Month: April 2026 (Page 3 of 3)

Friday, April 3, 2026 (Court Day #921)

This morning, I received one of the myriad of pickleball newsletters that I’m subscribed to. This particular one was from Pickleball Union. A section of the newsletter was discussing cleaning your paddle to help grip pickleballs. What I found amusing was that it referred cleaning off “ball fuzz”. What sport do they think they’re talking about? Tennis? Pickleballs don’t have fuzz, tennis balls have fuzz!

Mike Cattivera had reached out a few days ago asking if I could play this afternoon with a private group. I told him that I’d be meeting with my cousin from Florida but I would join them no later than 5:30 p.m.

Skypark

It was sunny and clear and 77°F when I arrived at 5:15 p.m. It would be Mike, Scotty, Max, and me. Scott was in the middle of a random game and Mike and Max were warming up on an otherwise empty court. It was warm in the sun and hot on the court surface.

Max and Me

Max and I teamed up first. The game stalled at 7-7, with a series of side outs, then we pulled ahead to 10-8, then won 11-8. A good way to start.

We had a rematch. Max and I went ahead 8-3 then went on to win 11-8.

Scott and Me

We rotated partners. Scott and I lost 5-11.

We did better on the rematch, pretty much flipping the score, winning 11-6.

We played one more together, but this time Scott and I lost 9-11 after being up 8-1. A pretty sad letting them go on an 10-1 run.

Ashley—the only face I recognized of the 16 or so other players on the courts—came over and asked if he could rotate in. I told him that we wanted to play one last combination of players, then we’d get him in. Mike and I hadn’t played together yet.

Mike and Me

Not a shocker, Mike and I won 11-2. (Mike and I are the strongest players.)

At this point, Max opted to hit the road and leave space for Ashley.

Ashley In

Mike and I won 11-9 against Scott and Ashley. I was trying to hit a bit more to Ashley, who was the stronger of our two opponents.

Mike and I won again 13-11. I was continuing to try to hit more to Ashley. 

We mixed things up and Ashley and I won 11-8. We really should have done better.

Scott and I lost 3-11, then we lost again 0-11. Ouch.

Done

It was 8:37 p.m. and—while the lights would be on for another hour since it was a Friday—we called it a night. I would’ve continued to play even though I was tired, but Ashley was done.

I felt that I played reasonably well. Not stellar, but not bad either. I didn’t make more than about half a dozen errors in that entire last game, including returns that should’ve been deeper. One of those errors, I was going for a shallow crosscourt winner but I slammed it into the net. I was kicking myself for that one.

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Saturday, April 4, 2026 (No Play)

A notification from my DUPR app popped up on my phone telling me about the “no risk” DUPR reset going on. I already knew about it. And, well, there is risk, you could be out whatever fee they are charging and still not have any changed your rating for the better!

Just for kicks, I went to the app. I tapped on the “players” icon at the bottom of the screen, and it displayed a list of players in the my area. It showed the ratings for the players that have one, others show “NR” (not rated). I had to laugh at some of them for being so wildly inaccurate. For instance, Mark G. shows a rating of 2.6. Mark is actually in the 3.5 range. There’s a local woman who was showing a rating of 3.8, and there is no way that is correct, she’s definitely in the 3.0 range.

One problem occurs when you do DUPR games only with players that are approximately your own age and gender and/or within the same group of players. You can end up overrated.

Another problem is that if you always play with players that are a lower skill level than you, then it can be hard to move up.

Number of days on a court: 921
Number of total hours: 3,438.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 209.5

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

Thursday, April 2, 2026 (Court Day #920)

It was wet on Tuesday so tonight was my first time playing since Sunday.

Earthquake

This morning at about 1:40 a.m., I was suddenly woken up by my house getting thrown back-and-forth. It was an earthquake. And a decent sized one at that. I was at work in a second story office in October 1989 when the big quake struck and took out a number of buildings in downtown Santa Cruz. Today’s quake wasn’t quite as strong and lasted far shorter—only about three seconds.

My wife told me before she left for work that it was a “4 point something” earthquake, but why it felt more intense than that was that the epicenter was only a few miles away in Boulder Creek.

One of my staff, who is not native to California, was pretty shook up, literally, by the earthquake. She said that she didn’t go back to sleep and instead spent four hours on the phone with her mother in Europe. Me? I was tired and was back asleep within a few minutes. Earthquakes are nothing new to me.

Skypark

I set the security alarm after work at about 6:20 p.m. then headed to Scotts Valley.

It was sunny and 64° when I arrived in Scotts Valley about 6:30 p.m. Sunset was still an hour away.

It was busy enough that I needed to park down the street and around the corner.

(Photo)

It was very busy, in fact, it was so busy that there wasn’t enough room in the paddle rack for all the waiting paddles. There were 32 on the courts, 16 paddles in the rack and another 5 or 6 paddles either jammed between the rack and the fence or lying on the ground next to the rack, waiting to get in. That’s over 50 people.

A main topic of discussion tonight was the earthquake. A few people said that they simply slept through it.

There were no games of major note tonight, it was hard to be choosy about partners without extending already long waits even longer.

Number of days on a court: 920
Number of total hours: 3,435
Number of paid coaching hours: 209.5

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

Sunday, March 29, 2026 (Court Day #919)

While I was out walking the dog after dinner last night, someone in our neighborhood mentioned that it’s supposed to be quite a bit warmer again today, in the high 70s, then drop back into the 60s tomorrow. 

My 4-week classes ended this past Sunday and now I have a two-month break from teaching. Between travel with family and work in April and May, it was not practical for me to teach. Plus, there is the changeover from Rec.us handling class registrations to the Scott Valley Parks & Rec Department handling it themselves. I have a strong suspicion that there are features that I am going to miss from the Rec system. For instance, when students signed up for my classes, I received text and email notices. I don’t believe that is the case with the City of Scotts Valley.

Knee

As I drove to the courts, I was wondering how my right knee would hold up. It’s been bothering me more since Thursday night. Rain is predicted for next week so I may get a forced break from playing.

Brommer

I pulled into the Brommer parking lot at 8:31 a.m. and it was about half full.

I got into a game with an early morning regular, John, against a couple of opponents. Midway through the game I made an error and apologize to my partner. John chuckled and replied, “You are the only reason we are even in this game!” It’s true that I was playing a fairly clean game, but it wasn’t enough and we lost by a sizable margin.

Oops

I played a game with Aaron, the tan tattooed guy, against Kim and Dave Ryan. The biggest takeaway in that game was after Dave made a second winner passing shot off my side down the sideline, Aaron stopped and pointed something out. “I’m covering 80% of the court. You have to cover the sideline.” And he was absolutely correct. It’s kind of embarrassing. Dave was pretty much right across from me straight ahead, but I should’ve been slightly to my right and trusted my partner more for the middle.

Young Visitor

I played a wide assortment of games over the five hours that I was at Brommer today. The most unusual and interesting game of the day involved a young man named Ryan who was visiting along with his parents from Fresno. When I asked, Ryan said that he is in the seventh grade. Ryan takes after his dad and is on the shorter end of the height spectrum.

I chose Ryan as my partner, not expecting much. But we won 11-5 vs. John and an Asian woman named Kim. Ryan’s serve is better than quite a few adults that I’ve seen.

More Games

Ryan’s dad Jeff and I played a game together. He and I lost 11-13 versus Bruce (whom I had not seen much in recent months) and tall John.

Next up, John and I teamed up and won 11-2 versus Bruce and lefty Greg. The loss was not on Bruce.

One More Game

Marquis talked me into one more game. I played with Navi against him and another Marcus. That was a very long game. We ended up winning 11–8. I was completely exhausted.

We wrapped up that game at 1:31 p.m. I’d been playing for five hours straight with only very short breaks between games. I couldn’t ask for a much better situation as far as rolling from game to game the game. Aside from a few games early on, all the games were strong.

It was 81°F as I drove home. I was pretty sweaty. At least, sweaty for me. I don’t get drenched like some guys.

Ouch

Early on in the morning, I got hit on my hand with the ball and the bone behind my pointer finger and knuckle. That was a good stinger. The bummer thing was later when I got hit in the exact same spot again. I noticed my hand was swollen a little bit in that spot, and when I tried to close my hand, there was pain. I know there is no broken bones, but it was definitely a good bruise.

My playing was a little sloppy early on the morning, but as I continued, my play got better. Considering how tired I was I was kind of surprised that I played reasonably well in my last few games.

New Skill Needed?

Dan Dewey has his lobs down perfectly. Just high enough to be out of reach, but low enough to make it a challenge to get around them. I think I need to start developing a “back-to-the-net tweener” to combat it.

Now, as far as skills that are continuing to prove to be solid, is running to the net at full speed but still dinking the ball over the net low and gentle. I haven’t messed one of these up for a while now… not that you regularly get opportunities.

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Monday, March 30, 2026 (No Play)

Proton paddles have been banned from pro use under the UPA umbrella. The UPA charges a substantial sponsorship fee to allow paddle makers to have their paddles be used by a pro players in their leagues. Proton didn’t pay their bill to the UPA and now the UPA has banned the paddles use in the PPA and Major League Pickleball, as well as their minor league events. I keep hearing that the paddles are banned in pro and amateur play. But this is misleading. That’s purely a UPA-centric thing. The paddles can still be used in the APP and also all USA Pickleball events. USA Pickleball does not charge outrageous fees to manufacturers to let players to use given paddles. It’s simply a fee for testing paddles for approval, there’s not marketing fee involved. The UPA has a testing/approval fee, plus a marketing fee for pros to use a paddle.

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Tuesday, March 31, 2026 (No Play)

This morning, my wife was checking the weather and told me that there was a good chance that I might be able to play pickleball tonight. I was raining this morning and it was raining fairly heavily when I went home for lunch around 1 p.m. With the amount of rain coming down, I figured there is no chance that I would be able to play. Then the rain stopped shortly after 3 p.m. and the sun made some brief appearances poking out through the clouds. My closing time at work at 6 p.m., aside from an occasional puddle, the streets were dry. However, I had decided to leave all my pickleball gear at home at lunchtime. I debated running home and then out to Scotts Valley, but in the end, I decided to simply stay at work and catch up on the myriad of projects demanding my time. So, tonight, I was home by 7:45 p.m. instead of 8:45 p.m. My right knee will probably appreciate the rest.

At 8:35 p.m., I took the dogs out back and noticed it was raining. Maybe players got in games and maybe they didn’t.

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Wednesday, April 1, 2026 (No Play)

This morning, I posted the news to our local Santa Cruz Pickleball Facebook group…

Of course, it was an April Fools joke. From the comments, I got a few people until they realized the day!

Weezer

So, there’s a band called Weezer. I don’t know all that much about them, other than I’ve know people who are fans and the band is well known. So they are going on a 32-city tour but what’s interesting is they are are integrating pickleball tournaments with fans as part of the tour! Wild!
https://www.cleveland.com/news/2026/03/popular-rock-band-sets-new-national-tour-la-pickleball-tournament.html

Number of days on a court: 919
Number of total hours: 3,433
Number of paid coaching hours: 209.5

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