Friday, February 9, 2018 (Court Day #123)

After a slow moving morning, I arrived at Brommer Park about 9:15 a.m. Eric was there, but the way the rotations went, we didn’t play with each other all morning—even though our tournament is two weeks from tomorrow.

My first game was Leslie and Dean against me and a 60-ish man I’ve never seen before named Allen/Alan/Allan. John Connor seemed to know him fairly well, happily greeting him by name. (To avoid confusion with Alan and Allan, and I know know better, I’ll go with “Allen”.) Allen is a good player. He made few mistakes and was all over the court making good shots. I told him, “I’m glad you are on my team!” I went into that game with no warm up and it showed. Allen was polite and didn’t say much. He could have easily been critical of my play, especially on a court with Dean as an opponent. I was likely the weakest player on the court. On a good day, I might play at Leslie’s level and Dean and Allen were unquestionably on an entirely different level than me.

One of my efforts in improving is to being more aggressive about taking dinks out of the air when I can manage it. And I’m still having trouble with my drops. Some people get the “yips” with serving. I’ve never had that. I get the yips with my drop shots . . . either too high or two low. But it’s not like I don’t get any of them, but the percentage is sometimes noticeably lower. For instance, I hit too many of them into the net Wednesday night. I hit many too badly early in the day but it improved as the morning moved on.

The Good Game

Karen and Leslie were signed up in red. I asked them if they minded if I joined them. “I won’t be offended if you don’t want to play with me, if you are waiting for a harder game.” But they both agreed, so I added my name in blue under theirs. Kevin became our fourth. Kevin said he wasn’t playing his best today. As if I don’t know what that’s like! Ha! Kevin and I crawled out ahead of the ladies. It was something like 8-2 or 7-3 or thereabouts. They came back closer but we held them to getting any closer than a couple points down. It was back and forth, but we won. Walking off the courts, Kevin said, “You carried us in that game.” Wow. Nice to hear, especially in the strong company. It was a fun challenging game.

Oh, I wrote this and only remembered later. Karen tried an ATP shot off to my right. It had the same result as last time she tried it, I tracked with the ball, was there to return it for a winner off Karen’s right side.

I had a serve in the game, right to left, where I watched it fly down the wrong side of the center line only to have it curve in late and catch the corner of the service box. A week or two ago, the last time I watched such a serve, the receiver just stood there for an ace. Today, Leslie impressed me since not only did she hit it, she made a good return of it.

Off the courts, Allen was talking to someone, counting up all the players there. 42. Bryan was down against from San Jose—though I’d originally met him in Palo Alto. It was a good turnout.

New Guy Rob

Rob, a young firefighter who lives in Soquel, but works in . . . I think it’s Fremont . . . was there for the first time. He said he and his co-workers would set up a net in their parking lot and play pickleball at work. (His schedule is 48 hours on, then 96 hours off.) Jen (wife of tennis pro Chris) mentioned that he said that they often wouldn’t respect the non-volley zone and just hit hard. Basically brute-force pickleball.

I convinced Jen and Mark and Rob to play a game me. Rob was the weakest player and I picked him to play with. Even then, we managed to win 14-12. There was a lot of back and forth. It was common that a team’s service would go with no points. Rob is a cool guy. Before we started, he said to give him any advice to help improve his game. I did a little, but it’s easy to overwhelm someone with advice on too many things, so mostly I just let him play. I suspect he knew what he did wrong. Primarily, he’s got to develop a soft game. Much like Jen still needs to. During the game I called at least a couple kitchen faults on my own partner Rob. He was a great sport about it: “Keep calling those, I need to learn.”

I had a new experience, I actually was feeling embarrassed getting repeated compliments on winning shots from Mark and Jen. “Great shot, Andrew!” It wasn’t all that many in a row, but it was enough to make me feel self conscious.

We wrapped up play about 12:45 p.m. Overall, I am pleased with my play today. I started slow, but I got stronger and stronger as the day went on. I still am blowing my nose more than I should and still have some sinus drainage, but my energy is mostly back. I’m not wanting to lie down after games, which is a good thing!

Number of days on a court: 123
Number of total hours: 351.5

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