It was a beautiful day, mid-60s, sunshine, no clouds, no breeze. My daughter has asked a few days ago about me perhaps joining her, her boyfriend Aidan, his mom Trish and her boyfriend Bill in some pickleball on Thanksgiving. My knee is still not 100%, but honestly, I don’t know if it’ll ever be 100% again.
Trish and Bill opted for the courts at Cabrillo. I’d never played there for rec play, only one tournament and helping at the recent Newman Camp.
We had a sit-down breakfast at my house then Aidan and Charlotte headed to the courts. I drove my son Nicholas along with my wife Kristen and our second corgi Pepper, who my wife would be walking while we played. We also invited my younger brother John who said he might come.
Cabrillo
When we arrived just after 10 a.m., there were two doubles games going on. I recognized two players, one was Rosie, a woman who I’ve seen at Derby Park. “I haven’t seen you for months!” “I had knee surgery.”
There was a man and a young woman on the adjacent tennis court. The problem was that tennis court was also occupying the only remaining marked out pickleball courts. The man figured out what I wanted and offered to move to one of the empty tennis courts over the fence, which they kindly did. He and I chatted for a moment. He teaches horticulture at Cabrillo once a year and the young woman is a current Cal Poly student.
It was then that Charlotte and the Aidan clan arrived. Also there were Aidan’s younger brother Jordy and also their cousin Robby. Jordy’s girlfriend arrived too and she later on joined a game as Charlotte’s partner.
We set up the net I brought. Trish then asked for help setting up their net. It was a pretty serious net in a bag with rollers. The net itself is portable, but with heavy-duty flattened tubing and locking casters. Not cheap!
From Right to Left: Nicholas, Charlotte, Aidan, Robby (sleeveless).
We rotated through partners then my brother John arrived and I played a few games with him. This was his third time out playing. He‘s gotten better. He still needs to work on getting to the net, but he’s getting his serves in. (He had good success with the drop serve.) He was a mix of rookie moves and some shots that were impressive.
Charlotte has good hand-eye coordination. With more practice—I’m sure medical school gets in the way!—she could be really good.
Just about everyone left about 11:40 to get ready for activities of the day—Thanksgiving, after all!—though John and Nicholas stayed to play a game against me, with me covering only half the court. They are too good, particularly Nicholas, for me to try and cover the whole court. I won by a sizable margin, as you’d expect. We left a little bit after noon.
Later on, on John’s house with two big tables full worth of family, he mentioned, “The first couple of times that I played, I didn’t really understand how good of a player that you are.” Nice compliment, thanks, bro!
Not a big surprise, my knee hurting from the playing on Thursday. It’s not to the point of limping, just hurts the most going down stairs and aches with my leg in certain positions.
Work Visit
A player that I taught a few years ago at Derby, Allison, stopped in at work today. We chatted for a few minutes. She’s been playing with a group of similar-skilled woman in the afternoons a few days a week. Good for her. I mentioned that I’m teaching a beginner class for the county and she said, “You’d be perfect for that. You are so patient.” A nice vote of confidence.
This video popped up tonight while cruising on YouTube. Zane Naratil explains the “banana shot” popularized by Rafael Nadal. This is what I’ve used for years in my serve arsenal, not knowing that it has a name.
So, “take that” tennis players making mocking videos of throwing pickleball paddles in the trash!
PPR
I finished watching the PPR Pre-Certification videos. It wasn’t that bad, less than 2 hours. There are other instructional videos that are not required for certification, but are helpful. Those total about 10 hours of run time. I’ll be spending time watching those, but I have to finish reading the PPR guidebook first.
Paddles
Zane Naratil and Thomas Shields host the Picklepod podcast. It bring in some top players and key movers and shakers in the pickleball world. In this episode, they talked with Carl Schmits of USA Pickleball about the testing of paddles. As a techie nerd-head, I found it fascinating: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/picklepod/id1584931417?i=1000633411228 Or you can watch the podcast episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/D9gYG82GDGQ?si=HNivf817zTLiV02A Carl did a fabulous job representing the association.
I didn’t mention it, but it appears that the original “Pickleball Forum” on Facebook started by pro player Aspen Kern was deleted sometime in recent months and replaced by a new Pickleball Forum on Facebook that I had to join again to participate. All posts to the original group are now gone. It’s a total drag. It provided history and I’m sure I have links here in my blog to a now-deleted Facebook Group. I know Aspen had turned over most (or all) of the moderator duties to others, but perhaps he got tired of whatever remaining obligations that he had or perhaps the ownership was transferred by Facebook to some other individual. This sometimes happens and the original owner/moderators lose any control over the group and it can turn into a haven for spam posts and blasting members with spam. I never saw any spam, so who knows. All I can do is speculate.
Number of days on a court: 610 Number of total hours: 2,677 Number of paid coaching hours: 5
To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.
And I left my house at 12:45 p.m, giving me 45 minutes before my class was supposed to start, which was plenty of time to get situated once at Willowbrook Park.
Aptos
Arrived in Aptos about 1 p.m. and pulled up alongside the courts, parked and I got out, and noticed that all the courts were empty except for one man with a basket of balls. I grab my things from the car and walked over. It was then that I realized it was all tennis courts—nine private courts. Oops. (If figured out later that these courts belong to the Imperial Courts Tennis Club and apparently they do have one permanent dedicated pickleball court on the far side.) This was only my third trip to Willowbrook Park in nearly 7 years of me playing pickleball—it’s not a huge surprise that I forgot exactly where it was on the road! I put everything back into my car and drove two blocks further down to the real Willowbrook Park.
What’s kind of amusing is if you zoom in on the current Google maps image of the Imperial Courts, you’ll that every single one of the tennis courts are empty and the single pickleball court has people on it!
Willowbrook
I saw there were a couple of women hitting a ball back-and-forth plus another couple of women milling about. One woman, Deb Diaz Menges, introduced herself to me. Rec, company organizing the classes and reservations, tries to make sure that there are still some free courts for drop-in in play whenever a class will occupy some of the courts. Mike told me via email with they accidentally reserved all the courts. Deb had three reserved for her group and I would have two courts for my class.
I wrote my first name on some white tape and stuck onto my shirt: “Andrew”. Most of the students arrived about five minutes before class was going to start. I wrote people’s names on tape as each one arrived. Once all the students were there, I had everyone introduced themselves and explain a little bit about their background with any racket sports. I passed around a form I’d prepared to get each student’s email address.
I went on to talk about court safety . . . like not backing up for lobs . . . and I also talked about proper footwear. And eye protection. I also asked if anyone had any medical conditions. None.
I briefly explained some of the key rules of pickleball and I tried to keep that short so that I could get them onto the court and start having fun.
We started with controlled drinking just back-and-forth between two people across from that from each other.
Then them all back up midway between the kitchen line and the baseline.
We took a quick water break and I explained serving.
We did that for a bit then took another water break then I explained scoring and had them play a game.
It went very well. I don’t think I would have changed a thing.
Shortly before 3 p.m., Sean Lynch showed up and I introduced myself to him. He’d be teaching the 3 p.m. class. Sean hasn’t been playing pickleball nearly as long as I have, but he has more general coaching experience . . . last year, he took over as the women’s basketball coach at Cabrillo College.
Tuesday, November 14, 2023 (No Play)
I had PT this evening with Dr. Matt. My knee was not perfect, but it was relatively pain-free going through the exercises. Not entirely pain free, but better. Hopefully, this is sign of things to come.
Wednesday, November 15, 2023 (No Play)
I pulled the trigger. I’m now registered for the PPR Certification Workshop in Sunnyvale on Friday, December 1. $145. It’s pretty close, less an hour drive away with good traffic.
Sunday, November 19, 2023 (No Play)
When I got to Willowbrook today for my second session of my 4-week class, a woman was there giving a tennis lesson and taking up the four main pickleball courts. She insisted in no uncertain terms that she had the tennis court reserved until 2:15 p.m. and that the court(s) had been double-booked and that she had the same double-booking problem earlier this morning around 8:30 a.m. When I checked the website, it only showed my class reservation and nothing else. When I asked her if she had received an email confirmation of her booking, she blew me off as a distraction to what she was doing. Rec had told me about a double-booking last week, so I knew that it was at least possible, but they hadn’t warned me this week. Regardless, this woman was absolutely not budging from “her” court . . . and I wasn’t going to get into a fight with her over it.
I ended up doing a 45-minute “chalk talk” over on the basketball court. I quickly shifted some of the things was going to talk about in my next lesson to this week. Then we moved onto our courts at the stroke of 2:15 p.m. (It didn’t seem that any of my students were overly upset about the delay taking the courts, one of the players later told me, “You are such a good coach.” It made my day!)
Relative Pickleball
My mother-in-law Bonnie from San Diego was visiting my sister-in-law Liz and her family up in San Carlos and they made a pickleball outing when my son drove up and visited for the day.
My niece, my mother-in-law, and my son Nicholas. They sent me proof!
Monday, November 20, 2023 (No Play)
I heard back from Rec today that that tennis instructor didn’t actually have the court reserved yesterday. She had emailed the county (the old system) only 1 or 2 days in advance asking to reserve the court but didn’t get any response. She merely assumed she had the court anyway, which she didn’t since our class had the courts booked weeks in advance. The court was not “double-booked” as she claimed. She was just presumptuous and bullheaded. Annoying, really. Rec said that they’d work with her to get her on the new system.
We’re Famous!
Riley Newman shared a short video on social media. If one looks carefully, one will notice that it was recorded here in Santa Cruz County during the recent workshop held out at Cabrillo College: https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cz4-lzzrfTn/
Dinking
Here’s a really good in-depth video on the strategy of dinking I just discovered:
PPR
I’ve been watching the required PPR “Pre-Certification” videos. I don’t know about the rest, but the first few videos are not very “time compact”. They are informational and demonstrative both in the content and how the content is presented. It’s presented to a coach in real-time in a similar method to how you would explain topics to beginners. That makes it a little slow. The content could be delivered easily in half the time and perhaps even a quarter of the time. But it gets the job done.
Number of days on a court: 609 Number of total hours: 2,675 Number of paid coaching hours: 3.5
To start at the beginning of this blog click on “1st Post” in the menu above.
I went to PT yesterday for the first time in weeks. (I was waiting for the insurance authorization for more sessions.) I met with Matt the PT at 5:30 p.m. and while it was officially a “class”, I was the only patient, so he spent 45 minutes evaluating me instead. He poked and prodded. He did an electronic strength test with me pulling my foot forward from a seated position—both legs were of similar strength, though I cut the “5 second hold” short for my right leg since my knee hurt. Going up and down stairs is the most painful, especially going down when planted on my right knee and it’s slightly bent.
Similarly, riding a bike with the seat much too low is quite painful . . . as I found out on Sunday at my folks’ house when my brother Mike wanted me to try his fancy mountain bike. I didn’t realized he’d intentionally dropped the seat down for me to adjust first.
Matt gave me a couple of stretches for the knee but was at a bit of a loss as to what is causing the issue. He did say that the “2-3 months” estimate that the surgery office gave me is actually much more like 6 months. In other words, me playing pickleball at the three month mark was pushing it.
County Coaching?
I received an email from the County of Santa Cruz’s court management company, “Rec”—based in San Francisco—asking if I’d be interested in instructing some beginner pickleball classes. I’ll have to give this some thought. There are some dynamics beyond just teaching or not.
Wednesday, October 18, 2023 (No Play)
I had PT again yesterday at 5:30 p.m. When I asked about what to do going forward, Dr. Matt said my knee needs just time and stretching to heal. I have a follow-up appointment with the surgery PA Heather tomorrow morning. I also asked about ice and heat, Matt said to ice the knee and heat the quadriceps.
Coaching
This week, I’d set up an appointment for a phone meeting for this morning with Mike of Rec in San Francisco. Previously, after a couple of days of consideration, I’d emailed him back on the 13th telling him to check with Karen Haselden, the local certified instructor. Mike emailed back and told me he’d checked with Karen and she was too busy to take on the classes. With that, I told him that I was interested in talking further. They are interested in a beginner classes on Sunday afternoons held at Willowbrook.
Local Newman Clinic
SCPC president Mark Dettle texted me asking for clinic registration help on Wednesday next week since I’d offered to do so. It’s about 90 minutes of time starting at 8:30 a.m. I told him that’d I’d be there. Plus, heck, it’s maybe an opportunity to meet pros Riley and Linsday Newman.
Peloton
I set a new personal record last night of Peloton riding for a full hour and burning 200 calories. Afterward, I iced my knee with the cooling gel sleeve and finished watching the movie I’d started while riding. (“The King” on Netflix. Good movie.)
County Coaching
I wrote to Karen H. this afternoon and she confirmed that she’d turned down the county teaching position that has been offered to me. Sunday, November 12 would be the first day of this new class. I talked to my wife and Kristen was agreeable.
Thursday, October 19, 2023 (No Play)
I had an appointment with Heather the surgery PA this morning to follow up and discuss my right knee. I asked what I should have just asked at the previous appointment weeks before: “Is this normal?” (Within context, of course!) She said that it was. So there you have it. I just have to wait out healing. Their original estimate of “2-3 months and back out playing” was overly optimistic. In our conversation, she said to not stretch the knee by sitting on the floor with my legs tucked under me and leaning back. Oops. I did that a few days ago. Bad. Got it.
MLP Paddles
Major League Pickleball has some rigorous on-site paddle testing and disqualified 28 paddles at a recent event. 28! I found that amazing. The PPA—now under the same ownership umbrella as MLP—doesn’t have nearly the same testing and some pros are unhappy that some other pros get advantages with paddles that have more power and would otherwise be disqualified under MLP. Sooner or later, there will be convergence, but not yet.
Teaching
I wrote Mike at Rec back this afternoon and accepted their offer to teach local beginners classes on their behalf. He wrote back a few hours later and said that “another instructor was able to confirm the slot”. Oh. I didn’t know they’d approached more than one person about teaching. Ah, well. Mike said that if that class series fills, I’m on the docket for an additional series.
Monday, October 23, 2023 (No Play)
It rained nearly all day yesterday and we had our first full cancelation of club play for the season, at Derby Park. (Later note: Club play today at Brommer also ended up being canceled.)
Camp
Today is the first day of the Riley & Lindsay Newman pickleball camp held out at Cabrillo College in Aptos.
Mark Dettle texted me last week asking if I’d make up directional signs for the camp and I agreed. When I delivered those this morning at 7:30 a.m., Cabrillo pickleball instructor Tony Marcopulos retrieved two white plastic A-frames to hold my signs and I set about installing those.
After I helped Tony set up a net or two, I spent some time helping Dan Bliss dry off the wet courts for the camp start at 9 a.m. Lots of towels and blower use! Barbara Gerry was manning the registration table and Patty Doler was there organizing.
Riley and Lindsay arrived. Both are quite tall. Riley is easily over 6′ and Lindsay is about 5’9″. Patty introduced them to Tony and Mark and Dan and me. Riley and Lindsay are both super nice. Definite thumbs up.
I had the two of them sign my “autograph paddle”. I told her that I’d gotten the Ben Johns, Kyle Yates, and Morgan Evans autographs at the Golden State Pickleball Championships. I was remembering it as a “one and done” tournament. But Lindsay said she’d played in that tournament later on. Lindsay texted Jordan Briones to check and see which of us was correct!
Newly minted Newman autographs. (Photo taken later at my house.)
Lindsay was asking about my role as USA Pickleball Ambassador and what I do for a living. The Newmans are based out of Dallas, Texas and I shared that I have a niece who lives just outside of Dallas.
Once the session started, Dan and I headed out. It was off to work. Before I left, Patty invited me to a sailboat outing and dinner with the Newmans. (We’d have to pay our own way.) I figured that dinner would be “do-able” and fun. Driving back I realized that the other Golden State Pickleball Championships that I was discussing with Lindsay probably took place during the time I was nursing that really bad tennis elbow and was staying away from tournaments. Oops.
Dinner
I left straight from work and arrived at The Crow’s Nest restaurant about 10 minutes before our planned dinner. Just inside, Patty was talking to Lindsay and Mark Dettle was hanging out by Riley. Lindsay showed me the text set back from Jordan Briones which said he thought that he had run that tournament for about 5 years. Lindsay smiled and said, “I don’t want to say, ‘I told you so’.” I laughed and told her about my recollection in the car earlier.
I talked to Riley about his “pancake” shot. I still need to get clarification, but I think it’s a scorpion shot but with a western grip. Not sure. Rachel Kuo arrived—who was in my graduating class from Harbor High and frequents the Skypark courts. Aud also came. And a woman named Beth whom I’d see a few times around.
We were taken to our table. I sat across from Riley at the end. We chatted for a bit, ate bread and calamari before the waitress figured we wouldn’t be ordering any entrees—they had pizza on the boat!—and more or less kicked the eight of us out of the main restaurant for the upstairs bar area instead. Right then, Karen (middle-age Asian lady whom I’ve seen around but don’t know well) arrived and later did end up ordering an entree while upstairs, but it is what it is!
Riley and Lindsay, Beth, Rachel, then me, Karen, Patty, Aud, and Mark.
We had fun yapping. Lindsay shared some stories off the record. Things wrapped up around 8:30 p.m. As I observed to the Newmans as we all got up to go, Dallas is two hours ahead, making it pretty late for them. They agreed. We said our goodbyes and headed our different directions.
Wednesday, October 25, 2023 (No Play)
Mark Dettle had previously asked me to help at the Newman camp today. I got there early and helped Patty register participants as they arrived.
Once the workshop started, I hung around for about an hour listening.
One thing that I thought was clever was having players play a short game of skinny singles for maybe 6-7 minutes, then losers would move down a full court and winners would move up a full court. (Of course, if you were already in the lowest court, you couldn’t down when you lost. Same went for winners in the top court.) The goal of all this was to sort the players by skill level so that any drills would be more balanced.
Lindsay made a point to emphasize “playing the odds” when positioning on a court. That is, you don’t need to hug the sidelines. If you can’t reach the last 12 inches of the sideline and your opponent wants to risk hitting the ball out by squeezing it in that space, more power to them, because you want to make sure the middle—the high percentage shot—is definitely covered well.
They got into drills with Riley and Lindsay constantly circling around and stopping into watch and make suggestions to players. I walked over and said my goodbyes to Riley and Lindsay—Riley said they might even be back next year—and headed to work.
Thursday, October 26, 2023 (No Play)
Someone did a great job tipping off the local newspaper about our pickleball camp. That exact thing had crossed my mind and I’m a bit ashamed that as a USA Pickleball Ambassador that I forgot to contact them myself. Fortunately, someone else did.
Aside from the front page, there was a full page inside spread too!
Hard to beat that publicity!
Saturday, October 28, 2023 (No Play)
The actor made famous by the “Friends” TV show, Matthew Perry, was found dead today. Apparently, he fell asleep in his hot tub and drowned. 54. A little younger than me. The only reason I mention it here—no, I’m not a fan—is that he regularly played pickleball and was purported to have played some hours before he died.
Pam had asked if I could help at the SCPC Halloween scramble tournament at Brommer Park. It’d be a good excuse to see people I hadn’t seen for a while with my forced hiatus due to knee surgery.
I was there about 8:30 a.m. and it was chilly to start but got warm. There was me and another gentleman registering players for the tournament. Lots of wild halloween costumes!
After the quirky tournament, we had lunch courtesy a hired taco truck, and some potluck food items.
Then it was to home and then to work!
Thursday, November 2, 2023 (No Play)
Mike at Rec got back to me today and said that the original pickleball class had sold out and asked if I wanted to coach a second class from 1:30 p.m. until 3 p.m. I got back to him within a few hours and said I’d do it. He’s proceeding tomorrow.
Parade
I had received word from the SCPC board that we are a “go” for the downtown holiday parade again this year . . . on the condition is that I’d organize it! Of course, though with some hesitation, I said yes. I was kind of hoping someone else would step up, but it’s not all that much work, probably about 2-4 hours of coordination in advance. Today, I got us officially registered. I received permission from Mark Dettle, the president, to send out email blasts to all members about the parade, so I sent out a “save the date” email today.
Friday, November 3, 2023 (No Play)
With coaching income coming from the class I’ll be teaching, I can roll that money into getting credentialed as a pickleball coach.
Step #1 was signing up as a member of the PPR (Professional Pickleball Registry) which certifies pickleball coaches. It’s about $180/year. I signed up and now I have a PPR member number! The PPR has a pickleball video library. Colin Johns, Ben Johns, and Sarah Ansboury all have clips explaining certain shots. An interesting note, it’s very different watching videos with the intent of teaching versus implementing oneself—a totally different mindset and perspective.
Step #2 will be going to a PPR Certification Workshop which are held around the country and cost about $150. There’s one in about three weeks nearby (Sunnyvale) but with my back being sketchy and me still recovering from knee surgery, I’m not super keen on committing to that at the moment.
Sunday, November 5, 2023 (No Play)
So, the pop star Katy Perry is an avid pickleball player: [Video removed after a month, so link here now removed! Bummer!] So, the video had Katy Perry recommending that people enter a contest for a pickleball facility. The most entrants from a city had the sponsoring business build there. Katy Perry shared that she’s a regular player.
Monday, November 6, 2023 (No Play)
Mike at Rec provided an image for me to post in the Santa Cruz Pickleball Facebook group.
I had an almost immediate signup.
Friday, November 10, 2023 (No Play)
Ok. This is crazy.
On Monday morning, I strained my back putting on my left sock. So lame—and so severe! I couldn’t stay upright. I laid down on my back on my bed and proceeded to not leave my bed even once for the next 48 hours. I couldn’t even turn on my side without intense pain . . . so intense, I couldn’t make myself do it. Thank goodness I have local family! I had a video appointment with a doctor and between the muscle relaxer she prescribed, ibuprofen, and a pain patch, I could eventually sit up and carefully hobble around. It was miserable. I canceled my work trip to New Orleans, where I would have otherwise been right now.
My Class
I now have 6 students signed up (out of a maximum of 8) for my beginner pickleball class on Sunday. Apparently, there was some mistake and the folks at Rec forgot to mention to the students that they have to bring their own paddle. Yesterday, Mike at Rec arranged to send me four paddles and some balls to use for my class and those items arrived today—fast! The paddles are wood and the balls are cheap knockoffs of the Onix Pure 2 balls. Not anything I’d personally like to play with, but they’ll work for a beginner class. Mike asked me to pass the paddles on to Sean Lynch—who I don’t know—who will be teaching the second class right after mine out at Willowbrook Park in Aptos.
Debate
There’s some debate about how you would start teaching new players. Some recommend dinking, others recommend ground strokes. I’m a “start with dinking” kind of guy. Sure, beginners likely won’t use dinking much in their actual games, but I believe it’s a good place to understand the dynamics of how a pickleball acts in relation to a paddle.
Costco and Pickleball
I can’t remember if I shared this, but I don’t think I did. Back in May, Costco featured a 2-page spread in their magazine on pickleball.
Pickleball is very much heading into the mainstream.
Saturday, November 11, 2023 (No Play)
I worked for about six hours yesterday and my back hurts more today than it did then. The doctor said the more I move around, the better my back will get. I’m not so sure about that! Ok, kidding. I’m sure she’s right. Still, my back is less happy today than it was yesterday.
I was impressed with the guy in his 80s who beat Maree and me up at Mitchell Park about five years ago—this guy Joe takes the cake!
Class
A box of pickleballs showed up at my door this morning courtesy of Rec. A dozen Dura 40 knockoffs. At least those should be better than the softer balls that came yesterday with the wood paddles.
I’ve been making notes and trying hash out in my head what I’m going to say and what drills we’ll be doing at my first class tomorrow. With my experience training new players as an SCPC Site Coordinator for the last five years, it’s not new territory exactly, but this is a larger group and it’ll be a longer session and with approximately six hours of instruction over the four classes. Plus I like to be, if anything, over-prepared and totally organized.
Number of days on a court: 609 Number of total hours: 2,675 Number of paid coaching hours: 2
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