Author: andrewlenz (Page 143 of 328)

Sunday, August 21, 2022 (Court Day #534)

I arrived at Derby Park about 8:50 a.m. to set up and there are two games of doubles going on already when I arrived. René and Rick were off at a tournament today, and I think there may have been others gone too as there were not very many truly advanced players at Derby today. Charles, Binh and me and that was about it. The next two strongest were Adrian and Ted.

Aside from my first two games of the day, most of the games I played today were pretty decent, however there weren’t any games with truly all strong advanced players—three of the four was as good as we could get. As a result, we were splitting the best two players to make the games more evenly balanced . . . which is unfortunate for an advanced game.

Long Game

There was a game mid-morning with Binh and Ted against Adrian and me. It was a very balanced game that dragged on and on. They finally won 17-15. That was the highest scoring game that I’ve ever played in. Binh said his was at tournament where the score climbed to 23-21. Wow. That’s something!

On Fire

I was very happy with my play today. Sure, I made some mistakes. For some points I should’ve opted for a soft shot instead of a driving shot, but overall I played very well. Ted and I played against Charles and Binh. That would be a difficult game with Charles (the strongest) and Binh (fairly equal to me) and me partnered with Ted, the least strong of the group. As Ted said, I was “on fire” in that game. I went on a run of points which ended when I hit a shot in the white tape. “Andrew is back to earth,” observed Charles. Ted and I were leading 6-0. Binh and Charles did come back and they eventually won by a couple of points. That was the expected result.

Last game ended about 12:30 p.m., and I spent another 20 minutes storing club equipment—thankfully, Rick had done a bunch of the work—and talking to other players who were still hanging out.

Nicholas

While my son Nicholas hasn’t been back to the courts since his first weekend back home, a woman stopped me and asked, “Isn’t Nicholas your son? He is such a nice young man.” Chip off the old block! I told him that he has a fan club!

Winners

I checked in with René tonight to see how they did at the tournament. Rick and René won gold at the U.S. Seniors Pickleball event at San Juan Bautista today. Congrats to them!

Private Game

Binh wanted to arrange a game tomorrow night. He got Charles and I told Binh that I’d be interested but I’d have to make sure I was wasn’t forgetting something. Later, I got a blessing from my wife to play and I reached out to Eric S. as a fourth, but he wasn’t available. So I texted Jason, who will be my partner for Chamisal next month, and he said was going to be back in town just in time to join us. This should be fun!

Number of days on a court: 534
Number of total hours: 2,441.5

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

Thursday, August 18, 2022 (Court Day #533)

On Tuesday, someone posted this online. I thought it was funny.

Skypark

I got my brother to close the family business so I could leave a little early. I was expecting to go to band practice tonight, but the leader of the pipe band cut his finger and it required stitches so he canceled practice. That meant that I could go to play pickleball, but I needed to go home first, change, and get all my gear.

I arrived at Skypark at 6:30 p.m. There are no tennis players to be seen and there were six courts going for pickleball. Eventually there were eight courts set up with a number of players waiting. There were about 35 people at the peak.

Daniel B., who has been there the last few weeks but I have not seen for quite a long time prior—like a year or two—partnered up with me for a number of games.

Ouch!

In a game against Paul and his friend Matt, Paul served and the ball hit me on the tip of my index finger. The ball did go back over the net crosscourt and was unreturnable for a winner. However there was a cost for that mis-hit. I had broken the end of my finger nail on my index finger, and it was mildly bleeding and slightly painful. I keep Band-Aids in my wallet so it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience. My biggest concern was ripping off the rest of the broken part of my nail—that would be quite painful!

Nice

Tonight was a really good night for challenging play. The weakest game was me playing with “Swoop” against Daniel and Sharon. (I’m almost certain that Swoop and Sharon are part of the local Derby Girls roller derby team.) It was still a fun game. A amusing moment was when I served to Daniel as Swoop’s partner and she blurted out an “OoooOooo” when served hard to Daniel. (I was serving less hard to Sharon.) I don’t think she’s used to speedy serves.

The other weaker game was me and Aaron against Daniel and the “other Mike”—not Texas Mike.

The rest of the games were all at least 3.5 level. Daniel and I played Casey and his dad Tim, losing a very close first game, winning a second game fairly decisively, and then losing a third game. Anytime you can beat Casey and Tim do you know you’re playing a good game.

In the game where Daniel and I beat Tim and Casey, after one rally, Tim said, “Really, really nice play, Andrew.” And he was very sincere. It was a solid compliment. I was playing reasonably well tonight.

Weaknesses

My two biggest weaknesses tonight were hitting balls that otherwise would’ve flown out of bounds, and also returning low balls to my backhand short of the net. Another issue that made itself known when I was playing with Shanté as my partner, was me taking balls in the middle to my backhand when I should’ve left them for my partner’s forehand. That’s definitely something I would need to look out for in a tournament—leaving balls for my partner’s more powerful forehand.

Play wrapped up at 9:30 p.m., with the lights clicking off less than a minute after we finished a last game.

I got Daniel‘s phone number so that we can maybe connect up for a tournament later on. Daniel is a good player.

Number of days on a court: 533
Number of total hours: 2,438

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

Sunday, August 14, 2022 (Court Day #532)

As with most Sundays, I was the site coordinator on duty at Derby Park. I arrived about 10 minutes before 9 a.m. to unlock the bins and set up. There is already a group of four warming up on one of city nets when I walked up.

I had typed up and printed three signs to post today:

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From your SCPC Sunday Site Coordinator:

SIGNUP SKILL LEVELS

Last Sunday, things got a little fast and loose regarding who was signing up in what level . . . in particular, intermediate players signing up as Advanced. The ideal is to break up skill levels approximately 1/3 “mellow/beginner/lower intermediate”, 1/3 intermediate, 1/3 advanced. This keeps games competitive.

If you have never played in a tournament—or if you have, but only at a 3.0 level—you are almost certainly not an advanced player yet. If you think you are ready, I’m happy to get a game together of strong players and see how you do. At Derby, Advanced is at least 3.5 and up. (At Brommer, they like to see 4.0 and up.)

It’s best to privately and quietly ask a known advanced player—or, better, PLAYERS—for an evaluation of your skill level. (And keep in mind that strong players will sometimes ease up on their play during the 9AM-10AM social hour so opponents don’t get mad at them.)

If you are thinking you want to try out the Advanced group, please ask permission instead of just adding your name to an Advanced box. And please do not start a new Advanced box yourself until you are unquestionably an advanced player.

If the Advanced group gets watered down, the advanced players get bored and stop coming to Derby—this is ALREADY HAPPENING. You want those players around when you do develop strong skills and want more challenging games.

Also, if you have a fair number of unforced errors—failed serves, popping up balls, missing the ball with your paddle, can’t consistently place your shots, you can’t reach shots—you really should be in the base group and not the Intermediate group.

The goal is to keep everyone happy. Some are looking for casual games. Others are preparing for tournaments and are looking for equally challenging strong players to sharpen their skills. 

I really hate being the “bad guy” and informing people they need to move down, but I will if I am forced. Please be courteous and humble and “police” your own game.

Feel free to approach me with any questions.

Thank you!!

Andrew, your trusty volunteer club site coordinator

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Erased

Mid-morning, I started a new Advanced box by writing my name down in red pen. A few minutes later when I looked, a woman had added her name as well as a man. Both super nice people, but small problem. The woman is a stronger intermediate player, but has no soft game to speak of and generally drives everything. She’s not an advanced player. The man I consider a moderate intermediate and certainly not at all an advanced player. Upon finding those two names written in the box under my name, they were eliminating any chance for me to have a truly challenging game. I was annoyed. I debated what to do. I could either leave my name but that would validate their decision to add their names . . . or I could risk being viewed as being a jerk and erase my name. I chose to do the latter, and walked over and wiped my name from the box leaving the other two players listed. Later, the woman mentioned that I had removed my name to which I replied, “no offense.” She said, “no offense taken”. It appeared that the two of them from then on wrote their names down as intermediate, and not advanced. So, in that sense my decision was successful. Instead of that weaker game, I got into a stronger game with Matt and Paul from Scotts Valley and George.

I do feel a bit bad about the episode. I don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. But I do have a tournament coming up and need to get in the best games possible in order to prepare.

Rachel, Steve, and La Madrona

My last game wrapped up about 1 o’clock. There’s a game with Jeff is a regular, Brianna, who is pretty new, and a woman named Rachel who, it turned out, is my wife’s acupuncturist. Rachel‘s husband‘s name is Steve and apparently I had met them before but I didn’t remember.

Rachel mentioned that they are both members of the La Madrona Athletic Club, and she said that there is pickleball up there regularly although most of the pickleball players are not very strong and come from a tennis background. They apply tennis strategies instead of pickleball strategies. Rachel said that if I ever wanted to come up on a Thursday night for their social pickleball night, I could come as her guest. She said I could bring my wife Kristen as well, although I would say there’s almost zero chance of Kristen ever coming.

Last Games

Toward the end of the session, I started an advanced box, but there were few players left. Kim asked if I was willing to play with her, Jerrianne, and Charles. I said I would. Charles was playing left-handed, I imagine he has some kind of injury going on with his right arm. For our game, I decide to play left-handed as well. So it was two strong players playing lefty against Kim (who is the intermediate player) and Jerrianne who is a little bit weaker of an intermediate player . . . somewhere in the 2.5 to 3.0 range. Charles and I did win that game even with the two of us playing left-handed. Charles said he was getting pretty frustrated playing left-handed today. I told him that I could feel his pain, given that I had played left-handed for two years as a result of severe tennis elbow in my right arm.

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Wednesday, August 17, 2022 (No Play)

Facebook has this new ”shorts” videos feature. Of course, it knows to feed me pickleball video clips. No big deal, right? Well, I watched one with a title of “dirty shot”, figuring I might learn something new. I’m watching dinking going on and there’s a sharp crosscourt dink to the left to the nearside left player…who—rather than dinking the shot back, speeds it up and drives it at the body of the opponent directly across from him for a winner. I smiled. In the past week, I pulled off this exact shot myself for a winner from the same type of sharp crosscourt dink. Satisfaction! I’m in good company!

Number of days on a court: 532
Number of total hours: 2,435

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