Tuesday, June 4, 2024 (Court Day #669)

At 6:58 p.m., I was on the path walking to courts. It’s the warmest evening that I remember. My brother texted a photo earlier of his thermometer reading 94°F. He lives in Scotts Valley about ten blocks from the Skypark Courts.

The dry erase board was out when I arrived, but it wasn’t being used and it didn’t get used tonight at all.

Missing Women

It was a bit unusual tonight in that there were almost no women there. I was told there was a women’s league going on at Brommer Park tonight. I saw only one or two women. Spencer’s mixed partner Mo showed up later, but it was a whole lot of just guys.

Weather

It was very warm and unusually muggy. It made for a very sweaty and sticky evening. At one point, I had to get out a towel and wipe off my forehead. If I have ever had to do that before at Skypark in the evening in the years that I’ve been playing there, it was just once.

Good Games

Tonight was pretty much all good games. The really fun one was me partnered with Ethan against Marquis (“Marcus”) and David. They were standing there looking for a fourth. I wasn’t feeling super confident and said, “I don’t know . . . I could be the goat in this game.” (I didn’t mean Greatest Of All Time, I was thinking more “sheep and goats” . . . goats are the undesired!) But Ethan encouraged me and said, “You can play with me.”

And this is not any of the regular David, this David is a little bit taller and older David, who remembered me although I didn’t remember him. David asked if I was the Andrew who was having the arm problem. I told him, yes, shoulder, but then I added after the next rally, I had had really bad tennis elbow. In any case, he remembered me. I only had a very vague fuzzy recollection of him after our conversation. It’s been many months, no question. Maybe even pre-pandemic—that’d be four years in the past!

Anyway, that game was a lot of fun. Sure, I had a handful of bad shots, but on the flip side, I also made some really good shots as well. Ethan was a machine, as you would expect. He complimented me mid-game on my resets. I remember one rally where I was rock solid on my dinks. There was one shot that I popped up a volley while at the kitchen, Ethan said I probably should have let that one bounce. Yes, volleys are harder to control than shots off the bounce. I’ve been trying harder to try and take most shots out of the air while at the kitchen. It’s getting all the decisions perfect—“volley or bounce?”—that is hard.

Dropped

Also, as I was walking on the path back to the remote parking lot, I got a call from David L.—of David and Minori—saying that I had left my wallet at the court. Unfortunately, I have the habit of being a bit lazy and not always completely closing the zipper on my backpack. It’s more efficient, but a bad habit. My phone fell out once about a year ago, and this time it was my wallet. Someone also reached out to Paul Winn to get my number, but David already had it. I walked back, hung out with big Mike Diaz and Aaron (OG, not the big linebacker-size lefty Aaron) and chatted. At 10:15 p.m., I called it a night and left them to finish their beers.

Ugh

As I stepped out of the car at home, I was sore and stiff. Boy.

Wednesday, June 5, 2024 (No Play)

The big news of the week is the continuing saga of the Joola (“you-la”) Gen 3 paddles being delisted/unapproved by USA Pickleball.

The story goes that the wrong paddles were submitted by Joola for approval. USA Pickleball approved the paddles—using their third-party testing service—then a different paddle was shipped out by Joola to the masses with the approval label on them. These paddles sent to consumers were tested and failed. Originally, it was chalked up to a clerical error on the part of Joola . . . but it came out today that the second set of paddles failed too! Uh, oh. Big problem. Now there are thousands of paddles “in the wild” that are not legal to use in tournaments. I will point out that this is NOT the fault of USA Pickleball. Inconsistency in manufacturing is a problem with the maker.

Health

I should have iced my knee last night. Also, my back is tight.

New Courts

So Karen Haselden, another local certified pickleball coach, has five beautiful new courts on her and her husband’s property in Scotts Valley. She’s calling it “Quail Valley Pickleball.” They even have an LLC for it—probably a good idea, you never know if someone is going to sue you when they are a klutz and hurt themselves! Dave Cox graciously reached out about joining him and having me play there on Friday night, but it’s $15. I’m not on generous retired firefighter’s pension, so I’m going to play for free on Skypark on Thursday night instead. I’ll probably go to Karen’s place at least once just to see what’s up.

More on Joola

So also today, later, Joola issued a statement basically saying they are unhappy with the USAP decision and say “we are confident the current Gen paddles are materially and structurally the same as those approved by USAP in September 2023”. They go on with:
“We plan to dispute USAP’s decision to remove Gen3 paddles from the list, and the process employed to do so, in forthcoming legal proceedings.”

So, it sounds like they plan to sue USA Pickleball. Such a headache. Someone said online that something similar happened with Joola a few years ago when one of their paddles failed a “field test”. Perhaps they are just pushing the envelope so much that the variance in manufacturing can tip the scale and a paddle can fail. There’s risk of pushing too much, of course.

Mindset at the Net

Here’s a good reminder that I tell my students. Expect the speed-up. Prepare mentally and physically for it. And If you don’t get it, you have time to adjust to a slower shot.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7z9YaNgRTw/

Number of days on a court: 669
Number of total hours: 2,845.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 37.5

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