Author: andrewlenz (Page 63 of 327)

Tuesday, January 21, 2025 (Court Day #764)

It was 52°F and dark—as you’d expect—when I arrived at Skypark at 6:49 p.m. 

It was a busy with a solid group standing around and waiting to play. 

Games

My first game was with Matt Babb against Chloe and Asian Aaron. That was a close and long game and, honestly, I can recall if we won or lost. Maybe that means we lost! Afterward, Aaron said I played well, but I did not feel that way at all.

Matt, Kirby, Dan

Matt Babb and I played against Kirby and one of the two tall Dans. (Not Dan Borlean, the other one.) We won the first game 11-4.

Then we had a rematch and Matt and I lost 11–5, but for this game, Matt had traded his regular paddle for an Owl brand paddle. Mid-game, he shared that he was having trouble adjusting to it. Also, in that game, there may have been as many as half a dozen shots where our opponents’ ball hit the crack in the court, which significantly impacted the trajectory of the ball… you’d go to swing at the ball and it’d be somewhere else.

We had a rubber match, trying to squeeze in the game before the lights went out at 8:30 p.m.—we only had about 10 minutes. We figured we’d get as far as we could. It turns out that we didn’t need much time that we took command in very short order and went on the win game 11-1 with a few minutes to spare.

And?

I don’t know what was going on tonight, but my drop shots tonight were pretty consistently awful. Although they gradually did get better over the course of the evening, mostly in the latter half of the evening. although I still missed a few that I shouldn’t have.

It was a chilly evening, it was 46°F as I was nearly home and drove through my neighborhood.

Pickleball Stand-up

A pickleball stand-up comedy routine appeared for me to watch on Instagram. I didn’t think it was overy funny or anything, but I’ve never seen pickleball mentioned by a comedian, so here you go:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_3CVGxPYxL

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Wednesday, January 22, 2025 (No Play)

I received a promotional email today from Courtney Beyer looking to sell her cards and prints to our family retail store. One of her cards caught my eye.

Coincidentally, Mrs. Beyer lives only about an hour north of me.

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Friday, January 24, 2025 (No Play)

I had a non-profit board meeting last night, so I didn’t play at Skypark.

The Kitchen Blockers protective eyewear that I ordered arrived last night. At first, I was thinking they were very uncomfortable, but then I figured out that they included foam pads to adjust them and that improved the feel significantly. I’m looking forward to trying them out in a game—that’ll be at night at Skypark!

Number of days on a court: 764
Number of total hours: 3,072.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 108.5

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

Monday, January 20, 2025 (Court Day #763)

I arrived at Brommer Park at 10:21 a.m. Today was to be our Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board meeting. I had to do some prep for it this morning and that kept me from playing earlier—well, that and just being tired!

Games

When I got to Brommer, harder games (blue, 4.0+) appeared to be difficult to find, so I signed up in just red (Advanced) instead. Tom Sherwood and I played against short Chris and another guy I don’t know. Tom and I won pretty easily. It was a lazy warm up game.

Tony Sloss and I won 11-4 against friends named Adam and Chris.

In a game against Josh, there was one shot from the kitchen where he slammed it near my right hip, and I whipped my paddle to my right and returned the ball. Afterward the rally ended, he exclaimed, “Wow! Where did those hands come from?”

While playing in a game with Tony, I said, “I got it!” but then I hit the ball off the edge of my paddle and it flew up and nearly hit the fence behind our opponents. Oops!

Tony, Ying, Mo

My last game was with Mo against Tony Sloss and Ying—mixed doubles. We lost 11–7. We were down quite quite a bit but then we worked our way back and we were getting closer but ran out of time. Mo and I were not playing our best.

Tony was back at the baseline and I hit a very short shot, but Tony managed to sprint up to the ball and drop it over the center of the net. Nice get and nice hit, Tony!

Meeting Time

It was 11:54 a.m. when I got back out to the club’s court scheduling board and, by appearances, there is no way I would get an additional game in before our board meeting starting started at 12:15 p.m.

It turned out that there was some confusion amongst the board regarding the date plus president Mark Dettle was at the ER with his elderly mother, so after about 20 minutes of club business discussion, we decided to postpone the meeting.

Pro Paddle Sponsorship Fiasco

Recently, Selkirk told their sponsored pro players that they were only allowed to play with the 008 paddle in competition. Apparently, this was with short notice, and this particular paddle behaves differently than the selection of paddles the players were allowed to choose from before the mandate. One pro player, Quang Doung, was traveling in a different country and playing in a tournament. Midway through, he had enough of trying to adapt on the fly to this new mandated Selkirk paddle and switched to a Proton brand paddle.

Understandably, Selkirk was very unhappy about this and sent him a letter not to do it again. Selkirk pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to sponsor athletes. If an athlete doesn’t use their paddle then that is a breach of contract and Selkirk is not getting their money’s worth. This was especially damaging to Selkirk and was unexpected positive publicity for Proton. Selkirk may need to tighten up their contracts but also consider making sure they give enough notice to their sponsored players regarding having to switch paddles.

Volleyer’s Eye

Something interesting that Colin John’s mentioned on a podcast is something he referred to as “the volleyer’s eye”. He compared this to the batter’s eye, which refers to the color of the background that the batter sees past the pitcher on the mound. For instance, you wouldn’t want to have a white background because it obscures the baseball being thrown by the pitcher. In a similar way, you wouldn’t want to have a light colored wall or a window without opaque blinds beyond a baseline of a pickleball court.

Number of days on a court: 763
Number of total hours: 3,071
Number of paid coaching hours: 108.5

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

Sunday, January 19, 2025 (Court Day #762)

My wife is still on her girls’ weekend with her monthly book group friends in Palm Springs, along with our daughter Charlotte and her medical school compatriot… they came out from Tucson. That means I’m still on dog duty which also means I can’t more or less crawl out of bed and go play pickleball. Instead, I have to feed the dogs, then take them out on a leisurely walk. By the time that was done, it was about 10 a.m., and that is when I was on my way to Brommer Park under cloudy skies and surprisingly chilly 48°F.

Today is a teaching day for me, so I couldn’t stay much longer than noon. I like to be comfortably early to my classes—it’s bad if the instructor is late!

Brommer Park

 When I arrived at Brommer, there was plenty of parking and not all the courts were in use at about 10:15 a.m.

I was alone waiting on the wall with no one to drill or warm up with. It took me about 10 minutes to get into my first game.

Games

I played a game with Kim against a guy name Haung and little Linda S. Before the game, Gary told me to watch out for Haung since he hits really good shots. And watching him in the game before, I’d agree that he looked really good. And I would say that he played like a solid 3.5 player—yeah, power and angles, but even with me going out of my way to hit more shots to him, Kim and I won 11-1. Maybe it was an off game for him, I don’t have enough data points to judge.

Manda and I played against Kirk and Gary and I was completely not paying attention during that game. They had to constantly remind me that I was serving and what the score was… it was the most unfocused that I’ve ever been in a game. I was just not into it. And, no, I don’t remember the final score.

Linda and I played against Marco and Kim and we won the game. I wasn’t perfect, but I was playing pretty sharp.

The last game was Gary and myself against Manda and Linda. We lost 8–11. Even with less than two hours of play, I was tired. I was a little more focused, but still not really into it.

And Out…

I checked the time, 11:58 a.m. It was time for me to go home and get ready to teach. I was thinking, “Hopefully, I can pay a little bit more attention when I’m instructing!” (Instructing did go great later, by the way!)

Today was a bit of a disappointment with regard to the strength of the games. Don’t get me wrong, all the people were enjoyable and fun, but there was no game with all strong 4.0+ players. It’s harder for me to be focused in those kinds of games.

In the afternoon, students were late in my Beginners class, so I had to fill in for warm-ups and, later, I played against two women by myself. I played lefty and tried to hit everything backhanded… maybe I should have let them score a point…!

Number of days on a court: 762
Number of total hours: 3,069.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 108.5

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