Author: andrewlenz (Page 214 of 329)

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.

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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.

Wednesday, January 1, 2020 (Court Day #328)

I arrived at Derby Park at 9:15. I was late, but today was Dave Allenbaugh’s day to open and close.

There was a couple visiting from Idaho. I saw some strong play of theirs in other games and was hoping to get into a game of my own with them. And I did later, with Ted. I told Ted that I would be playing righty since otherwise we’d get wiped out. Nonetheless, I was outclassed, and Ted more so. Part way through the game, Ted unsuccessfully hit the ball 4 or 5 times in a row. They were not making it easy and we lost 11-2 or 11-3. If it recall correctly, the man made every single one of his drop shots. He was easily a 4.0.

There were two shots in that game that were particularly memorable. One was me popping up a dink and him hitting a passing shot out of the reach of my paddle in for a winner down the right sideline. I told him “Merry Christmas!”—I don’t know where that shot came from, it was lame. The second memorable shot was a drop shot he made that was too low for me to attack—we were across from each other, the woman across to my left. I hit it the best place that I could, which was deep in the middle to the woman’s backhand. It was a little of an awkward hit by her but she did get the ball back over the net—the main point though is that my hit was not attackable by her and kept her back . . . it was the best that I could do.

My right elbow was hurting in this match. I should have probably stopped. Being that it was my first game righty since playing Sunday, three days ago, it shows that my three games righty on Sunday did take a toll.

Around noon-ish, give or take, Dave Allenbaugh wanted to leave and asked me if I would close. I was going to see a movie with my family at 3:30, but I’d have plenty of time. I told him I would.

Later on, as things were pretty much done, I was outside the courts talking to Charles when Kat asked for one more game. How could I pass? Kat, Wei, Gregg (not “3G”) and I walked back into the courts. Wei put up a surprisingly good performance—he’s improved a lot!

Wei was really good at disguising the angle of his shots. He would change the angle of his paddle head and turn it so that it would go somewhere you weren’t expecting—”inside-out” shots. It was kind of annoying, but in a good tactical way for him. He’d look like he was hitting a shot to me, but would send it toward Gregg at the last instant.

After a first game loss, my competitive streak came out and I switched to righty for last two games. Kat said, compared my serve “like that game in Harry Potter, the snitch, it moves all over.” Curving serves.

I earned at least four points in the last game off my serve . . . they’d end up in the net or returned deep or wide of the court. Wei and Kat both had problems with my serves, they were either too fast or too curvy or both. Gregg and I won the last two games—the last game solidly.

My wife texted me at 2:30, “You are aware that we have to leave here around 3PM right?” “Walking to car”.

5 hours of pickleball! Woah.

Afterward, I felt a bit bad about pulling out my strong serves on Wei and Kat, but then I thought, “That’s exactly how I want my opponents to play against me—don’t hold back.” That’s how they get better. Make them stretch and grow.

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Friday, January 3, 2020 (No Play)

Today, I drove by myself down to the Los Angeles area. It’s about a six hour drive, give or take. Being alone, I get to pick what to listen to and so this was a great opportunity to catch up on Pickleball Kitchen podcasts. I play them back at 1.5x speed which allows me to get through more of them since they take a third less time to listen to!

Joe Baker released a new video this week. He always has good videos, though he’s covered most of the most important advice/basics already in prior videos. What better way to spend time in a hotel room getting ready to go to sleep than watching pickleball videos?

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Saturday, January 4, 2020 (No play)

Sitting up in a hotel room bed, waiting for my feet to warm up, YouTube suggested a video. One of Barrett Kincheloe of Pickleball Kitchen.

The video is good, though his tip about drop shots is a bit confusing.

Here was another video that YouTube suggested:

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Sunday, January 5, 2020 (No Play)

Today, I was driving back home from Southern California, so more podcasts. One episode about tournaments particularly struck me. In particular, one tip.

Barrett said that he uses the first few points in a game to probe the strengths and weaknesses of an opponent. How to they handle third shot drives? Or backhands?

While I think many of us mentally “log” what is effective or ineffective, doing it in conscious and planned fashion is an excellent strategy.

In one of Barrett’s later podcasts, he specifically mentioned the video I watched last night. He said he was not very clear on his drop shot segment of the video.

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Thursday, January 9, 2020 (No Play)

I had an annual physical with my GP. I asked him about getting my elbow “shot up” and he said that studies show that there is an initial faster improvement versus control cases but in the long run, healing was slower than those individuals not given the shot. He recommended against the shot.

I said someone suggested acupuncture. He said he’d done it and had a little improvement with it, so it might be worth trying.

After a little discussion, he gave me a referral to a local sport medicine physical therapy group. He said they are excellent. I’m cautiously hopeful.

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Friday, January 10, 2020 (No Play)

I picked up a used Rolflex Pro roller unit for about $40 on eBay and it came a couple of days ago. I used it to massage my right forearm. I don’t know if it’ll make any difference or not, but it’s worth a shot.

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Saturday, January 11, 2020 (No Play)

Weird. My forearm and elbow actually hurt more after the massaging last night and this morning with the Rolflex.

Number of days on a court: 328
Number of total hours: 926

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

Sunday, December 29, 2019 (Court Day #327)

I arrived at Derby Park to open up at 8:50. It was overcast and cold, in the high 40s°F. My wife said it was supposed to start heavy rain at noon. Wayne arrived as I unlocked the bins and I got to blowing off the courts. Wayne helped set up a net or two as players started to trickle in.

Tom S., retired ER doctor, asked how my arm was since he noticed that I was warming up lefty with him and a new older woman named Jan.
“Still hurts.”
“It has been almost a year hasn’t it?”
“Yep, November last year.”
“Have you shot it up yet?”
“No, my GP recommended against it.”
“I had mine shot up and it hasn’t bothered me since. You should get the shot. But you need to have someone who knows what they are doing. The first one who shot me up didn’t know what he were doing. The second one was much better.”

Something to think about. If it’s just masking the pain of the injury so it gets worse, that’s not a good solution.

Today would be a lighter attended day, we set up the last net later on and even then we only played one or two games on it before we took it back down. We barely cracked 25 people.

I played a game with John P. against Grita and a newer guy named Matt that I’d never seen before. Early on, Matt wasn’t playing in a way that would make anyone take notice. But later he played far better—on par with most of the solid players. Regardless, John and I played well together and won without question. Afterward, Matt said to John about me, “I’d hate to see him play right-handed.” John replied, “He’s scary right-handed!” (A nice compliment!)

Charles invited me into a game. “Give me a minute, I’ll grab my forearm band and I’ll play right-handed.” Charles kidded, “We didn’t invite you to play right-handed!” A minute later, I was back.

Charles asked if I wanted to warm up. I said no, and off we started against Grita and Matt from Monterey—the very strong player Matt. (Not the same Matt as before.) I was playing great. Sure, I made a few small errors early on, but it was like magic. Playing left-handed does keep one from being lackadaisical—you have to be focused—and that manifested itself in this game with me playing righty. Charles and I won 11-2.

In that first game, Matt hit a shot off to my left. Instead of really stretching to reach, I switched the paddle to my left hand and returned the ball. Charles commented right afterward that I’d hit a perfect dropshot lefty. Those should happen now and then after a year of practice, right?

We stitched sides and had a rematch, with a similar result. One particularly memorable moment for me was whipping a forehand topspin approach groundstroke an inch over the net crosscourt to Grita who was already at the kitchen line. The ball only made is as far back as their side of the net.

For the third game with the same four of us, we split Charles and me and paired Grita with Charles and Matt and me. Matt and I fell behind initially—I made a few mistakes—but we caught back up and pulled ahead and won.

My arm didn’t feel too worse for the wear. We’ll see how it does in the next few days.

It was 12:30 and the rain was behind schedule compared to the prediction. Two games were still going on the city nets. As my duty, I made sure all the club balls were collected, locked up everything and hit the road.

I was happy about today. I managed ok playing left-handed and playing righty was amazing.

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Monday, December 30, 2019 (No Play)

The muscle in my left forearm is sore. Weird. But it’s not lefty tennis elbow, it’s the top muscle, which is good.

Number of days on a court: 327
Number of total hours: 921

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