Friday, July 4, 2025 (Court Day #825)
While it was only 61°F, it felt warmer in the bright sun. With it being a holiday, club play at Brommer Park would likely be a zoo. So I decided to try my luck at Derby Park instead.
I walked into the courts at 9:40 a.m. and there were a number of familiar faces that I haven’t seen in quite some time. Eric Schmidt and Ted B. were there along with others. I got into a game with Ted against Glenn and Eric.
Jordan R. arrived at mid morning. He said that he had forgotten that Brommer Park would be a club day, drove there first and found that it was crazy there, so he came over to Derby. He also shared that the traffic was bad.
For at least the first two hours, I felt really bad about the quality of my play. I felt a little bit better in the last part of the session though that may have also been due to the lower quality of opponents.
Nicholas
My son Nicholas arrived around 11:30 a.m. He had mentioned that he might be coming, but nonetheless, I was kind of surprised to see him. We played games with and against each other. While Nicholas continues to be inconsistent, he is getting better and better.
There was a guy there named Dan who I’ve never met before and a shorter, very talkative fellow named Michael who I had also never seen before. Dan and I played it against Nicholas and Michael and won in a lopsided fashion.
Dan complimented me twice during different parts of a game together about me having really good drop shots. Nice to hear.
We mix things up and Dan wanted to play with Michael, so Nicholas and I teamed up. In our last game, Nicholas and I beat Dan and Michael 11–2.
We wrapped things up at 12:50 p.m. then we headed home to get ready to head to my folks’ house for an annual big gathering of relatives for independence Day.
Oh, any my Uncle Warren shared this yesterday, pretty funny:
Saturday, July 5, 2025 (No Play)
I sent an appeal to DUPR about my rating. I figure the odds are bad of them doing anything, but it’s worth a shot.
I’m a PPR Certified Coach and USA Pickleball Ambassador and can tell you that I am NOT a 3.3! LOL! I haven’t done a lot of DUPR events and getting opponents to verify scores in non-DUPR events when you beat them is often like pulling teeth, so I haven’t even bothered to try lately.
I very recently did a local grassroots event and got dropped to 3.376… which cracked several people up when I told them. Aside from it just being inaccurate, my biggest concern is that I don’t want my one bad game (coming off of games against weak players can be a difficult transition for me!) to throw off a bunch of other people’s DUPR ratings with a ripple effect. I’ve entered a number of 4.0 tournaments and been in the mix.
For comparison, over 5 years ago, back when I was doing USAP tournaments, my rating was 3.58 and I’ve improved quite a bit since then. I know you can only judge from data in, but my initial rating is actually fairly accurate. If I’m “on” 4.5, if I’m really “off” 3.5, and most of the time is in the middle.
Thanks for all that you do there.
Great Pickleball
Here’s an impressive rally to feast your eyes upon:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DI1I8-IAnNw/
Rallie Ball Machine
My son Nicholas was in town for the holiday weekend and he was a bit bored after dinner. I suggested that we finally break out the rally ball machine and set it up. The insect said to charge the battery before use, but I took about 10 minutes before he had a green light so I think it was already pretty well charged. The only thing that needs to be installed was the ball stirring paddle and that only took a few minutes. I flipped the ball hopper over and set it on top after opening the brand new box of Franklin X balls I loaded up the hopper with as many as it would reasonably take.. After figuring out with the remote control, it’s only for adjusting and not starting. I use the app that I’ve already installed on my phone to get the machine to shoot a few balls, which it did admirably. Purely by chance, none of the balls ended up in the fountain across the yard.
It’s too late in the evening to really do anything with the ball machine, so I rolled it up to the barbecue and covered it with plastic for the time being.
Network TV
Top pickleball pro Ben Johns made an appearance on CNN yesterday morning and did a great job representing the sport on national television:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DLsXeRhOgDN
(Make sure to click on the right arrow to get the the companion videos of his interview.)
And here’s an article about Ben’s appearance:
https://pickleball.com/people/ben-johns-talks-pickleball-on-cnn-you-can-play-with-anybody-and-have-a-great-time
Number of days on a court: 825
Number of total hours: 3,216
Number of paid coaching hours: 147.5
To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.
Leave a Reply