Month: November 2025 (Page 2 of 3)

Thursday, November 20, 2025 (Court Day #873)

It rained midday today, but then the sun came out for a little while, enough to assure me that the courts might be dry enough to play on tonight.

At 6:24 p.m., I left work in the dark to head to Scotts Valley. It was a chilly 52°F.

My right knee has been bothering me more the last few weeks, so, like Tuesday night, I’m wearing my knee brace tonight.

Skypark

I was walking in at 6:35 p.m. and, like two days ago, there was plenty of parking in the lot.

When I showed up, only three courts were in use. I was surprised.

Upon a closer inspection, I saw the some of the courts were still wet from the rain. As I approached, I thought that I was the odd man out. But as I hung my backpack up near the gate, Manda called from the far end of the courts. I grabbed my paddle to connect up with him, but then I discovered that he did not called me on his behalf, but for me to warm up with a woman down there by the name of Sho, whom I don’t recall meeting before.

Sho and I hit a ball back-and-forth with me for about 10 minutes before one of the games ended and we got invited to play.

First Game

Sho and I would be playing against Mike O’Brien and Thad. Before the game started, Mike had suggested that Sho play with me given how I play (strong). Initially of the game was close, but after each team had scored a few points, we started to pull away. Sho and I came out with a lopsided win.

We mixed things up in this time I played with Mike against Sho and Thad. This time it was another lopsided win for my team. Mike told Sho that she was playing really well tonight. I wasn’t familiar with Sho’s skill level so I would have to trust Mike with his evaluation.

Sho said she was cold and tired and left. Frabrizio, who was in a game on an adjacent court, suggested that we get Jesse to play with us.

More Games

We played a variety of rotations first with me teaming up with Jesse, and then Mike, and then Thad. My team won every game.

We mixed things up and this time I played with Mike again. I think Mike was getting tired. We lost that game and then played a rematch and lost that one as well. There were a few shots where I was being a bit lazy and wasn’t where I should’ve been.

Those games were very entertaining. There was a fair amount of laughing. Like in one of those last games, Thad told Mike (my partner for the game), “Nice try!”
And then I added, “…loser!” The unspoken ending for that phrase! We had a good time in that game.

When Thad and I were playing together, Pauly hit a sharp crosscourt shot that took me a little bit off the court to my right. I hit the ball back over to the net to Jessie at the kitchen who was playing across from me. She attacked that shot, hitting the ball to the opening where I had been on the court. Unfortunately for her, I was already back, stretched out and attacked her shot with a backhand for a winner. Thad was impressed and exclaimed, “You are all over the place!”

I’ll share the shot that I was most pleased with. As an opponent, Thad had hit a really nice lob over my right shoulder to the corner of the court. I raced back there and managed to get off a beautiful crosscourt drop shot. Unfortunately, Thad attacked my shot, driving the ball at Mike’s torso while he was in the transition zone. Mike couldn’t handle it and that was the end of the rally. Still, I had a beautiful drop.

The last game wrapped up at 8:24 p.m. Time to head home!

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Friday, November 21, 2025 (No Play)

Some people take this game too seriously. Two rec players got into it. A video was shared on social media. Notice the guy bleeding from the forehead in the background. The headlock is by a bystander trying to get a guy under control:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRTGxpUD9Su

Late Work Night

Ugh. It was a late night at work today. I finally got home at almost the same time as if I had gone and played pickleball first. I pulled up in front of my house and the cold and dark at 8:38 p.m. Oh, the joys of a family business!

Number of days on a court: 873
Number of total hours: 3,326
Number of paid coaching hours: 182

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 (Court Day #872)

The big news for today is that the Santa Cruz City Council voted to prove the draft plan for redesigning Harvey West Park. Club president Mark Dettle told me that there is no funding attached to the plan, which could be a concern given the project will cost upwards of a staggering $140 million! But it is at least a step forward. The plan includes either five courts or eight courts and, however many they decide, we are pushing to have those courts lit.

Driving

I’ve been doing a lot of driving over Highway 17 to the Silicon Valley in the last couple of days. On Sunday evening, I drove to San Jose Airport to pick up my mom. Yesterday, I met with my son Nicholas to watch the Raiders get clobbered on Monday Night Football. The original plan was for he and I to meet in Los Gatos, but my sister asked me if I could pick up her brother-in-law Joey from the airport. So instead, Nicholas and I watched the game in Santa Clara. All was well until the flight was delayed by two hours so instead of me picking up Joey immediately after the game ended, I went to Nicholas’s apartment and hung out for a couple hours instead.

Tonight, I got to drive Highway 17 again, although this time it was abbreviated with me only going as far as Scotts Valley. Thank goodness!

Skypark

I arrived at the Skypark Courts at 6:45 p.m. after work. It was dark and 54°F. Given all the rain we’ve had over the past several days, I was expecting it to be busy. When I got to the courts, however, there was plenty of parking. Perhaps the cold weather scared people off.

I immediately got into a game and played a few with Pauly against Kim and Ahbi. 

This evening, one of my weaknesses became apparent. It’s not a secret that serving to your opponent’s backhand can be a very effective weapon and result in a weak return. Aaron Bartley’s wife Kim has a fast serve and she’s also very good at targeting specific locations. She served hard to my backhand and my return went into the net. I told her, “Keep those coming!” And she did. I think she made six serves my backhand. Several ended up in the net and all were poor returns. My backhand service returns are generally not that bad—though not stellar—but not that bad. Perhaps it was a combination of not playing for a week, playing under lights, having a long day of work, but still adjusting to a new paddle. That reminds me, I still need to add a layer of grip to the handle since it is still factory spec and the grip is little too small for me.

More Games

My next series of games was with Max against Pauly and Maria. Max was having a rough night and as we walked off the courts for the evening, he apologized to me. It wasn’t necessary, I enjoyed the games regardless.

The games tonight were pretty relaxing. No pressure. There was no one to impress and no DUPR ratings on the line.

Carmel

So, it’s a 52 minute drive—with good traffic—from here in Santa Cruz to Carmel by the Sea. Aside from being a very expensive place to live, Carmel famous for being home to movie icon Clint Eastwood and a whole lot of art galleries. It has also been gaining notoriety this month for looking to ban pickleball!
https://www.sfgate.com/centralcoast/article/carmel-moves-to-permanently-ban-pickleball-21193222.php
It seems crazy to ban a sport completely due to noise when there are solutions. We’ll see how this plays out. (No pun intended!)

Path to the Olympics

This week, two international pickleball governing bodies decided to merge, the United World Pickleball Federation (UWPF) and the Global Pickleball Federation (GPF).

GPF and UWPF Announce Joint Initiative to Establish a Single International Governing Body for Pickleball

Now, the problem I have with this article is it completely ignores the International Pickleball Federation (IFP), which was originally the IPF but was disbanded and immediately reorganized as the IFP.

Ok, wait. I missed something.

Back in June, the IFP merged with the WPF and later formed the UWPF:
https://theipf.org/assets/pr/MergerResolution.pdf
How I missed this, I don’t know.

This means we truly are down to just one international pickleball governing body. This is great news since to get into the Olympics, pickleball needs just one international body to interact with the IOC. We’re now finally there!

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Wednesday, November 19, 2025 (No Play)

The USA Pickleball Nationals are being held down in San Diego this week. Bob Hansen—retired UCSC tennis coach—and Jackie Signor—current SCPC Board member—won 70+ mixed 4.0 at Nationals! Nice! Kristin Long (also a board member) posted a photo on Facebook to commemorate the win. 

Number of days on a court: 872
Number of total hours: 3,324
Number of paid coaching hours: 182

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.

Tuesday, November 11, 2025 (Court Day #871)

The Pickleheads email newsletter today included questions about rules and one of the questions was this:

“Before serving in doubles, the server starts with one foot inside the court but behind the baseline extension. The serve lands in. What’s the ruling?”

I found this question to be worded in a very confusing manner.

Their possible answers were:

• Legal serve
• Let serve – replay the point
• Legal if the ball clears the net and lands in the correct box
• Fault — both feet must be behind the baseline and within the correct sideline boundaries at contact

By rule, on a serve, at the time of ball contact, one foot needs to be on the ground behind the baseline, and the other foot cannot be planted inside the court. (That unplanted foot can be in the air over the court, however.) Also, at the time of contact, neither foot can planted be outside of the imaginary extension of the sideline nor across the imaginary extension of the center line.

To answer this question correctly, one needs more information. It says, “before the serve”, but we would need to know what’s going on at the time of contact. Before the actual serve, at least with regard to the server’s feet, is irrelevant.

Let me quickly address the second suggested answer, that is, “Let serve”. There are no let serves in pickleball. There used to be, but the rule changed about 5 years ago. The only reason a serve would be replayed would be a hindrance (like an errant ball rolling onto the court) or stopping before the serve is returned due to score error. (Once the serve is returned, the rally can’t be stopped for a score discrepancy.)

Biodegradable Balls

A company called Professional Pickleball Partners has come out with a product called a “Compost-A-Ball” that is made out of wheat straw and rice husk polymer and biodegrades in about three months. They claim it can last about 2,000 hits before cracking, which is supposed to beat out most plastic balls.

I can tell you, it won’t last longer than an Onix Pure 2 ball—those things last forever. (They just get kind of “spongy” in terms of performance, which is why they don’t see widespread use these days.)

PPP makes a Rec version and a Pro version of this biodegradable ball. Both aren’t cheap, $16 each, which is about 5 times the cost of a regular ball. If they can bring the cost down, they’ll get a lot more takers.

Komodo Pickleball came out with their own biodegradable ball at least a year ago, the BioBall, though they say that one decomposes in a much longer 3-5 years.

Skypark

I left work at about 6:40 p.m. exhausted. Aside from literally getting about six hours of sleep, working all day, perhaps a little bit of jet lag, and dealing with the tail end of a cold, I have very little energy.

As I got into Scotts Valley in the dark, it was 57°F. I was just thinking last night how we have about six weeks before we get the winter solstice when days start getting longer again. I’m looking forward to that.

The weather report is predicting rain on Sunday, which would interfere with the last weekend of my 4-week classes. I will probably need to bump them a week.

I walked into the courts at 6:52 p.m.

There was a new thing, there was a wood paddle rack where we would sometimes hang the white dry-erase board.

Games

There was a group that was waiting for a fourth on the paddle rack and so I didn’t even have time to hang up my backpack before I was asked into a game.

I found myself playing with Brandon. That game started pretty rough, but as the game went on I started dialing things in. We were playing against Mike C. and the younger guy named Shane who I had seen around a few times and seems to be becoming more of a regular.

Mike Cattivera and I played against Matt Babb and a guy named Jerry. We won 11-1, then played again, also winning 11-7.

But then Mike and I lost the next game in a lopsided fashion. Weird.

Interlude

In the middle of that next last game, I spotted Pauly giving Maria a hug. Jerry, the server, was talking to Matt, his partner, and I quickly dashed over to Pauly and Maria and exclaimed, “Where is my hug?” They stopped their embrace and Maria turned to hug me but I gently barged past her and gave Pauly a hug! Pauly and I were cracking up. I turned around and Maria had a hysterical pouting look on her face. She had her arms folded, looking like a five-year-old who was withheld a cookie. It was quite hilarious!

One More

Jerry was about to leave, saying that he had said that he would be home around 7 p.m. and at that moment it was 8:12 p.m. I told him that he was already in trouble, so he might as well stay and play one more game, which he did!

We switched sides and, this time, Mike and I one in a comfortable fashion.

An unusual thing happened in that last game. They drove a ball from midcourt and it caught me in a chicken wing at the kitchen line. The ball bounced off my paddle nearly straight up and landed barely over the net literally on the sideline. Matt made a run at it, but he couldn’t get there in time. The situation was amusing. It was pure luck.

We finished up our last game at 8:25 p.m.

Weather

As I drove home, there was drizzle on my windshield and I had to use my wipers. Rain is coming. Matt Babb mentioned the words, “atmospheric river”… not something out outdoor pickleball player wants to hear!

Ouch!!

Mid-session, I tripped over the mesh divider—the short ball stopper—going out to start a game and it aggravated my already-sore right knee. That really hurt. A lot.

Tempers Flare in Pickleball

This article is a summary of some pickleball disputes that made the widespread news:
https://www.cleveland.com/metro/2025/11/pickleball-disputes-arent-just-rocky-rivers-problem-tensions-over-the-growing-sport-flare-nationwide.html

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Thursday, November 13, 2025 (No Play)

So, someone decided to do a prank call pretending to be from DUPR. It sounds like the person getting pranked deserved it!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNdiT-Eut7P

Comedian on Pickleball

Here’s a guy performing stand up about his wife’s reaction to both of them out playing pickleball.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DM-3awnSwYk
What’s funny is that in nearly 9 years of me playing pickleball, my wife has never seen me play. Not even once! She’s seen me teach, but not actually play.

Pro Video Analysis

Nice pro doubles match analysis by John Cincola against Ben Johns.

Number of days on a court: 871
Number of total hours: 3,323.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 182

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.