Thursday, October 23, 2025 (Court Day #864)

It is getting dark so early these days. After work, I stopped by my parents. My brother Mike is in town from Washington State for a couple of weeks and he’s helping my sister organize and de-clutter my parents’ house. My parents—mostly my dad—have collected a lot of things over the 50 years that they have lived there. It may have been a mistake to introduce my dad to eBay, but that is a story for another time! Regardless, I left my parents’ house with the back of my car full of garbage bags and recycling.

Sports Cam

I had ordered a thumb-size sports camera, but the description was confusing and I accidentally got the 1080P model instead of the 4K model. (The title specifically said “4K” but one of the options was apparently a 1080P model.)

Today, I sent one of my staff to the post office with it to be returned.

Recently, we received two or three packages via USPS to our business, each containing multiple bottles of male health supplements addressed for a guy we’ve never heard of. I think it may be one of those scams where they send products to random people so that they can write their own positive reviews on Amazon… in any case, the bottles are on their way back to Amazon. Those went to the post office with my staff today too. They have gone whence they came!

Skypark

I arrived at Skypark at 7 p.m. and David L. pulled into the parking lot right after me. Attendance was light and there were courts open when I arrived. Daniel Borlean was there and he asked if I wanted to warm up, which of course, I did. Mauricio arrived a moment later and jumped onto our court next to me and warmed up against Scott.

After about five minutes of warming up, we got into a game against Daniel and Scott. Mauricio and I lost the first game by a significant margin. Then the second, and the third. By the fourth game, we were fully warmed up and playing a bit better and won that one. Quite a turnabout. Going from getting completely clobbered to winning. After that, Daniel decided to leave.

Mauricio and I played a game against David and Scott. It was a close game but we lost.

In that game against Scott and David, Scott got me on a number of lobs which were miserable under the lights. Almost no matter where you were against a lob, you were looking up into the lights.

Rose and Megan

The last game was me pairing up with a woman named Rose against Mauricio and Megan. Megan has good spins and angles, but also likes to drive and speed up shots to me, which is a mistake. Those are my strengths. Fast hands and handling fast drives. My partner Rose obviously has a tennis background since she has a habit of staying at the baseline. Nonetheless, to my surprise, we won that game. After one fast exchange at the net that I won off my two initial transition zone resets, Rose was impressed: “S—t!” That’s the best kind of praise. Like after hitting a winners against Matt Smith a few years ago, and he’d rattle off a series of 4-letter words in my direction! Heh. 

And?

Mistakes I was making tonight included hitting returns too long, hitting a lob or two too deep, and those were the only two that I tried. I also I hit a couple of my serves too long. I hit the white tape a couple of times. I hit some drop shots either too low into the net or some too high which were slammed off the court. But my drops did improve over the course of the evening.

The next time that I’m at the optometrist, I swear, I’m going to look into prescription protective goggles and see if that will help me under the lights. Judging depth is difficult for me at night.

Friday, October 24, 2025 (No Play)

Back on September 11, I shared a New York Times article about pickleball courts taking over tennis courts. Here is some more on growth of pickleball courts in the USA—as you can see, not all were originally tennis courts:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOhioiqDO7P

UPA Paddle Fines

The umbrella company of the PPA Tour, the UPA, is cracking down on paddles—in particular, gritty paddles—as their new standards are rolled out to limit power and spin on paddles. They are getting serious, even threatening $50,000 fines for companies providing illegal paddles to sponsored players:
https://www.thedinkpickleball.com/pro-paddles-are-still-failing-onsite-testing-repeat-offenders-could-face-50k-fines

A First! Singles Only!

Lifetime sponsored the first-ever singles only pro pickleball tournament. It was held October 15-19 in Georgia:
https://ltopen.lifetime.life

They had a $250,00 prize purse with a $50,00 grand prize for each of the mens and womens top finisher from a 128-person qualifier. Those top finishers were Chris Haworth and Lea Jansen.

Ah. I just found a video by Zane Navratil about the event.

And an article too:
https://www.thedinkpickleball.com/haworth-and-jansen-take-home-50k-each-in-the-first-ever-life-time-open/

Number of days on a court: 864
Number of total hours: 3,306.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 178

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