Thursday, June 25, 2026 (Court Day #940)
The plantar fasciitis in my left foot is improving. Stretching seems to make a huge difference. Last night, I ordered a soft splint, which will keep my foot closer to 90° angle, which keeps the fascia stretched out overnight. The claim is that the fascia heals overnight in a shorter relaxed foot position, then it can tear when stretched out by walking around in the morning. I will say that morning is typically the worst, however, on Sunday afternoon, the pain in my foot was significant. Quite a bit more so than it would typically be in the morning. Regardless, it was a little tight and only very mildly sore as I headed to Scotts Valley tonight.
On My Way
It was sunny and 66° as I drove to Scotts Valley after work. I got one of my staff to close up te business since I haven’t gotten to play much lately and I really want to get in more than my typical 90 minutes tonight.
I realized that forgot my sports sunglasses at home, but I keep a pair of sunglasses for driving in my car regardless, so I used those instead.
Skypark
Being early to the courts was nice, was able to find myself a spot in the parking lot.
I was walking into the courts at 6:06 p.m.
There were three or four games going on, but I was the odd man out. I spent about 10 minutes waiting for someone to show up. Eventually, Aaron Huang arrived and he and I started warming up. Shreyas arrived, and we started warming him up and then Alec finished whatever game he was in and joined us.
I played an assortment of unmemorable games for the two and half hours I was at Skypark.
The lights went out shortly after 8:30 p.m. and we were in the middle of a game. Aaron Hicks and I were playing against Shreyas and short left-handed Eric. We played for about 10 minutes after wrapping up the lopsided win.
I do have to give some credit to Eric. There was one rally where there was a high ball and I slammed that thing really good. But Eric still managed to get the ball back anyway. I’m pretty good about getting slams like that back myself so it was a taste of almost like playing in a mirror.
I was not playing my best tonight, though I was serving pretty well.
Pro Accident
Earlier today at an MLP event in New York, a large baseline LED scoreboard blew over briefly trapping Rachel Rohrabacher’s leg. It looked really bad, but she was relatively ok, though she didn’t return to play.
Here is an articles about it:
https://www.thedinkpickleball.com/baseline-scoreboard-falls-on-player-during-mlp-new-york-match/
…and another…
https://www.timesnownews.com/sports/pickleball/frightening-scene-at-mlp-new-york-as-wind-blows-led-scoreboard-onto-rachel-rohrabacher-article-154784734
And Nico the Lefty’s take on the incident (with a warning that there is foul language):
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaBiWpsyEDS
Friday, June 26, 2026 (No Play)
It’s seriously getting time to retire one of my pairs of pickleball shoes! (I need a pickleball show sponsor!)
Saturday, June 27, 2026 (No Play)
Jennifer Lucore, retired pro women’s champion, added a new entry to her blog:
https://allpickleball.com/first-pro-pickleball-tour/
It’s really cool to revisit history. The first pro tournaments were held a few months after I started playing pickleball. Jennifer has a couple of links on that page to blog posts that she made at the time. (At the moment, they say April 2016 and May 2016, but I just emailed her telling her that those are supposed to be 2017.)
A kick is this photo that Jennifer shared as a part of a collage of pro participants:
I commented on Jennifer’s social media post promoting this new blog post. I said, “That kind of looks like Tyson but with no tattoos!” (Granted, I was viewing it on my little phone screen.) She replied, “yes, it’s Tyson”. Wow. Tyson is much more decorative these days.
You can see Tyson’s own take on the passage of time here.
Funny!
Here’s an amusing photo of a future pickleball player in the womb:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DZsH8Z-xFMR/
Number of days on a court: 940
Number of total hours: 3,485
Number of paid coaching hours: 218.5
To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.
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