Tuesday, March 7, 2023. (Court Day #583)

At least a week ago. Binh had arranged for four of us to play this morning at 9 a.m. Fortunately, there is a break in the seemingly constant rain lately—though more rain is expected later in the week.

We had Jon Barlow, Avery, Binh, and me. That’s a great combination, and made for some really good games. Jon was the best player and Avery is very solid. Binh and I spent much of the morning losing game after game. The only game we won was when Binh and I played against Jon and Kent who took over for Avery.

Later, we played some games against Ethan—the Asian UCSC student—and Steve the spin master. The last two games were against them. Ethan is easily a 4.0 player. My right knee starting to hurt a little bit and I have a SCALPEL league match at 4:30 today. So I left at 11:30 after 2 1/2 hours of play.

Those are some really good games. I don’t mind losing, it points out the areas that I need to improve.

First League Match!

And I left work at 4:07 PM, and drove headfirst into rush-hour traffic. But the traffic wasn’t really that bad, and I arrived in Brommer Park at about 4:20 pm.

But as I pulled in the parking lot it was pretty full, with only a few parking spots left. It turned out that all the cars were not Pickleball players—there was some kind of baseball game going on in the field next to the pickle ball courts. But even then, there were a number of games going on. It seems these days there are games going on at Brommer at any time of the day and there’d likely be played there at night if they had lights!

Warming up

My partner Matt was warming up with Peter. Anne was there, but she was dealing with a puppy in a dog crate that she was fostering from the pound. The puppy would later be whining now and then during our match, but it wasn’t particularly distracting.

We warmed up for about 10 minutes or so with Peter across for me, then we switch it up so that we were warming up with our own partners.

Game #1, Best of 3

We started the match with Matt and myself facing into the low sun. Peter agreed that we should switch sides at 6 since that seemed to be the most fair. Matt and I scored the first point but in short order we found ourselves down 1-4. It was a bit of a wake-up call. This was not going to be a walk in the park.

But as the game continued on, we got back into it and then pulled out ahead 6-4, then it was time to switch sides and put the sun at our backs. We got dominant and we scored 5 of the next 6 points and won the first game 11-5.

Game #2, Best of 3

In the second game, starting with the sun at our backs, Matt and I went on a bit of a run and took the lead, continuing where we left off in the first game. Service went back-and-forth the number of times, but we eventually won this game, again by a score of 11-5.

And with that, Matt and I won our first league match.

More Play

Once the official league match is done, since we were there already, we decided to play some more games. I played with Anne for a couple of games and then Peter and I play the game together taking on Matt and Ann.

Matt had to go which is good for Conner because Conner asked if he could join us for a game . . . so he needed one of us to leave. While we waited for Conner‘s game to finish off, Peter and I drilled a little bit but it wasn’t long.

Conner played with Peter and I played with Anne. They went on a run then we came back to make a game of it, but still they end up winning. Conner had a great inside-out volley that took me by surprise at the net and I got jammed up—a very nice shot.

My right knee was bugging me, so it was time for me to leave at 6 p.m.

The Other League Match

While I was back at work with waiting to give my brother a ride home, I talked to René about the other league match for our team of four. On the balance, I was expecting René and Evan to pull off a win in their league match. They had lost their match in three closely contended games. She and Evan had made the mistake of targeting Colleen when they probably should have been targeting John F.

Night Time

I added our match scores to Conner’s Google spreadsheet for the SCALPEL league.

I found this video, it’s interesting.

In it is mentioned an incident in Santa Rosa—about three hours north of here—that happened in November last year. Someone poured motor oil on some pickleball courts and left a note threatening pickleball players.

I found an article about it:
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/santa-rosa-tennis-pickleball-courts-to-reopen-after-vandalism/

Wednesday, March 8, 2023 (No Play)

Matt texted me this morning asking if we are responsible to add our games scores to DUPR. I logged into my DUPR account and, not finding yesterday’s game entered, I added them in. DUPR has my rating as a 3.99. I’m not quite sure why it keeps going up. Maybe my opponents from the tournament a few months ago have their ratings going up and that’s affecting mine. I don’t know how that works. Honestly, I don’t think I’m a 3.99. That’s virtually a 4.0 and I know I’m not that good.

Matt said our next match will be against the Team with Casey and his dad Tim along with Nate and Tim H. (the tennis coach). Casey and Tim are formidable.

Goofing Around

I was just messing around and designed a draft league logo to run by the organizer:

[April 8: A nice fellow—Eric Ferrante—pointed out that I have a typo in my draft logo. “Enthiast” versus “Enthusiast”. (I’m not sure where “us” went!) Kudos to Eric, that’s something I would have done myself, let the creator know of the error!]

Saturday, March 11, 2023 (No Play)

Maria and I had set up a tentative plan for a lesson with her kids this morning, but it was raining, so we postponed.

Oh, I sent that logo to Conner—who does a fabulous job organizing the SCALPEL league—and he had already designed a logo. Apparently, it didn’t register with me. Mine only took me about 10-15 minutes and was intended as a starting point, so I’m now on to other things since my logo concept is not going to be used.

This morning, my wife said her mom told her that pickleball killed a doctor down in her area—San Diego—recently. If found the article:
https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/beloved-point-loma-doctor-suffers-head-injury-dies-of-talk-and-die-syndrome
The key here if you get a head injury while on blood thinners, you need to get your brain scanned for internal bleeding.

Wednesday, March 15, 2023 (No Play)

It rained Sunday and has been raining regularly since. We finally have some sun today.

I woke up on Monday with a pull in my right calf. Just one more injury to deal with! The back of my right hand is still bothering me. I went to give my departing son a hug goodbye on Sunday afternoon and my hand was painful in that simple process. It’s improving, but it seems very gradual.

Tournament

The good news is the chance of rain on Sunday in Templeton is down to 24% from 37% last week. The schedule was sent out and play for 3.5 35+ is starting at noon. That means that I can sleep in my own bed, drive down on Sunday morning at 8 a.m., and I should get there 90 minutes before play starts. Hmmm. I just remembered that Highway 1 has been closed since last weekend due to severe flooding in Monterey County. I’ll take a look in a couple of days.

Thursday, March 16, 2023 (No Play)

I’m still hurting with that pulled right calf muscle. And while the back of my right wrist is improving, it’s still sore when I bend my hand down at the wrist. Arg.

YouTube fed me this nice video interview of Anna Leigh Waters, who is far and away the #1 female player is the world right now.

She carries herself well for a 16-year-old.

Tournament

While there’s now a 44% chance of rain on Sunday morning, one weather app says the amount of it will be minimal. Maybe I’ll get to play Sunday after all. I’m going to be “limping in” between my hand sprain, my pulled clad muscle, and my right knee still not 100%.

Friday, March 17, 2023 (No Play)

The rain is becoming more and more of a potential problem for the tournament on Sunday with 48% at 10 a.m. though total precipitation is supposed to be light, 0.2″ for the day . . . though it’s supposed to be concentrated around the time our match is supposed to start at noon!

Book by Its Cover

This was a funny video short:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CpWV8imjLC9/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

I recall a year into playing I was beaten by an 83-year-old. You never know!

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Maria texted a photo, she and Nicole won silver in their 3.0 category at Zin 2 Win in Templeton today! Congrats to them!

Saturday, March 18, 2023 (No Play)

Stephen Colbert on pickleball…
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cph06R8AA75/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY%3D

Here’s a news article about what Mr. Colbert is talking about:
https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2023/03/03/arlington-pickleball-war-dc

Rain Marching In

As I type this line at 2:41 p.m., there is a 78% chance of rain at 9 a.m. and a 50% chance of rain at noon. It looks like it’ll peak at 0.05″ of rain at 9 a.m. That’s light rain, but more than just drizzle.

Here’s a video example of what 0.05″ of rain looks like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asI4uUhzhv0

The bugger would be driving down 2 1/2 hours (about $25-$30 of gas), not playing, then driving back another 2 1/2 hours (another $25-$30 of gas). That would be 5 hours of my day wasted on the road instead of enjoying my one day off this week.

Sunday, March 19, 2023 (No Play)

I had Ted lined up to cover opening up for me at Derby today, but it was raining, so he asked me to send out a cancel notice, which I did.

There were a lot of back and forth texts with Binh and me this morning. First, the start times were delayed 2 hours, then the match formats were shortened and times moved back up. Then at 9 a.m., when I was about 10 minutes into my drive to Templeton, Binh called me and told me that all tournament events were canceled for the day. I took the next off ramp, and headed back for home. I was quite ready to spend 5 hours driving today to do the tournament, but it was not to be. I’m just glad our event was supposed to start at noon. Had it been at 9 a.m., I would have driven down last night only to drive back this morning. That would have been miserable . . . other than maybe having dinner with Binh and Mark G. and perhaps others. That would have been fun.

League Play

Evan and I hashed out a time to play with Tim F. and Tim H. for our league match that was supposed to happen last week. It’ll be tomorrow night at Skypark, weather permitting, but that’s looking good.

René and Matt lost in their match to Casey and Nate, 11-8, 11-7, so we’re 1-2 on the season so far.

I was trying to come up with a clever names for our team using our initials “MARE” and moon craters and pickleball, but also on a whim suggested we could just name ourselves something like “Death Ballers”. Of course, Evan liked that and it cracked up René, so we are now “Deathballers”!

Pro Play

I found this post, this is a fantastic rally from a pro match:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CnC8Kv8qu7z

Number of days on a court: 583
Number of total hours: 2,585.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 2

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