Monday, May 11, 2026 (Court Day #931)

My brother John is out of town for work and my sister‘s husband Mike was going to run my niece and nephew to school in Scotts Valley this morning but he came down with a bad sore throat. Last night, my sister asked me to take the kids instead and—of course—I said yes.

Alarm!

I was brutally awakened at 4:11 a.m.— it was the burglar alarm at work! I immediately sat upright and grabbed my phone. I remotely turned off the alarm and then checked the security cameras on my phone. It appeared that everything was fine. Having dealt with real break-ins, this kind of thing generates a lot of adrenaline and anxiety. I ended up being awake for the next two hours. It was miserable.

Brommer Park

I arrived at Brommer at 8:15 a.m. We’d be having our board meeting shortly after organized club play ended at noon. We had the whiteboard out so I ended up playing with random players.

I was continuing to play left-handed today to keep my tennis elbow from getting worse. It’s still mostly mild, I want to keep it that way—or even better, give it time to heal!

Janell and I won 11-8 versus regular Ed and lefty Daniel Nachman. Janell is one of those players who plays much better than you’d expect.

For my last game of the day, I was paired with Shawnté against Cary and Marquis. After the game, I was talking to Marquis and he said he can switch and do a lefty forehand, but when doing lefty backhand, he wiffs on the ball. Fortunately, the only time you’d do a lefty backhand is when you can’t play at all with your right.

At about 12:15 p.m., I dashed over to our monthly Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board meeting over in the picnic area for my role as board VP.

Overall, there was nothing of significant note in the games today.

Missing Paddle Found

Deanna (Matt Zachary’s syster) told me that found my missing paddle—as mentioned last time—at Derby Park. Apparently, someone demoed it (fine) but left it out somewhere on the courts and didn’t return it the bag with the rest. Thanks, Deanna!

Wednesday, May 13, 2026 (No Play)

Joola has reached settlements with two of the eleven companies that it recently sued over what it considered violations of its patents. Those two settling companies are Paddletek and Pro XR who agreed to pay Joola a portion of each paddle they sell with infringing technology:
https://www.thedinkpickleball.com/joola-paddletek-group-settle-patent-dispute-agree-to-royalty-payments

Number of days on a court: 931
Number of total hours: 3,467.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 209.5

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