Author: andrewlenz (Page 94 of 328)

Friday, June 14, 2024 (Court Day #674)

As the club secretary, I needed to be at the 12:15 p.m. monthly meeting. I might as well take the morning off from work and play. I pulled up to Brommer Park at 9:34 a.m. under partly cloudy skies. It was 59°F, but soon it would be clear skies and warmer temperatures. I lucked out and there was just one parking spot right at the courts. Nice. If the lot was empty, that was the exact spot I would have picked!

Almost all my games were challenging, which is great. I was playing well, though not quite as well as last night.

Tennis Elbow Back?

I really like this new Gearbox paddle, however, it seems as though I’m having little twinges of tennis elbow symptoms. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten golfer elbow before but the inside of my right elbow has been acting up a little bit. Same with the top of my forearm. But it’s just twinges. It’s nothing to worry about . . . yet. It does have me considering going back to a Players Rogue 2 paddle. Or maybe getting Players’ new gel core paddle. We will see.

Games

I played with Brandon against John Connors and a man named Shaun, whom I’d never met. It was a good game. I can’t recall who won, other than it was close. Maybe it was us, maybe it wasn’t. Regardless, it was about the experience of a good game where the ball comes back.

There was one rally where it was one of those how you don’t know how you pulled off what you did. I was on the left. John was straight ahead. Shaun was diagonal from me and we were all at the net. There was a high ball on their side. There was was a slam down at me by Shaun, followed by another from John—I was low and my paddle was lower!—then another from John but now the ball was high enough for me to drive it between them . . . for a winner. “I thought that was over after my first slam!”, shared Shaun. They were impressed. Heck, I was impressed!

Communication?

Shaun was my partner for one game. I was on the right. An opponent lobbed directly over my head. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get it. I immediately shifted left get out of the way and to cover for my partner going after that lob to hit with his forehand. But, no. I turned around and he hadn’t moved. Rally over. I would have expected any advanced partner to just go after that lob. I was mildly annoyed in passing, but I hadn’t yelled “switch”, so I have to accept at least some—or maybe a lot—of the responsibility.

Just like the last time that I played against John Connors, afterward, he told me, “You played well.”

Board Meeting

Today was the monthly Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board meeting. Dan Bliss didn’t make it and Kristin Long had an appointment outside the area and couldn’t make it either. For the rest of us, the meeting lasted about an hour and forty minutes and we were out shortly after 2 p.m. One problem we are having is some of the players aren’t doing the $2 donation. As it is, we are not covering the costs associated with reserving the Skypark courts on Saturday mornings. If someone comes and sets up camp in the tennis court that is dual striped for pickleball, without that club reservation, half the pickleball courts would be unavailable.

Paddle Wars

I found out that Selkirk issued a statement yesterday supporting USA Pickleball and integrity in paddle manufacturing.

STATEMENT RELEASE 06.13.24
EQUIPMENT STANDARDS & THE FUTURE SUGGESS OF PICKLEBALL
As with any sport, maintaining high standards and enforcing rules is essential to ensuring fair play and the sport’s integrity. We encourage all pickleball equipment manufacturers and the general pickleball community to support USA Pickleball (USAP) in their recent efforts to enforce the current rules, as well as hold manufacturers to higher quality standards.

In pickleball, it has become a common issue that the production models of paddles differ from those that were originally approved in testing.
Enforcing the rules and ensuring a level playing field is critical to the current and future integrity of the sport.
SELKIRK

Obviously, this is in response to the Joola’s lawsuit against USA Pickleball.

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Saturday, June 15, 2024 (No Play)

The one thing about coaching professionally on weekends with regular classes is it’s often “do teaching or do tournaments”. Tournaments are almost always on weekends. Mixed doubles is often on Sundays, so there’s still a chance for doing men’s doubles on a Saturday, though I regularly work that day.

Number of days on a court: 674
Number of total hours: 2,857.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 40.5

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

Tuesday, June 13, 2024 (Court Day #673)

In the afternoon, as I was walking to my car parked across the street from work and back, my knee was providing a little bit of pain with each step. It’s not what a player wants to be experiencing.

I arrived at Skypark shortly before 7 p.m. It was is busy but not that busy.

My first game was with Danny—Sean‘s brother—he was paired with Marco and I had Jax as my partner. That was challenging and enjoyable game.

Krista

The next game was Tim Handley and myself against Sean and a woman named Krista. I never seen Krista before. She’s a lefty and a good 4.0 player. She also tends to be a bit on the serious side. That was a close, great game.

Jane

Jane Prince was there. I hadn’t seen her since the Riley and Lindsey Newman clinic at Cabrillo College back in October last year. I didn’t get to play any games with her. I asked if she was still coaching tennis and she said that she’d given that up a year or two into playing pickleball. She said that she’s coaching with Karen at Karen’s new “Quail Valley” courts at her home in Scotts Valley.

Uh, Oh. Lights?

Around 8:15 p.m., as I walked across the courts after a game ended, Wendy stopped me and asked if I could go take a look at the lights. Apparently, Mark, the retired chef, tried to turn on the lights, but they didn’t work. When I looked, they were already in the “ON” position. I switched them off and then switched them back on, but the lights over the courts did not illuminate. Poop. Apparently, the new policy with the lights going out by 8:30 p.m. has finally taken affect. Everyone was quite disappointed. Being that it is summer, we had just enough light to continue playing until about 8:50 p.m. though it got harder and harder to see the ball.

A new sign was posted this week announcing the court hours and various rules.

My Play

It was mostly all challenging games tonight. I was happy . . . even with the early departure.

I felt that I was playing extremely well tonight. I had my moments of badness, such as I hit a couple of drives off dinks past the baseline (barely), and during some fire fights at the net I hit two or three shots off of pop ups into the net which would’ve otherwise likely been winners.

We have our monthly SCPC board meeting tomorrow at Brommer, so I’ll be playing there tomorrow morning. I won’t miss not playing really late tonight.

Paddle Wars: Joola Sues

Soooo, it’s official. After threatening, Joola has filed a lawsuit against USA Pickleball, which they announced today:

Here’s an article about it:
https://pickleball.com/news/joola-sues-usa-pickleball-over-gen-3-paddle-ban

It’s unfortunate. I’m hoping USA Pickleball did everything correctly.

Number of days on a court: 673
Number of total hours: 2,855
Number of paid coaching hours: 40.5

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

Tuesday, June 11, 2024 (Court Day #672)

After leaving work, I got to the courts in Scotts Valley just about 7 p.m. It was very crowded and people were complaining about the waits. I didn’t count, but there were about 50 players.

Yes, the waits were long, but most of my games were pretty good.

Great Game

Sean Lynch and I played against Matt Babb and Oscar. It was a great game with dink rallies, speedups, and resets. Sean and I pulled ahead, then they got within a few points, but then Sean and I closed out the game. There was some redemption in that. The last time was in a game with Sean, he was on the other side of the net and I was making series of dumb mistakes like dinking shots wide of the court.

Later, I was teamed up with lefty “linebacker” Aaron against Tim Handley and Matt Babb. We got clobbered. Matt Babb was performing exceptionally well with his serves tonight. He’d hook his serve off the short side of the court out of the reach of my forehand or driving serves down the center of the court to my backhand. I know my serves sometimes don’t pop back up but Matt had a few that I’d swear that the ball was broken or it hit debris by how low the ball stayed. Tim Handley was also whipping some serves angled off the court and impossible to return. Matt got two aces on me and Tim got another. Aces are rare.

I was playing pretty well tonight outside of that one game against Matt and Tim.

My last game wrapped up about 9:20 p.m. and I helped take temporary nets down. Mark Dettle had asked me earlier to be responsible to make sure they got stowed properly and locked up.

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Thursday, June 12, 2024 (No Play)

A funny article by a woman named Celia Rivenbark appeared on AOL this week—is AOL even a thing anymore?—about pickleball. After reading it, it’s obvious that either she did a lot of research or actually knows something about pickleball. For instance, this is the first time that I’ve seen “swing weight” appear in an article meant for consumption by the general public!

Beware! Pickleball addiction may affect you or loved ones
https://www.aol.com/beware-pickleball-addiction-may-affect-090315084.html

Number of days on a court: 672
Number of total hours: 2,853.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 40.5

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