Tuesday, September 29, 2026 (Court Day #973)

Dave Cox invited me to play tomorrow morning at Brommer Park yesterday, but I had an interview finalized for tomorrow morning. I can’t conduct an interview and play pickleball at the same time, unfortunately. So I had to tell Dave no.

I managed to leave work before closing to try to get in more than the miserable one hour of play that I’ve been sometimes getting lately with this new temporary test of the lights going off at 8 p.m. instead of 8:30 p.m.

By 5:55 p.m., I was on the freeway and heading to Scotts Valley. While the sun was dipping below the trees, it was still 68°F with clear skies.

Skypark

In my first game, I missed three or four of my serves. My first one landed at least 4 feet wide of the court. But my next serve is closer, but it was too far the other way by a few inches. It was enough that Alec jokingly called across the net, “Are you Andrew‘s twin? What did you do with him?” Yes, my serving was inexplicably wonky. But, by the end of the evening, three of my serves in a row were returned into the net. Aaron Hicks asked, “What did you put on that ball?“ He was smiling. I smiled back and yelled, “Top spin!“

Play against Marquis, I had a crosscourt dink from my right towards his right. Granted it was a touch high, but I fully expected it to drop into the kitchen and be taken off the bounce. But Marquis is easily over 6 feet tall and simply reached in and volleyed a drive toward my partner! Note to self!

There was one rally where Paul and I were on the ropes. Alec and Shreyes had ball height and angles and they had us running all over the place just trying to get the ball back over the net, however Paul and I were both doing a really great job of covering for each other and we ended up winning the rally. Being in the correct place on the court helps immensely.

I was playing with Mauricio against Aaron Hicks and big linebacker Mike. We were leading 6-2 when the lights clicked off at 8:05 p.m.

It was still 63°F when I headed home.

And?

This was one of those nights where the lighting really seemed to affect my play. One of the overhead lights in the center of the courts was not working.

My play was inconsistent tonight. I had some stellar shots and then some inexplicable shots. I like to think that I would’ve played a whole lot better without the lighting. It wasn’t just me complaining either. Marquis and Mauricio played against me and Aaron Hicks. And Marquis was complaining multiple times about losing the ball in the lighting in the poor lighting.

Wednesday, September 30, 2026 (No Play)

This is basically my entire pickleball existence, but it’s not every other match, it’s full sessions!
https://www.instagram.com/p/Dd6bAC3S8kK

Tournament

I got Mike Cattivera to commit to the Monterey tournament today. He wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to do it.

Number of days on a court: 973
Number of total hours: 3,556
Number of paid coaching hours: 240.5

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