Monday, March 9, 2026 (Court Day #910)
Today was our monthly Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board meeting. I worked on some club business this morning at home and didn’t get the Brommer Park until about 10:30 a.m. Yesterday was absolutely beautiful, but today it was overcast and 54°. But truth be told, this is just about perfect for pickleball weather—cool and no sun in your eyes!
It was an organized club play day and the courts were full. When I arrived, it was an unusual circumstance, I was literally the only person waiting to play, standing by myself in the waiting area.
Games
My first game was with Marin against John Connors and Jeanell. Jeanell is one of those prototypical short, white-haired pickleball players the newbies get shocked by. She is certainly not a tall, young, athletic male, but she does a great job consistently getting the ball back over the net. We were midway through a close game when John announced that Janelle‘s ankle was hurting, and she wanted to stop, which we did.
The game of the morning was tall Paul versus Dave Ryan and Humad. We were leading 8-6 but lost 8-11. Fun game. Dave won a couple of rallies by driving a very hard shot straight ahead to my backhand along the sideline that I was guarding. In each case, I contacted the ball, but I was unsuccessful getting the ball back over the net. Dave’s partner also had one sideline winner like that as well.
Board Meeting
Our club meeting was pretty routine, nothing earth-shattering. Allen Greenberg was there—the plan is for him to take over George Propper’s Treasurer duties.
After Meeting Games
After our meeting ended around 1:30 p.m., Allen and I convinced a young guy Lucas and also Mark Dettle to join us for a game. Mark and I got completely clobbered in the first game—it was bad—but we redeemed ourselves and surprisingly won the second. We played a third game and the results in the third game were about the same as the first game although slightly better.
It was a disjointed outing for me, but that is typical for board meeting days.
By the time I left, it was sunny with only slight traces of clouds and the temperature is climbing closer to 70°.
Drilling
Mauricio texted and invited me to go drill at Skypark at 4:30 p.m. I told him that I could do 5 p.m. at Derby Park. He agreed and after only an hour of me at work, I left and headed to meet him. I had to spend a few extra minutes printing out the work schedule and talking to one of the staff about the schedule tomorrow so it made me five minutes late. On my way to Derby, I told Mauricio that it is going to be about five minutes late. He told me he had an errand to run for his daughter and so he wouldn’t be there until 5:20 p.m.
Conner McNicholas texted asking about drilling. I told him I’d already committed to drilling with Mauricio. He said he might stop by anyway.
I walked into the court at 5:05 p.m. It was somewhat busy with only two of the six courts open. It’s a far cry from the days when they’d be empty in the afternoons. And at least half the players were under 30 years old.
I worked on practicing my serving while I was waiting. The second court cleared out by the time Mauricio arrived. We got right into the straight ahead dinking followed by backhand crosscourt dinking, and forehand crosscourt dinking. We did that for about 20 minutes.
Games
A couple of guys that appeared to be in their mid-30s arrived, Cole and Taylor. Both are lefties and are over 6 foot.
Mauricio and I beat them pretty handily in the first game.
Conner and Abhi
Conner had been waiting, so I stepped out and let him take my place. It was a very close game but surprisingly Connor and Mauricio lost 10–12. Conner did mention that he was getting over an illness and hadn’t played for a couple of weeks.
Abhi was there and he asked if he could join me and we could take on the winners. We were waiting a while for that game to finish.
This was also a somewhat close game against Taylor and Cole. Abhi was making an uncharacteristic number of errors, such as drives into the net or drives too long of their baseline. I made five errors in entire game, including one pop-up. We did end up winning 11-8.
The last game was Conner and Mauricio against myself and Cole. With Cole being a lefty, I asked if he wanted to stack. He said he did and that not everyone know how, so he appreciated my offer. Cole complimented me a couple of times during that game as having fast hands. While the game was back-and-forth, Cole and I lost by a significant margin. Sometimes that happens, it’s just the way the ball bounces, as they say!
Progress
One of the hardest shots in pickleball is when a ball is dropped short over the net when you were at the baseline. Today, I had three successful handlings of that. Two were at Brommer against Dave Ryan and Humad. When I was on the right side with Humad in front of me, I was on a full sprint. I got to the ball and was it able to dink it to the middle successfully—low and controlled. The second one was when Humad was in front of me on the left side. I ran up, dinked the ball low over the net and he popped it up towards the middle, and I jumped to the right slamming it for a winner down the middle. The third one was at Derby Park. This one was with Taylor on the other side of the net across from me and again on a dead run, I was able to dink the ball low over the net successfully. It seems I’ve pretty much got this skill down.
While I still need to be more consistent and more patient, there are harder shots that are getting more reliable in my toolbox.
Number of days on a court: 910
Number of total hours: 3,410.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 203.5
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