Author: andrewlenz (Page 3 of 331)

Sunday, August 23, 2026 (Court Day #957)

As I left my house and made my way to Brommer Park, it was 63° and, while the sky was completely hazy, it felt sunny. The temperature prediction called for the mid-70s, meaning is going to be warm for my last meeting of my two classes this afternoon in Scotts Valley.

Knee

In a resting position, my knee doesn’t hurt, but there’s a certain amount of pain walking around. If I only played when there was no pain in my knee, there would be very long stretches between outings!

Brommer Park

I pulled into the lot at 9:03 a.m. and the courts are half empty.

I left at 12:05 pm. The game of the day was a player who I’m forgetting now and myself winning 11-5 against Mickey and Drew. (Voice to text thought that player was named “Cannon” but there is no player named Cannon!)

The last game was Jesse, the tan guy with tattoos, against John (Robin’s husband) and Ken. Ken was playing really well today. It was the best that I’ve ever seen him play. While I was playing against him in a game or two, he got me on one or two serves that were low, fast, and angled. Nice work, Ken!

Most of the games were pretty good today. Though there were a game or two were is lopsided. Ed and I played against Lefty Greg and a very muscular middle-aged blond man wearing a tank top whose name that I forget, whom I’d never seen him before. He was a 3.0 level player. I think Greg and his partner scored maybe two points the whole game.

Shot to the Face!

About an hour into play, during a game against young Aaron, he did a speed up and hit me right in the face breaking my sunglasses. He felt bad about it, but I told him not to worry about it, it’s just part of the game.

Blast from the Past

Across the divider, David Black asked if I wanted to join their group. There was a group of pickleball players somewhat older than myself who had rented two courts this morning. One of the group was Karen Long, former president of the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club. Karen splits time along with her husband, Terry, between California and Arizona depending on the season. They come back to California during the summer when it gets really hot in Arizona, but then head to Arizona when it gets cold and rainy in Santa Cruz. Karen and Terry were part of the original group responsible for bringing pickleball to Santa Cruz along with Dan Bliss and Jerry Louis.

I hadn’t seen Karen in many months. Maybe even like a year or two. I got a hug. I asked Karen if she was still involved with any governing bodies of pickleball. (She had been involved at one point with the International Federation of Pickleball.) She said she isn’t right now and that she’s been playing more softball than anything else.

Karen said she’d tweaked her back. That’s why I got invited to join the group.

I played with Beth against her husband David and Monica (Kiko’s mom). It was a fun game.

Teaching

For a wide variety of reasons, a bunch of my Advanced Beginner students could not make our last session today.

I’m not sure the reason, but signups for my classes starting next month are minimal. If it stays that way, I will simply end up canceling the classes. It doesn’t bother me, I do it mostly for fun. Sure, having supplemental income is is nice, cause that’s not the main reason I do it. But I still do it if I didn’t get paid? No. My free time is too valuable. But I do enjoy teaching.

Sunglasses

I just ordered three pairs of sunglasses on eBay, which totaled about 40 bucks. I currently own three broken pairs. One which the arm was snapped off at the joint this morning, another months ago that snapped around the lens when I went to put it onto my face (I’m hoping to glue that one back together), plus another one where one of the arms snapped and I taped it back together temporarily— that is the one that I wore to my classes this afternoon.

Number of days on a court: 957
Number of total hours: 3,524.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 231.5

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

Thursday, August 20, 2026 (Court Day #956)

This is a great rally during an mixed doubles MLP match with Anna Leigh Waters:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbuGcuFRbbg
Did you notice at the end where ALW nearly tackled her partner to keep him from falling into the kitchen? It’s totally legal provided she doesn’t step into the kitchen herself while doing it.

Rules

What continues to surprise me are the comments on social media posts that make it obvious that the person has never read the rulebook or taken a class with a good coach. If you play pickleball more than just once in a while, you owe it to yourself to read the rulebook. And certainly don’t share your “knowledge” when you don’t know what you’re talking about. It seems most players learn the rules through a chain of word-of-mouth and things get lost in this real world “game of telephone”… not to mention that some rules change over time.

In my time of playing over the last 10 years, there have been many rule changes. Most are subtle, but some are quite significant. For instance, when I started playing, if a serve hit the net but still landed in the service box, it was a let and the serve was replayed. Perhaps the biggest, was the addition of the drop serve, first as a provisional, temporary edition, but then it was made permanent the next year.

Another Tesla Paddle

Tesla and Selkirk are back with a new collaborative paddle called the Aurum:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DcRaBxniVz2

Paddle Shapes

Here is a good overview at the various paddle shapes provided by the USAP:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DcRjKAwkquF

Heading To Skypark

By 6:15 p.m., I was on Highway 17 and driving towards Scotts Valley. It went from sunny to mostly overcast, but it was still a warm 73°F.

My knee continues to bother me, especially when going up and down stairs. I also have a strange pinch near my collarbone at my right shoulder today. It is, what it is.

Skypark

I pulled into the Skypark parking lot at 6:22 p.m.

Aaron Bartley and I played against Shreyes and Marquis. We lead 10-8 but ended up losing 12-10. 

We also lost 12-10 in a second game. We had a comeback but it fell short. 

More Games 

I played with a guy named Holt and we won 11-0 versus Chuck and Garrett. 

We swapped partners and this time teamed with Garrett. Garrett’s team had a better showing but we still lost 7-11 to Holt and Chuck. It wasn’t a true evaluation of the teams considering that I was trying to hit to Holt since he was the stronger player across the net.

Playing with Ahbi

Ahbi and I played against Chris and Shreyes. We won the first, lost the second, and were leading 8-2 when the lights clicked off at 8:32 p.m. Apparently, the City of Scotts Valley’s plan of turning off the lights at 8 p.m. is still being implemented! (It was supposed to go into effect a few days ago.)

Knee

My knee doesn’t usually bother me while playing too much, but I was definitely feeling it by the next to last game. And if I wasn’t trying not to, I would’ve been limping a little bit.

And?

So what to work on? I think over the course of the evening there are a couple of balls that I should’ve let sailed along—yes, hitting outballs. I hit one of those two for a winner, so it wasn’t a complete disaster. Nonetheless, I need to work on letting balls go.

I feel that I do a good job mixing up my serves. Predictability is the enemy of points. When you do the same thing over and over, your opponents get comfortable. They can react quicker and have a plan since they’ve seen it before and their brains don’t have to process what’s happening on the fly and can instead just react.

Whole Foods

This is interesting.

The co-founder and former CEO of the Whole Foods grocery chain John Mackey started playing pickleball and gained a whole lot of new friends:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DcSK27eERId
This is a common theme. Pickleball is so social. The players are relatively close to each other. The same are only 10-15 minutes then you have time to chat and/or rotate partners. This take is not a surprise to me at all. I’ve heard it hundreds of times.

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Friday, August 21, 2026 (No Play)

Disney’s Goofy cartoon features pickleball—click the arrow to scroll through the various frames of the strip:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DcOwXqAm2SP

Number of days on a court: 956
Number of total hours: 3,521.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 228.5

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

Tuesday, August 18, 2026 (Court Day #955)

Officially effective yesterday, the City of Scotts Valley is implementing their trial of cutting off the lights every night at Skypark at 8 p.m. As of last week, the lights still went off at 8:30 p.m., Sunday through Thursday with an extra hour tacked on for Friday and Saturday nights. With the loss of 30 minutes of lights, there was an imperative for me to leave as soon as possible from work.

Unexpected Stop

On my way to Scotts Valley, I noticed that the gas light was on in my car. I looked at the miles left in the display: zero. Oh well, I would need to stop for gas on my way into Scotts Valley.

As I entered Scotts Valley, it was 75°F and sunny with traces of high thin clouds. Very warm.

Knee

Playing on Sunday had stressed my knee and it hurt while walking the dog this morning. It wasn’t intensely painful, probably a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being excruciatingly painful.

Skypark

I walked into the courts at 6:15 p.m.

The parking lot was full tonight but it was a relatively light crowd. I think at the peak, I think there were only 3 to 5 people waiting to get onto a court.

The first game was Chuck and myself against Scott Anderson and a young guy whose name I forget who has curly blond hair that flops out under his cap. His play could be a little bit rough, but he had quick hands and good skills. They went ahead, but then Chuck and I made a game of it only to lose by a couple of points in the end.

Aaron Hicks and I played three games against Pauly and Maria. We won all three games, however, the second one was a little bit closer.

Friendly Fire and Friendly Feeding

Over the course of the evening, I got hit in my upper body four times. Two of them were off of either my paddle or my partner‘s paddle. The first one was early in the evening, in my second game, where a drive and hit me square in the right pec muscle. It was almost like I was waking up from a dream. I should’ve been paying closer attention since I think I had my paddle down. The second one was Pauly hitting me at the armpit, catching me in a chicken wing.

In that last game, there are a few shots that Matt popped up which I just drove with my forehand up to the left side of the court. Between me getting hit with the ball (“friendly fire”) off my partner’s paddle, Matt suggested that I should title this blog post “friendly fire”. Later, after he had popped up a number of shots, he suggested that I should add “friendly feeding“ to the title as well!

Playing with Chris

The last three games were Hispanic Chris and myself against Paul and Aaron Hicks. We played three games. In the first game, Chris and I lost by a sizeable margin. In the second game we lost, but the game was very close. In the third, I played a very clean game. I made only one or two errors. Chris reduced his errors too, though he had quite a few more than I did. From the very first service of the game, Chris and I went ahead 4-0. Pretty soon it was 6-2. Then 8-2. Then 10-2 Then a win at 11-2.

Lights

Though we had been told that the lights were going to be clicking off at 8 o’clock, they were still on at 8:10 p.m. Matt was ready to go home and I had it in my head that I was going to be forced to leave at 8 p.m., so 8:10 p.m. sounded pretty good.

What to work on

When I was on the right hand side, receiving a serve, there were three serves down the middle, low and fast to my backhand that I was unsuccessful in returning the ball over the net. That is a consistent weakness.

Number of days on a court: 955
Number of total hours: 3,519.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 228.5

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