Monday, June 18, 2018 (Court Day #160)

Rob texted this afternoon and said some guys where getting together at 6:30 this evening at Brommer Park. Being a good husband, I checked with my wife. My son was finishing up a final project for his UCLA applied mathematics coding class and my daughter was asleep getting over a slight bug. Ok to go? “Yes.” She wasn’t sure when dinner would be ready.

After work, I raced home, changed, popped a little cooked broccoli into my mouth—drat, dinner was just about ready—then dashed out the door. I arrived at Brommer just before the time I said I’d be there, 6:45 p.m. There was some large soccer match going on and the lot was completely full as was parking just outside the entrance. I had to park a block away and walk to the courts. I never noticed just how much of the adjacent streets are striped in red! A whole lot!

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Cameron, Wheeler, Rob, and Brennan.

A game was underway with Cameron and Wheeler taking on Rob and Brennan. A good young crowd. Pickleball is not just for old folks! Of that group, I think Brennan is the only one sporting any gray hairs. I suspect I’m well older than him, but he might just be beating me on the amount of gray. I opted to skip the ankle brace again this time.

I waited for their game to finish. It was back and forth as most would prove to be. Afterward, Rob sat out and let me into a game where I joined Cameron as my teammate. Then Brennan sat out while I played with Wheeler—surprisingly, Wheeler and I won that one. (While sitting out, Brennan hoped in and played with a family playing pickleball over the divider. He sat out two games.) Then Wheeler sat out as I teamed up with Rob. Then Cameron sat out with Brennan and I took on Rob and Wheeler. (That proved to be the most lopsided game, but they still scored some points.) By then, five games later, it was 8:06 and it was my turn to rotate out. I was getting pretty hungry. I told them I was going home to eat. Rob said, “Play another, go ahead!” Honorable, but I didn’t want to force him to sit out on my behalf.

So?

I was expecting to go in tonight and obviously be the strongest player. (Sheesh. What an ego!) Maybe in the first game. After that, though, not so much! Too many mistakes. No more than the others, but, still, rats! Drops and drives hitting the net. Occasional returns sailing long. (Usually with me trying to hit a deep slice backhand than just sails long—I’m hoping sooner or later, I can hit that shot successfully, but for now, it’s a whole lot of “miss”.) Serves me right though. Confidence is a good thing, but I need to be humble and not assume I’m better skilled than anyone else. There are and will always players who are better than me. And even if I’m better on average than one particular player, I can have a bad day and they could have a good day . . . then I’d look pretty stupid if I had been mouthing off about how good I was! (Of course, I’d never do that. That’s not my way. Like almost everyone, I just let my play speak for itself . . . good or bad.)

It was a fun session. Fairly balanced play with some hard hits and a handful of intense rallies. And a good group of smiling guys loving pickleball. Plus the ankle held up well.

There were a handful of points that I won due to backspin on my shots. I’ve seen it quite a number of times now. The ball lands, is hit, but never makes it back over the net. (Rob was commenting about it to his partner in one game after it happened.) I think it was Terry Long who said that by 4.0 that just every shot should have some kind of spin on it. I originally was thinking backspin or sidespin, but spin includes standard ol’ topspin too. Dinks are where spin has diminishing returns, though Dean won a point against me one time with spin on a dink. I consider it high risk/medium reward. Maybe for very advanced players.

Interference

Oh, and I suppose that I should comment. There were a couple of young boys kicking a soccer ball on the courts right next to the family playing pickleball. Not a big deal, except they hit the ball several times into our court during our games even after we asked them at least three times not to. Annoying. There’s a big grassy field but they still needed to use the courts where two pickleball games and some basketball was going on. At least it wasn’t a constant interruptions. Ah, well. Whaddaya do. Kids.

Number of days on a court: 160
Number of total hours: 437.5

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