Thursday, August 5, 2019 (Court Day #305)
64th day out playing lefty. Tennis elbow.
The Santa Cruz Pickleball Club was offering today a three hour training session reserved for dues-paying members lead primarily by Terry Long. I arrived a few minutes after 3 p.m.—late but work got in the way.
Boy, it was hot! We took water breaks between each drill thankfully.
The session was limited to 24 players and it was full. Terry getting rapt attention.
The first drill was dinking. Fundamental and not particularly difficult but sometimes needs tweaking. I asked John P. To be my partner—ok, actually, I went and stood next to him shoulder to shoulder and he just smiled and said, “yes.” Terry came by mid-drill and said I need to a bend my knees more and not just lean over at the waist. Good feedback! Dan Bliss came by about 5-10 minutes later and said, “It looks like you guys know what you are doing.” I’ve got left-handed dinking down.
The second drill was returning balls from halfway back in the service box with the other player at the net. Boy, this drill showed my weakness of playing lefty.
The third topic of the session was spin. Doing proper spin with control left-handed is a challenge, as you might well imagine. At the end, Terry said to the group, “This is why you don’t try to teach spin to 3.5 players.” (A lot of the group were 2.5 and 3.0 players.)
I left a little after 6 p.m. A few were staying to play a game. I had things to do and places to be that unfortunately did not include any pickleball.
Carol came to me and said, “You are my inspiration. I’ve been playing left-handed.” She had mentioned an injury some weeks back and possibly switching to lefty, but now she’s actually done it. I hope she has fewer frustrating moments than me!
Friday, September 6, 2019 (No Play)
Cortisone Shot
I had a doctor appointment early this morning to have him look on my right shoulder. He said he thought it was a pinching of the rotator cuff and suggested a cortisone shot to reduce pain and decrease inflammation. He also prescribed a referral for physical therapy for it. I asked him if he thought a shot to my tennis elbow would also be helpful, but he said evidence indicates that it’s not effective for treatment of that. We’ll see how this goes.
Number of days on a court: 305
Number of total hours: 845.5
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