Tuesday, March 10, 2026 (Court Day #911)
Nick Kygros is out playing pickleball in preparation of going onto the PPA tour…
DUPR mocking
With DUPR charging people to reset their DUPR rating, there are a good number of people giving DUPR a hard time about it. (As in, why charge people to fix a rating determined by your apparently insufficient algorithm?)
This Reddit discussion about it is pretty funny…
Defense Matters
Here is a masterclass demonstration on defense. On the near court is Ben Johns with partner Gabe Tardio. Wow.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVpXVJ2jQsT
Play Time for Andrew
With the time change two days ago, it was still very much light on my trip to Scotts Valley when I left work shortly before 6:30 p.m. The one annoying thing was the sun was low in the sky. It gets you in the eyes pretty much no matter what you try to do to prevent it. But still, it’s nice to have the sunlight.
Games
I teamed up with young Andy and we lost 6-11 to Jordan Rein and Marquis. This was a fun game. I’d say Jordan is the better of our two opponents, but both are stronger players than I am.
Jordan wanted a more balanced game and asked to play with me. He and I won 11-4 over Andy and Marquis.
We played once again, and this one really was more balanced. Jordan and I won 13-11.
DUPR
There were enough players tonight that we were using the paddle rack system. I went to put a paddle in, and there were three paddles in there with a posted note that said “DUPR?” Matt Babb was standing nearby and I asked him about it and he said that Paul (his friend) was part of that group of paddles. I figured, “Why not?”
Once on the court, we had to figure out teams. I was on the side with Mike so I figured that would be as good as anything. Paul and I are the strongest players. It was only after the teams were decided that Mike told me that he had not played for a month. I had to chuckle a little bit of that, it figures!
Mike Diaz and I were up 8-1, but lost 8-11 when Paul and Scotty came back. Once the game was done, I could see Paul was entering the result into the DUPR app on his phone. I was expecting my reading to go down a little bit after this game.
[Later note. I verified the final score and, as expected, my DUPR dropped a bit to 3.889. Lesson: no DUPR games at night and especially after a long day at work! The reliability score for my rating is still only 20 percent for accuracy.]
Lights Out
After the lights clicked off, there was the normal pickleball community chatter as players fell into a little groups while getting ready to go.
There were three Indian guys, Ashley, Humad, and Shreyas, plus the short, friendly, and very talkative Michael—someone described Michael as our local pickleball version of Richard Simmons. (Ashley and Humad are so hilarious! Both have a great sense of humor!) Part of the discussion was how Ashley gets confused with Abhi. (Both are tall, Indian, and can drive balls hard, though I’d take Ashley as a tournament partner.) Michael turned to me and said “Abhi could benefit from some of your game, Andrew.” His point was that I play more of a control game versus driving very frequently. I was kind of surprised that Michael remembered that much about me.
Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (No Play)
People are complaining that Apple decided that adding a pickleball emoji in their latest operating system update was not worthwhile.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DVwm2pOEZtB
But, the rest of the story is that it’s not just Apple’s decision. The Unicode Consortium, a non-profit based here in California-based, determines which emojis are added to their official standard. Their “Technical Committee” is composed of representatives from major tech companies—including Apple, Google, and Microsoft, and it meets quarterly to consider new additions. So, maybe in another 3 months, pickleball may get added. Or maybe another 3 months after that. Or maybe…
Number of days on a court: 911
Number of total hours: 3,412.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 203.5
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