Thursday, August 11, 2022 (Court Day #531)
This morning, it appeared on social media that CBS would be broadcasting pro pickleball (the PPA summer championships) on their television network:
https://www.pennlive.com/sports/2022/08/cbs-will-broadcast-the-professional-pickleball-association-summer-championships-live-this-month.html
The article is a week old, but I just saw it. Too bad I’ll be working while it’s being broadcast live on Saturday afternoon.
Night Ball
I left work and arrived at Skypark at 6:30 p.m. and discovered a giant pile of mulch blocking the exit from the parking lot. All the regular parking spots were full so I ended up pulling in between a couple of trees.
When I arrived, there were no tennis players to be seen but all eight pickleball courts were full and 10 players were waiting to rotate on. There were more players than courts for a good couple of hours. I got in a variety of games, some were weaker games and some were stronger games.
Losing Mike
Some sad news, “Texas Mike” Ballard is moving to… well… Texas. He’s expecting to be there by the holidays. He’ll be very much missed, he’s one of the stronger players to be found at Skypark.
Games Tonight
The best games were Avery and myself against Charles and Dan—the strong player Dan, not the weaker Dan. Avery and I lost both of the games that we played against them. The first game was probably more on Avery than me, but in the second game I had my share of “less than stellar” shots. Charles and Dan were formidable. When I complimented Avery for his great ATP, he said, ”That’s all I’ve got.” Avery has the smoothest motion for dinks I’ve seen outside of pro players. He just needs a bit more experience. It’ll come.
The lights clicked off at 9:30, just a few minutes after I finished playing against John (the ceramicist, husband of Peggy) and Aaron with younger Dan, who is still a weak player, as my partner. As one would expect, we lost the game and the previous with the same player partnerings.
Before that game, Dan said he was the weakest player and asked to play with the strongest player, John looked at me and said, “Probably Andrew” then he moved to play with Aaron. A compliment.
After the last game, I gave Dan some advice about making sure to return the serve deep, as well as some advice about his positioning on the court so as not to leave a gap between him and his partner. In the case of those last two games, his partner with me.
Chattering
After the lights popped off, seven of us hung out for a while and talked quite a bit about pickleball tournaments, workshops, etc.
Matt said that he follows the San Jose Pickleball Club on social media, and they have addressed the skill discrepancy issue found when signing up for courts by using the DUPR app. By using that, each person gets a rating and there’s a determination where they should be playing or not playing. Personally, I think that’s brilliant and would be really great to help place players properly into appropriate skill groupings. There wouldn’t be much argument—it’s hard to argue with facts and data.
Toward the end of the evening, my back was getting kind of tight and fatigued. I was also pretty tired. I got up early for an 8 a.m. dentist appointment… meaning I didn’t get as much sleep as I normally get. That left me a extra beat.
At 10:45, I finally left the courts with John, Matt, and Paul.
Tournament
Mike, the tournament director for Chamisal, fixed my entry for next month, so I’m in the right event and now matched up with Jason.
As you can see, my UTPR rating (rounded down to 3.0) is followed by my “challenging up” event rating, 3.5. If someone sees this and thinks they’ll have an easier time of things since I’m a “3.0”, they are in for a shock. Jason signed up as a self-designated 3.5, so he gets no parentheses.
Drill Video
Tyson McGuffin had this good dink drill video:
Number of days on a court: 531
Number of total hours: 2,431
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