Sunday, August 21, 2022 (Court Day #534)
I arrived at Derby Park about 8:50 a.m. to set up and there are two games of doubles going on already when I arrived. René and Rick were off at a tournament today, and I think there may have been others gone too as there were not very many truly advanced players at Derby today. Charles, Binh and me and that was about it. The next two strongest were Adrian and Ted.
Aside from my first two games of the day, most of the games I played today were pretty decent, however there weren’t any games with truly all strong advanced players—three of the four was as good as we could get. As a result, we were splitting the best two players to make the games more evenly balanced . . . which is unfortunate for an advanced game.
Long Game
There was a game mid-morning with Binh and Ted against Adrian and me. It was a very balanced game that dragged on and on. They finally won 17-15. That was the highest scoring game that I’ve ever played in. Binh said his was at tournament where the score climbed to 23-21. Wow. That’s something!
On Fire
I was very happy with my play today. Sure, I made some mistakes. For some points I should’ve opted for a soft shot instead of a driving shot, but overall I played very well. Ted and I played against Charles and Binh. That would be a difficult game with Charles (the strongest) and Binh (fairly equal to me) and me partnered with Ted, the least strong of the group. As Ted said, I was “on fire” in that game. I went on a run of points which ended when I hit a shot in the white tape. “Andrew is back to earth,” observed Charles. Ted and I were leading 6-0. Binh and Charles did come back and they eventually won by a couple of points. That was the expected result.
Last game ended about 12:30 p.m., and I spent another 20 minutes storing club equipment—thankfully, Rick had done a bunch of the work—and talking to other players who were still hanging out.
Nicholas
While my son Nicholas hasn’t been back to the courts since his first weekend back home, a woman stopped me and asked, “Isn’t Nicholas your son? He is such a nice young man.” Chip off the old block! I told him that he has a fan club!
Winners
I checked in with René tonight to see how they did at the tournament. Rick and René won gold at the U.S. Seniors Pickleball event at San Juan Bautista today. Congrats to them!
Private Game
Binh wanted to arrange a game tomorrow night. He got Charles and I told Binh that I’d be interested but I’d have to make sure I was wasn’t forgetting something. Later, I got a blessing from my wife to play and I reached out to Eric S. as a fourth, but he wasn’t available. So I texted Jason, who will be my partner for Chamisal next month, and he said was going to be back in town just in time to join us. This should be fun!
Number of days on a court: 534
Number of total hours: 2,441.5
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