a man named Bobby against Sam and a younger petite woman I’ve seen more frequently lately named Taylor.

Bobby has a habit of not coming up to the net quite as quickly as he probably should. Nonetheless, we won 12-10 versus Sam and Taylor. 

We switched sides, and played again. It was very obvious that our teams were very balanced. There were a lot of side outs in this game as well. The light was fading fast.

Once again, Bobby and I squeaked out a win, this time 14-12.

It was getting dark when I left at 7:35 p.m.

Surprisingly, I was still 73°F though the temperature was sure to drop soon. As it was, while I was not drenched, I was somewhat sweaty.

And?

I left feeling happy about my play, though I was not perfect. I hit three or four shots into the white tape. I popped up some shots on volleys, most often while on the run. Generally, my errors were shots that were made difficult by my opponents. For instance, I don’t believe that I hit any dinks into the net.

Inbox

Just for kicks, here’s a pretty typical morning of pickleball emails, after deleting some non-pickleball messages.

I get a lot of pickleball related email messages. And I’ll send notes to myself via email from my work account to my home account.

New Ball

Franklin is making some new foam pickleballs that are coming out in mid September, so soon:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNrTf0Nwp0W
From the comments on that reel, it won’t be official and will only be for drilling and non-tournament use.

Wednesday, August 10, 2025 (No Play)

A funny one! Good at pickleball or…?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNbJ6B0JRQ4

Thursday, September 11, 2025 (No Play)

A week and a half ago, an article was published in the New York Times analyzing the boom of pickleball courts in the USA.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DOYQ0nij37f/

“Thousands of tennis courts across the U.S. have given way to — or now share space with — pickleball, according to a New York Times analysis.”

I grabbed a couple of screenshots from their social media post linked above and here they are:

Here’s the actual article, though you need a subscription to read it:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/01/upshot/pickleball.html

“By analyzing nearly 100,000 aerial photographs, we were able to identify more than 26,000 outdoor pickleball courts made in the last seven years – a majority of them at the expense of once-exclusive tennis spaces and created since the onset of the pandemic in 2020,” [Ethan Singer] writes. “In total, we found more than 8,000 tennis courts that had been transformed for pickleball.”

Number of days on a court: 850
Number of total hours: 3,278.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 161.5

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