Author: andrewlenz (Page 95 of 328)

Sunday, June 9, 2024 (Court Day #671)

In my ongoing battle with those who say to never switch hands, here is elite pro Riley Newman doing exactly that, switching to his left hand to make a shot:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7-W1JRga5U

Derby

Somehow, today I was just moving slowly and got a late start and ended up walking into the courts just before 9 a.m. Fortunately, when I arrived, the bins are already open the dry erase board was up and the one net that needs to be set up was already up. Later, I learned Barb Gerry had opened up the bins for me and I thanked her. It’s embarrassing to be late to set up as the site coordinator. It wouldn’t be the last embarrassing moment for me today, unfortunately.

It was extremely busy today—51 players at one count—with long waits. With so many people, there was no question that I had to make the games to 9 and win by 1, instead of playing 11 win by 2.

It had started at 61° and overcast. At about 11 a.m., the clouds burned off. It was much cooler today than a few days ago when it got up into low 80s.

There was one game where J.J. and I played against Brandon and Glenn. I’ve been playing really well, but this game everything seem to be going wrong. I returned at least two or three serves passed the baseline. That was miserable. Everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. After waiting probably 20 minutes to get into the game, it was a lopsided quick one where J.J. and I lost 1-9 or 3–9. It was bad.

All the rest of the games, I played just fine.

I only got into one game that would be considered a truly advanced game. All the rest of them had at least one intermediate player.

My last game ran until 12:14 p.m., and Rick A.—who I asked to close for me—wanted me to take the donation money with me and that took another bit of time so I didn’t get home from the courts until 12:30. Then I had to immediately turn around after a very quick lunch to get to teach classes at Skypark in Scotts Valley.

Skypark Classes

Today was my first day teaching in Scotts valley instead of in Aptos at Willowbrook Park. I left my house shortly before 1 p.m., later than I wanted but my wife had moved my coaching clipboard and I couldn’t find it without a hunt. (It has been slid into a cubby under the computer desk.) Still, I was at the courts about 10 minutes before my class was to start.

After the Advanced Beginner class, Katie told me that my class went really well and she couldn’t be happier. That’s very nice to hear. I did tell that that while I’ve subbed for more advanced classes, this was the first time teaching this exact class.

Everything did go really well, though it was noticeably warmer than Aptos. At least there was no traffic getting home. Though I did have 43 text messages when I was done teaching! Boy.

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Monday, June 10, 2024 (No Play)

I found out that a week and a half ago, Harvard Medical School released an article regarding eye protection in pickleball:
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/protect-your-eyes-when-playing-pickleball
A key paragraph:
“Researchers cited numerous types of pickleball-related eye damage, such as corneal abrasions (scratching of the eye surface), retinal tears or detachment, Berlin’s edema (damage to the retina’s outer layers, causing decreased vision for several hours), and hyphema (bleeding in the front chamber of the eye that can lead to glaucoma).”

Another sense of vindication that I always wear eye protection while playing!

Number of days on a court: 671
Number of total hours: 2,851
Number of paid coaching hours: 40.5

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

Thursday, June 6, 2024 (Court Day #670)

Dan Bliss posted an astrophysics meme on Facebook. I added a comment…

Health

My knee is bothering me a little bit and I’m very much feeling stiff.

Funny

This disease we should know about came up on social media:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5rH4DZRNR0/
Yes, the disease is pickleball. Ha!

Skypark

I dropped off my brother Matt at my parents house after work on my way to Scotts Valley.

At 6:49 p.m., I was walking to courts. It was warm in the sun, but cooler than yesterday. That was hot—in the 80s. I know . . . we are spoiled here. I was talking to a friend today and he said it was 105°F yesterday in Sacramento! We whine when it drops below 65ºF or gets above 75ºF!

It was a pretty light crowd tonight. I don’t know if something was going on elsewhere or just the way the cards fell.

My first two or three games, I was obviously the most skilled player. Those aren’t quite as fun . . . games where you feel guilty for your opponents not being able to return your serves. Where you feel like you really need to dial back your game in order to keep the rallies more than two or three shots.

Fortunately, I was able to get into a games with David L., Tim Handley, and Paul. We played two or three pretty balanced games before Tim called it a night.

Aside from the earlier, weaker games, I played all my games tonight and some fashion with David and Paul on the court as my partner or an opponent.

There is a good player closely crop blonde hair, Jordan, who uses a static fully open stance on his serves. It’s unusual to see someone stand like that for a serve, but it’s effective for him.

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Friday, June 7, 2024 (No Play)

Yeah. Knee hurts. Story of my life right now.

New Classes

In the last 24 hours, I’ve done a lot of texting to students for my new series of classes starting this weekend. This will be my time doing two classes back to back. It turns out Binh’s fiancee Laurie is in my beginners class as is her sister, Christina. There’s also a woman acquaintance of mine, Elizabeth, in the beginner class as well. I’ll know about half of the Advanced Beginners class . . . previous students.

Under Pressure

Coincidentally to the topic that started this post above, ever wonder what a pickleball looks like in slow motion when hit? Here you go:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C74rVDLPEGb/
You’re welcome!

Number of days on a court: 670
Number of total hours: 2,848
Number of paid coaching hours: 37.5

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

Tuesday, June 4, 2024 (Court Day #669)

At 6:58 p.m., I was on the path walking to courts. It’s the warmest evening that I remember. My brother texted a photo earlier of his thermometer reading 94°F. He lives in Scotts Valley about ten blocks from the Skypark Courts.

The dry erase board was out when I arrived, but it wasn’t being used and it didn’t get used tonight at all.

Missing Women

It was a bit unusual tonight in that there were almost no women there. I was told there was a women’s league going on at Brommer Park tonight. I saw only one or two women. Spencer’s mixed partner Mo showed up later, but it was a whole lot of just guys.

Weather

It was very warm and unusually muggy. It made for a very sweaty and sticky evening. At one point, I had to get out a towel and wipe off my forehead. If I have ever had to do that before at Skypark in the evening in the years that I’ve been playing there, it was just once.

Good Games

Tonight was pretty much all good games. The really fun one was me partnered with Ethan against Marquis (“Marcus”) and David. They were standing there looking for a fourth. I wasn’t feeling super confident and said, “I don’t know . . . I could be the goat in this game.” (I didn’t mean Greatest Of All Time, I was thinking more “sheep and goats” . . . goats are the undesired!) But Ethan encouraged me and said, “You can play with me.”

And this is not any of the regular David, this David is a little bit taller and older David, who remembered me although I didn’t remember him. David asked if I was the Andrew who was having the arm problem. I told him, yes, shoulder, but then I added after the next rally, I had had really bad tennis elbow. In any case, he remembered me. I only had a very vague fuzzy recollection of him after our conversation. It’s been many months, no question. Maybe even pre-pandemic—that’d be four years in the past!

Anyway, that game was a lot of fun. Sure, I had a handful of bad shots, but on the flip side, I also made some really good shots as well. Ethan was a machine, as you would expect. He complimented me mid-game on my resets. I remember one rally where I was rock solid on my dinks. There was one shot that I popped up a volley while at the kitchen, Ethan said I probably should have let that one bounce. Yes, volleys are harder to control than shots off the bounce. I’ve been trying harder to try and take most shots out of the air while at the kitchen. It’s getting all the decisions perfect—“volley or bounce?”—that is hard.

Dropped

Also, as I was walking on the path back to the remote parking lot, I got a call from David L.—of David and Minori—saying that I had left my wallet at the court. Unfortunately, I have the habit of being a bit lazy and not always completely closing the zipper on my backpack. It’s more efficient, but a bad habit. My phone fell out once about a year ago, and this time it was my wallet. Someone also reached out to Paul Winn to get my number, but David already had it. I walked back, hung out with big Mike Diaz and Aaron (OG, not the big linebacker-size lefty Aaron) and chatted. At 10:15 p.m., I called it a night and left them to finish their beers.

Ugh

As I stepped out of the car at home, I was sore and stiff. Boy.

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Wednesday, June 5, 2024 (No Play)

The big news of the week is the continuing saga of the Joola (“you-la”) Gen 3 paddles being delisted/unapproved by USA Pickleball.

The story goes that the wrong paddles were submitted by Joola for approval. USA Pickleball approved the paddles—using their third-party testing service—then a different paddle was shipped out by Joola to the masses with the approval label on them. These paddles sent to consumers were tested and failed. Originally, it was chalked up to a clerical error on the part of Joola . . . but it came out today that the second set of paddles failed too! Uh, oh. Big problem. Now there are thousands of paddles “in the wild” that are not legal to use in tournaments. I will point out that this is NOT the fault of USA Pickleball. Inconsistency in manufacturing is a problem with the maker.

Health

I should have iced my knee last night. Also, my back is tight.

New Courts

So Karen Haselden, another local certified pickleball coach, has five beautiful new courts on her and her husband’s property in Scotts Valley. She’s calling it “Quail Valley Pickleball.” They even have an LLC for it—probably a good idea, you never know if someone is going to sue you when they are a klutz and hurt themselves! Dave Cox graciously reached out about joining him and having me play there on Friday night, but it’s $15. I’m not on generous retired firefighter’s pension, so I’m going to play for free on Skypark on Thursday night instead. I’ll probably go to Karen’s place at least once just to see what’s up.

More on Joola

So also today, later, Joola issued a statement basically saying they are unhappy with the USAP decision and say “we are confident the current Gen paddles are materially and structurally the same as those approved by USAP in September 2023”. They go on with:
“We plan to dispute USAP’s decision to remove Gen3 paddles from the list, and the process employed to do so, in forthcoming legal proceedings.”

So, it sounds like they plan to sue USA Pickleball. Such a headache. Someone said online that something similar happened with Joola a few years ago when one of their paddles failed a “field test”. Perhaps they are just pushing the envelope so much that the variance in manufacturing can tip the scale and a paddle can fail. There’s risk of pushing too much, of course.

Mindset at the Net

Here’s a good reminder that I tell my students. Expect the speed-up. Prepare mentally and physically for it. And If you don’t get it, you have time to adjust to a slower shot.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7z9YaNgRTw/

Number of days on a court: 669
Number of total hours: 2,845.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 37.5

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