Thursday, August 17, 2017 (Court Day #59)

I arrived at 6:05 p.m. at Skypark. Like clockwork, I was the odd man out yet once again, sitting alone on the bench watching others with play or warm up. After a few minutes, Janet took pity on me and invited me as the fifth person on their court to warm up with her and her husband Bruce. Then Janet kindly offered me her place in their first game, but I insisted—I had to strongly insist!—that she play. It was only a few minutes before I in a game of my own.

It was a light crowd. 17 people for most of the evening, with people coming and going. Olga and Oleg would be late arrivals again, it was around 8 p.m. by the time we saw them.

Eric was back from his short out of town trip. We played a few games as partners. We won one game by a very wide margin, like 11-2 or 11-3. Then moved on to play Larry and Bruce. We lost 11-6 or something, Not a close game. But in our rematch with them, we flipped the score and won solidly, never losing the lead. It’s funny how that works. I can understand why tournaments are best of three games, instead of just one game.

Kristin mentioned in a discussion on the bench that when she went to Derby Park for the first time recently she felt that she wasn’t much welcomed—that there were cliques and she wasn’t worked into games. It’s a disappointment to me. We never want visitors to feel unwelcome to Santa Cruz courts. She also described a partner who kept correcting her play—yep, Mike, that’s you!—and it was an unpleasant experience. Such a bummer. I hope she comes back, she’s a super nice person.

Alan was funny. A wise voice from the bench with a recent mantra: “Was that gentle, Andrew?” Uh, yeah, no. I’d just smacked the ball out past the baseline. Alan was reminding me yesterday morning repeatedly to be gentle since sometimes I overkill on hitting the ball hard. As I constantly try to remind myself, it’s “placement over power”.

Tonight was another instance of it taking some time to get into my groove. My best game was at the end.

One thing that was weird was the lighting. For some reason, the lights made it difficult to judge depth. There was a ball that I completely misjudged. I just couldn’t tell where it was. Eric commented on it as well. So did Oleg. I’m glad it wasn’t just me! I just hope that if I ever play in a tournament, it’s not under lights . . . or at least not under lights like these! Though I’m not sure why it didn’t bug me in previous outings. Maybe just a combination of mysterious factors.

An area to work on is hitting “out balls”. There were probably half a dozen that I hit that were sailing out of bounds. Oh, there are plenty that I let go, but ideally, I should let all of those go . . . in particular the ones that I have to jump up to hit—is it a lob that’ll land in or is it more of a drive that’d be long gone? Work to do.

One thing I’ve been doing varying my serves. If I don’t know my opponent’s skills and tendencies, I’ll try different approaches. Lob serve. Low and hard to the backhand serve.. Short soft outside serve. Some people can power a low, hard serve back and make it difficult for the server to approach the net—or properly return the ball at all. Others like lobbing serves. But some have difficulty controlling those serves and have trouble returning with any power. Some receivers have poor backhand control and return balls into the net or providing an engraved invitation to the serving team to come to the net—or sometimes even popping up an outright winner. Even if I determine which serve works, I still like to mix it up now and then. We don’t want an opponent to always know what we are going to do. Same thing with receiving. Mixing up the return. In a game with Eric, when I served right to left to one opponent, he’d return it every single time to Eric’s forehand. It was like clockwork. I never came to me. He was predictable. That meant I could cheat toward the net knowing it was not coming to me. Knowing what your opponent is going to do is an advantage.

The last game for the diehards was Terri and myself against Oleg and Terry. They pulled out to a fast lead, 5-1, I think. But Terri and I climbed back and won 11-7. We had some great rallies in the game. I surprised myself with some of my good shots. It was a lot of fun. As I told Oleg after, “You are always fun to play with. You make me work!”

Aside from a number of shots in the last game—any game against Oleg will bring out some good shots to stay in the game!—the entertaining shot of the day was against Larry and Kristin. Kristin hit a shot from the backcourt which hit the net and dropped straight down. I leapt forward, popped it just over the net and back down the other side. Winner! Kristin kidded me about how proud of myself I looked!

After the last game and the nets were down, i noticed Oleg had his finger in some kind of small digital device. His wife Olga said it displayed one’s pulse. Oleg’s rate was a mere 86 beats per minute. Olga said, “Try it yourself.” Oleg obliged and extended the device hanging around his neck. I put my right index finger between the two halves. 115 BPM. I laughed, “You were running me ragged!” I do have to wonder if my heart rate should be lower. I don’t think I’m too out of shape. Overweight by maybe 25 pounds, but after six months of regular pickleball playing, I should be at least somewhat fit. Hmmmm.

By 9:30, I was in my car and heading home. No Brommer for me tomorrow. Meeting with two reps and a tech at work in the morning.

Health

Right groin muscle. Sore. Right knee. Minorly sore. Still not bad. We have our last regular season softball game tomorrow night. If we win, we go to the playoffs. If we lose, we’re done. The pressure is on!

Number of days on a court: 59
Number of total hours: 169.5