Sunday, June 28, 2020 (Court Day #352)

The knee that I tweaked last weekend is still not 100% but it has improved quite a bit. Enough to play on.

Even with people not going to Derby Park, since I’d suggested to Dave Allenbaugh and Josh on Monday about going there anyway and trying to “restart” that locale since Brommer has been overly busy. I wanted to fulfill my obligation and not possibly leave Dave and Josh hanging.

As I pulled up at 9:08, there was a truck parked out front with the license plate “MAREE”—there was no question that this truck belonged to Mark’s wife! As I walked in, I could see Grita entering the gate to the courts. She and Maree were talking as Maree continued to set up her ball feeder for training. As we debated what to do—stay or go to Brommer—Tom M. came in. We had four!

As we worked through our first game, Jan (the relative newbie) came in and stood and watched. We’d spend the rest of the morning rotating the five of us in games.

At about 10:30, Maria, barefoot Terry, Sue (the teacher) and Jukka—whom I haven’t seen in forever—arrived with a net bag in tow. They said this was the third court they’d been to. Apparently Scotts Valley and Brommer were too busy. So they came to Derby with their own net. I’ll admit that I was a bit jealous of their foursome—just with the lack of newbie. They only played with their foursome.

A group of 20-somethings—one guy and three gals—came and played using one of this city nets. They were obviously novices and played only amongst themselves.

The last game—after Grita left to go “babysit”—was Mark and me against Maree and Tom—we won, but only 11-7. I was expecting a bigger difference.

At a quarter to noon, it was time to go. I was off to do a brief work-related project then home to figure out our clothes dryer that stopped working yesterday afternoon. Bleh.

I can say that I’m getting a better and better command of spin left-handed. I’ve won points outright with spin shots that never make it back over the net. That happened at least half a dozen times today. Maree, Tom, Jan—all of them.

I was very tempted to try out my right arm. But even with it feeling a little better this past week with more regular icing and roller massage, it’ll still give me twinges of pain when I do certain actions. I’m thinking of getting a elbow compression sleeve. There’s also a wrist vibration dampener that someone suggested on the Facebook Pickleball Forum. I’m a bit skeptical, but maybe. There’s also a new paddle out, the Players Pickleball Rogue2 Gel-Core Paddle which is supposed to be really good for tennis elbow—but my ProKennex was supposed to be really good too, and maybe it does help, but it certainly didn’t suddenly cure my problem and if it made a difference, it was hard for me to notice.

An significant milestone, I’m approaching 1,000 hours on a court. That should happen in July.

Number of days on a court: 352
Number of total hours: 990.5

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