Sunday, January 12, 2020 (Court Day #329)

I arrived at Derby Park it open up at 8:45 a.m. There wasn’t too much debris on the courts. Still, I used up the battery blowing off the courts. I held the blower in my left hand—it was painful to hold it in my right hand.

Tom from Los Altos

There were a few newbies today. One, Tom D., a tall man, was visiting from Los Altos. He said his girlfriend has a vacation home in Santa Cruz and they visit a few weekends each month. Tom had never played before and had nearly no racquet sports experience either. Everyone starts somewhere, he just has a bit more work to do than those coming in the hand-eye coordination ball experience.

I signed up for a few games with Tom to provide guidance. In the last of those games, John P. teamed up with Tom across the court from me. John’s main piece of advice for Tom was not to step in after the serve which is a beginner common error.

After playing repeated games with newbies, I was ready for a harder game.

On to Tougher Games

Mark G. had his name in a court box in red. I asked him if I could join his box. “Are you playing right-handed or left-handed?” “I’m playing lefty, but I’m playing solid lefty.” He concurred and I signed up. He then asked a new Rich to join us. I was astonished. I had just played with Rich. I’d call Rich a weak 3.0. So much for a strong game. Wayne joined the box.

Mark suggested he and I team up. I think he was expecting me to play more poorly than I did. We stacked during the game and we won 11-2. Mark didn’t do too bad stacking, he’s picking it up. A few reminders here and there, but he’s coming along.

Afterward, Mark suggested, “That went well. How about we take on Eric and John P.?” Sounded good to me. We’d have to wait for them to finish their game, but they won 11-5 and in short order—they were still on the second court over. (Long games end up on the third/last court over as we shift over when the earlier game ends.)

It was a long game. We lost 11-6 or thereabouts, but the serve was back and forth, back and forth. They had to earn every point.

We had one rematch, with a similar result, but also a long fun game.

Andrew and Adrian

Mark had to leave for the day so Adrian jumped in as my partner for the next game. Adrian and I came back and won the game. Eric and John won the next two.

I got clocked in the hand three times by Eric. One the ball bounced quite high and landed just past the net close to the sideline from which Eric hit a cross court shot then the remainder of a long point ensued—that was a great point.

One other thing of note was me scoring a point against Eric on a left-handed spin serve. It’s one thing to do it against newbies. It’s another to do it against a strong intermediate player who has won tournament medals.

Perspective

Let’s take a step back for a second for a bird’s eye view. I’ll pass three years of playing in a couple of weeks. One year of that has been playing lefty due to bad tennis elbow. I can get all my serves in now—I sometimes miss when I try to get fancy. I still mess up occasional shots that would still be awkward even playing right-handed. I’m probably better now playing lefty than I was when I started righty . . . and I started reasonably solid.

Thursday, January 16, 2020 (No Play)

I watch almost no TV so I missed this when it came on, but ABC very fortuitously uploaded their The Goldbergs snippet about pickleball onto YouTube. (I’d never even heard of the show!)

It does not portray the sport in a positive light and implies that the sport is in decline. Now, this show is set in the 1980s when pickleball was still just cruising along as a niche sport—not like today where it has exploded and has over two million players. It is a funny segment regardless.

It’s been a bad couple of months in terms of pickleball play. Work and weather has not been cooperating.

Friday, January 17, 2020 (No Play)

Yeah. Another video!

Number of days on a court: 329
Number of total hours: 930

To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.