Sunday, August 30, 2026 (Court Day #960)
Being that I had no obligations this afternoon, that is, I’m not teaching, there would be no limit to how long I could stay and play. I ended up staying up after midnight watching and making notes about a work-related video, so I slept in this morning. I woke up for good about 8:45 a.m.
It was 63° and sunny as I made my way to play. There were a few stray puffy clouds, but they were primarily off the coast.
Injuries
The plantar fasciitis in my left foot flares up, then almost goes away, but generally doesn’t bother me. My right knee continues to bother me. Last night, while walking downhill towards downtown to have dinner with my brother and my wife, my knee was complaining. One of the things I can be thankful for is that while playing, my knee and the plantar fasciitis rarely bothers me.
Brommer Park
I pulled in at exactly 9:30 a.m. to find that there were still a handful of parking spots open.
I ended up in a game with a man named Adrian from San Jose. We get visitors at Brommer fairly frequently.
Mickey and I played together against a team of Hing and Cesar. They got clobbered. They scored three points. I will say there were a handful of good rallies, however.
Nasty Nelsons
Dan Dewey told me that the title of this blog entry should be Nasty Nelsons. Here’s why!
Dan and I were playing a game against Kim and Anthony. On the first serve of the game, I went for a nasty nelson aiming for Anthony. I missed. Dan and I pulled out to a very significant lead over time. Each time I was to serve, I went for a nasty nelson. There was at least five or six in a row, based on their score, most of those were headed for Kim. I missed on every single one.
As I was about to serve again, I was across from Kim and Kim said, “If you go for a nasty Nelson one more time…” She had a smile on her face, but I wasn’t sure if she was getting annoyed or not, so I served normally from there on out. Even with me throwing away a bunch of serves on nasty nelson attempts, Dan and I still walked away with a solid win. Our win came on a dink battle where Dan hit a ball a little bit high and Kim drove the ball very hard at me. Afterward, Anthony said that he thought at that moment that the rally was over, but instead, I punched the ball pack at Kim with a slight downward angle and she hit the ball back into the net. We won that rally and won the game.
In one game, I was playing with Mickey and I went for a forehand in the middle, but Mickey went for it with his backhand and hit my finger. My finger was sore as I drove home.
Barlows
Jon Barlow and his son Ryan came today shortly after noon. I have played with Ryan before but it had been quite some time. He and I teamed up against his dad and Kim. Ryan is a lefty and we did a half stack. Ryan started out a little bit rough—it was his first game after all—and he was making a fair number of errors and admitted as much. As a result, we found ourselves down, but then he started to dial things and we started closing the gap. We were down 1-10, but then got within a few points before losing the game. Had the game been to 15 instead of 11, we might’ve carried our momentum to a win, but that was not to be the case.
I finished up my last game at 1:40 p.m.
And?
Overall, I felt happy about my play today. They were a number of shots where I impressed myself. On the flipside, there were a few shots after which I was musing, “What the heck was I thinking?” like when I hit a crosscourt speedup where the ball was too low so the ball merely went up to Mickey‘s forehand which he hit for a winner. Those are the ones where you kick yourself. Over the course of the four hours, there was one, maybe two, lobs where I hit them too short and they were hit off the court at an angle for a winner.
I’m at the point now where progressing mostly isn’t about hitting good shots when you have time and preparation. It’s been hitting good shots while being uncomfortable and off-balance as well as making good split-second decisions at the net.
I don’t mention it in these blog posts, but as a matter of course, if I’m going up against two players of unequal skill, I will go out of my way to try and hit more balls to the stronger player. Sure, it’s nice to win games, but I would rather lose and be challenged then to win and not be.
Balls
Franklin has a new ball coming out, the X-44:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcrQZiTyjQq
And ball density test on Franklin X-40, new Franklin (X-44), Lifetime Pro 48:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcsA7zmRf_E
Number of days on a court: 960
Number of total hours: 3,531.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 231.5
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