Wednesday, October 31, 2018 (Court Day #218)

I arrived at Derby Park around 9 a.m. It was cold, but sunny and warmed up in short order.

After warming up, I had to take a short break to check-in online for my Southwest flight tomorrow to New Orleans for a trade show. Using my iPhone, I signed up in the first 20-30 seconds once permitted, but I still ended up in the “B” boarding group. Ah, well.

It was a lightly attended day. Maybe an effect of it being Halloween.

New Paddle

One thing of significant note. My new replacement Tempest Wave paddle. Holy cow! An AMAZING difference in performance from the old delaminating one! Super noticeable! It was like night and day. It has much more pop. The old one was dead in comparison. I have to wonder how much better my performance would have been in San Juan Bautista had I had this new paddle. Boy.

One of the early games was Carrie and me against Ron and Sue (tall blonde woman). Carrie and I led 10-0 before they finally scored a point. We won 11-1. I felt bad at one point as they were giving me easy winners. Afterward, Carrie said, “I like playing with Andrew. He makes me look good!”

New Guy

A new guy named Charles came to play. Charles is a stately older African America gentleman. Sometimes, players will grunt when they hit the ball. Charles is one of those. Grita and Charles took on me and MaryAnn. (Not Marianne.) Grita is funny. She was hitting almost exclusively to MaryAnn. Grita likes to win. While I was hitting to Charles about half the time, they were mostly lollipop shots. Easy serves, easy drives. Granted, I hit a few that weren’t, but I was taking it easy on him. If Charles weren’t so new, I would have been hitting much more to Grita. I’m not there to win in rec play, I’m there to get better. MaryAnn and I lost 11-9. Charles will catch on with time. He drives too much into the net, but he’s a newbie. He has very promising hand-eye coordination.

The last game of my morning—I had to get to work by noon, too much to do before my trip—was Eric, Chris, me, and Ted B. Eric asked, “How do we want to do this? I think we should split up.” “I’ll take Ted.” Ted was funny: “I don’t know if I should be honored that you want to play with me or offended that you think I’m the worst player!” I was expecting us to lose. But I was playing very, very well. And Ted did fine. Ted and I won 11-3 which was a big surprise.

About 11 a.m., it was time for me to hit the road. I was very happy with my play today after a forced 10-day break. It might be another full week before I get to play again, but we’ll see.

I need to register for the Templeton tournament with Dave Cox. Dave will be my fourth tournament partner: Eric, John P., Rob. Now Dave.

 

Friday, November 2, 2018 (No play)

Surprisingly, my right shoulder muscle is sore from Wednesday. Sheesh, I get a little break and I lose my edge!

I registered last night for the Templeton tournament—I almost completely forgot being out of state in Louisiana and busy with a trade show—but I forgot to tell Dave that I had done so. I texted him late, about three hours before the deadline, hoping he was not still traveling himself.

YouTube suggested a video for me, it’s a fun point to watch. It’s not visually clear, but the ball clips the net cord right before it gets hit into the net. The announcer does point that out.

 

Sunday, November 4, 2018 (No play)

Dave didn’t get my text message in time to register before the deadline for Templeton. I emailed Mike, the TD, to see if he could add Dave manually. He got back to me and said he added Dave but Dave would have to pay the day of the tournament. Excellent. We are good to go. It’ll be interesting to see who our opponents pick to target in each game. It may just depend “on the day” which of the two of us is “on” and which is have a subpar day.

Number of days on a court: 218
Number of total hours: 598

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