Author: andrewlenz (Page 267 of 331)

Friday, July 27, 2018 (Court Day #176)

I arrived at Brommer Park a little after 9. It was my first visit there during club play hours in about three months. This time, I made absolutely sure work would be covered while I was gone!

I’m in a limbo of sorts. I’m on the fence between the local intermediates and advanced players. I’m definitely not perfect and make poor shots, but I also clobbered many of the non-advanced players. I must have won 40 points today on shots with spin that couldn’t be handled by my opponents. George, after one such shot, said, “That’s a career killer!”

The first hour was great. Chris Yoder and teamed up against Leslie and a tall older gentleman I’d never seen before—understanding, of course, that I haven’t played at Brommer since April or the first week in May. Chris and I won. It was a fun game.

I then played with Karen Long against Chris and Allan. We were leading early on, but I made a series of errors near the end of the game and we lost.

Soon, the hour of mixed skill play ended. Then the choice. Sign up in red with the advanced at the risk of embarrassment—both in terms of being called out on it and also not pulling my weight on the court. Advanced is supposed to be 4.0 and above. But it gets funny. A 4.0 in 60+ might be a 3.5 in a younger crowd. I opted not to risk it and stick with intermediates. Unfortunately, there are really two groups, intermediate and advanced. No one, unless they are brand new, signs up as the bottom skill group, that means intermediate has a wide range of skill. I think winning medals will slowly provide me with more respect. As well as continuing to improve and not making execution errors. Eventually, I’ll be accepted into the advanced group. Already, I feel that I’m on par with several players who play in that group, but I’ll give it time. Nonetheless, I watched longingly at some of the advanced games going on, knowing I’d be in the mix.

Paddle

Terry Long looked at my paddle. He’d seen my post on Facebook’s Pickleball Forum about the crack in it: “Let’s see that paddle.” The edge guard was lose already, so he pulled it back and checked the edge. The damage didn’t go all the way through. Was it a scratch or a crack. We couldn’t really tell, but the face acted as if it were fully intact, so we figured it should be fine.

Tournament

I talked to Dave Cox. Since Rob’s fire station in Foster City is still an hour from Concord, I’m leaning toward staying with Dave in a motel. Or just getting up at 5:30 and driving up.

Number of days on a court: 176
Number of total hours: 486.5

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

Thursday, July 26, 2018 (Court Day #175)

I posted a photo of my cracked padddle on Facebook’s Pickleball Forum. Several people commented on Paddletek’s great customer service and their lifetime warranty. I wrote to Paddletek explaining and sharing the photo. We’ll see what I hear back. I’ll admit it was fun to have top-player Kyle Yates comment on my post: “Hahaha my paddle looks worse than that .. should play just fine but if it really bothers you I’m sure they’d replace it.” Kyle is part of Team Paddletek and is sponsored by the company, so it’s not entirely unexpected that he might comment. Kyle will be in Concord on Sunday to compete.

Game Night

I had to finish up some things at work so I got to Skypark a little later, about 7:10. There weren’t too many strong players there. Rob and Bruce were there and Colleen. No Eric, no Brennan. Oleg would show up later though. Janet mentioned Jerry Louis. Jerry moved to Nevada or Arizona months ago and I haven’t seen him since. Too bad, he was good at keeping us on our toes.

Rob (left) and Bruce waiting for a game. 

Rob and I played Oleg and Bruce and won.

Then we played Oleg and Mark Dettle and won.

We played a game against Janet and Bruce intentionally giving up winners to get into a soft dinking game for practice. We told Janet and Bruce what we were doing. It was a closer game than it would have been normally, but we still won. It was an opportunity to experiment with spin shots and loopy serves and whatever else we wanted. Rob commented, “I don’t think you’ve missed even one of your backspin returns.” I don’t think that I did—and a whole lot of them ended up in the net over the course of several games. We’ll see if I get an opportunity to use them in the matches on Sunday.

The last game was Adrian and Colleen versus us. We were just coming off a very relaxed lazy game where we gave up our intentional winner shots. We didn’t dial it back up, underestimated our opponents and lost the game to Colleen and Adrian! Colleen could be named “backboard” . . . she’s good about returning shots. Adrian doesn’t have a complete game—he’s getting over some knee injuries—but can make some crack shots when given the opportunity. Our game was the last of the night. Oleg and Olga were watching, but aside from site coordinator Mark Dettle, everyone else was gone.

Afterward, Mark was packing up the courts and asked, “Was that the only game that you lost?”
“Yep!”

We were done about 9:15. It’s really nice having lights to play under. Even if it does make it hard to always spatially judge the ball location.

Tournament in three days!

Number of days on a court: 175
Number of total hours: 483.5

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

Wednesday, July 25, 2018 (Court Day #174)

I’m an optimist. A drop-down drag-out optimist. Today, one department at work would well-staffed with a fully-trained employee to answer tough questions. The other department would have two fully-trained staff members plus with one clerk with only four weeks experience but is knowledgeable and competent. As a backup, we have our bookkeeper to open the store and I checked remotely and our business alarm was off, so she was there early. No one texted or called in sick. We were covered, I could go play.

I arrived at Derby a few minutes after 9 and it was already warm—and even a touch muggy. John P. appeared not long after and I gave him my charged blower battery for Sunday since I’ll be at the tournament.

I got in some fun games. No really hard ones. Mostly ones where you either intentionally hit to the stronger player to make a game of it or backed off a lot and served or hit easier shots.

Lo and behold, the young couple from last night at Brommer appeared. Dan and Sara, they said. Both seemed very nice. It was their first time at Derby. Dan has further to go than Sara, but the basic skills are there. They both need tactical advice about when to advance to the net, keeping the ball low—typical beginner stuff. A lot of potential. They might be really good in 12 months.

I had signed up with Eric and Rob and a fourth for a hard game. I grabbed my iPhone to take a photo. (Notice there is no photo with this entry.)

#$@^%&!

There were a bunch of missed phone calls and texts. And several voice messages from an over an hour earlier. (It was now shortly after 10:30.) It turns out that one key holder at work texted me just 15 minutes before opening that she couldn’t come in and was going to the hospital. An assistant manager didn’t swap her day off and took her regular day off even though the other key holder who I thought was working was, in fact, taking an additional day of vacation beyond what was originally written on her time off request—leaving only one key holder to be responsible to open . . . the one that went to the hospital! But there was a backup: the bookkeeper was onsite. But it didn’t occur to her until about 10 minutes after opening time that no one had collected the register drawers from her office!

I didn’t know all the details when I grabbed my iPhone. All I knew is that even if the business was already open, it’d leave one department with a single person with four weeks training! (Granted, there was a second partially trained cashier to help from the other department.) I immediately left the courts—after telling Eric and Rob—and listened to the voicemails in the car. The store was now open at least. The morning usually has fewer customers and I was sweaty—it had already been 72°F by the time I left my house for the courts—so I drove home, showered very quickly, then dashed out the door for work.

I was overly optimistic today. I wanted to play and bypassed some safeguards. There was a perfect storm and I ended up with a parking lot full of employees standing around for 20 minutes getting paid to do nothing. The challenges of running a family business. Your life is never your own. You go on vacation—rarely—with your cell phone on 24/7 and check your emails regardless of the day or hour.

Pickleball can be like work sometimes. If you leave the door of disaster possibility slightly ajar, too often, you’ll get burnt. You need to plan ahead, be wily, don’t depend on others to make good things happen for you. You have to keep control and keep bad things from being a possibility at all.

Rob asked if I could play at Brommer on Friday morning. I said I’d have to check. I don’t want a repeat of this morning!

Paddle Crack

I noticed on Tuesdsy night that a crack had developed in one face of my paddle. When I press around it, it seems solid. But it does make me nervous. Will it get worse?

Number of days on a court: 174
Number of total hours: 481.5

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