Sunday, November 23, 2025 (Court Day #873)

Yesterday morning, my wife Kristen hopped into my daughter’s car and they drove to Oregon for one of my daughter’s 4th year medical school rotations. Kristen will be flying home tonight. In the meantime, I am on dog duty.

While it was only 54°, it was a sunny morning and really nice outside.

Brommer Park

I pulled into Brommer at 9:30 a.m. sharp. Surprisingly, they were only two parking spots left and I took one of them.

Once I got inside the gate, I spent a little time on the wall waiting for a game.

I teamed up with a regular, Ken, and we lost 7-11 against Dan Dewey and Mike Sullivan. Ken apologized to me frequently during that game. It was unnecessary, we both knew when he made an error. Of course, I’ve been in his shoes, in stronger games, and I do the same thing.

We mix things up, and I partnered with Dan Dewey against Mike and Ken. We were down 8–10, but came back and won 12-10.

Given that it was a close game, we opted to have a rematch. Coincidentally, we found ourselves down again, 8–10, but then again we went on a 4 point run and won again by a score of 12–10.

As we walked off, Dan said we weren’t playing great, but we continued to just hang around. Our biggest problem was not communicating well enough for shots in the middle. There are times when I wasn’t covering the middle well enough and there were times that he wasn’t either.

More Games

Ken and I teamed up again, this time playing against René and Mike S. We lost 6-11.

Next up, it was René and me taking on Kim and Mike S. We won 11-4.

René and I played again, this time against Kim and Frabrizio. This was a bad game. We lost 3-11. We were both off. I needed to take a break. There was a rally we lost purely because I hadn’t moved fast enough to the correct position. I was moving a bit too slowly. René messed up in the last two rallies and that was that. It was obvious that she wanted to be done and into another game.

But I didn’t take a break. I rolled into a game with Pavel against a guy named Darin with a wicked forehand and Nari. I must’ve hit at least four balls that were sailing far out. Pavel would shake his head and smile. So bad. We lost that game, but not by much. We would’ve won had I not hit all those outballs.

Marco

Marco arrived. I ended up in a game with Nari against Marco and a young woman who may have never seen before named Taylor. (There’s a Taylor with brown hair who is petite and comes fairly often, but this was a different Taylor.) This Taylor is the friend—girlfriend?—of Aaron, the young guy who sports the track and field T-shirts.

After a few shots, it became very apparent that there is a big disparity between Marco’s skill level of 4.0–4.5 and Taylor, who I would place at a 3.0 skill level.

During that game, I was hitting virtually every shot I could to Marco, and it was apparent that Nari was doing the same thing. Even with that, we won the first game 11–7. Marco got more warmed up in the second game and played better. We continued to target him. We did lose that second game 9–11. It wasn’t for not playing well. It negatively impacts the dynamic of the game when you’re not hitting optimal shots by intentionally hitting to a certain player. Shots can be slightly awkward or delayed while picking where to hit instead of it being more automatic. And I was intentionally hitting my serve softer to Taylor.

I was getting hungry and tired. I checked the time after last game, 1:18 p.m.

The aside from being tired and having not eaten since the night before, I played pretty well. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to be in a game was all stronger players. I was a little bit rusty.

It is 66°F and still sunny when I left. It was a beautiful day.

Monday, November 24, 2025 (No Play)

So, the latest real estate trend is an uptick is home listings that feature a pickleball court on the property. Courts aren’t cheap to install, tens of thousands of dollars typically, but they are desired!
https://www.aol.com/articles/pickleball-courts-hottest-backyard-trend-124500937.html

Number of days on a court: 874
Number of total hours: 3,330
Number of paid coaching hours: 182

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