Saturday, May 11, 2024 (Court Day #659)
As I walked out my front door, I could feel the sun on my face and thought to myself, “It’s gonna be a warm one.” But as I approached Brommer Park on the freeway, I drove into a major fog bank.
René and I were both two minutes late beyond our agreed 7:15 a.m. time. She complained about the chilly fog, but I told her that we’d be happy for the cooling fog later. (And we were!)
We’d be playing in “Division 8”, that is, teams with a combined DUPR score of over 8.0. We’d be team #6, not that that meant anything.
The list they sent out included 8 teams, but there would be a 9th . . . John Connors and Nancy.
Warm Up
René and I found a court and started warming up: dinks, drops, volleys. René wisely suggested we do crosscourt dinking before we had to share the court with others. Not long after, Sue Stone and her teammate Katy asked if they could join us, we told them that they could. I like them both, but we would have said “yes” for anyone, of course.
John Connors came through and asked that we sign the waiver/release and check in, so we headed to the tent on the far side and did just that.
It was time for the logics announcements.
Both the “8” group and the “7” group gathered on the courts. John and Eddy explained the court numbering and that games would be allotted a maximum of 25 minutes and those still tied at that point would switch to “sudden death” via rally scoring . . . the first team to score would win. The tie-breaker for the playoffs would be points scored differential.
Game #1
Our first game was against Bob Hansen and Andrea Pusateri. I don’t believe I’d ever met Andrea before. René and I found ourselves down, but came back to lead 8-5. Things were looking good but we ended up losing 9-11. It was a challenging game.
After the game, while hanging out on the wall, René was talking to Bob. I shared with René that Bob had been my tennis instructor in 1989 when I was at UCSC. (René went to UCSC too, but graduated a few years after me.) Bob said that 1989 was the year that UCSC won their first national tennis championship. But I had nothing to do with that, I was merely taking tennis as an elective P.E. class for the quarter. Actually, I’d won two raffles to get into two tennis classes in one quarter, so I was playing four days a week—two days with Bob and two other days with Phil Kaplan. It was awesome!
Game #2
Our next game was against Sue Stone and Katy Mozafar. It had been two or more years since I’d played against Sue. Katy, it had been a few months. René and I won 11-3. The result was never in doubt.
Game #3
Next, we played David Le and Garrett Woodford-Berry from San Jose. René and I found ourselves down 0-7, and it was looking very bad. David and Garrett like to drive shots. But we came back and won 11-9. Yes, we went on a roll and outscored them 11-2 down the stretch. René was pushing me—correctly—to let her take forehands in the middle when she was on my left. It’s a hard thing for me to do when I’m used to playing with much weaker players.
Game #4
We heard that John Funky and his partner Mark Donaldson had just lost 0-11. Ouch. We would play them next. We went in confident, probaby overconfident.
They were obviously targeting me. I was fine with that, I like to get shots. Prior to this game, the balls were coming pretty evenly between René and me. John’s partner Mark was much stronger than he is. Our plan was to target John but I occasionally wandered from the plan, like a crosscourt dink that Mark attacked René with. “Stick with the plan.” Sorry, René!
John was doing speedups in this game. One was right to my right shoulder. With hindsight, I should have just tried to get out of the way, but as it was, I couldn’t get my paddle into a proper position to return the ball, only make contact with it. That’s kind of how this game went. What could go wrong, did go wrong. Like me leaving a middle shot for René’s forehand only for her to let it go thinking the ball would go out but it landed about a foot inside the baseline. It was a disastrous mismatch of playing styles. Ironically, we lost 0-11. René was frustrated, I was disappointed.
Game #5
Next, we were playing Aidan and Gerome, both young guys. I gave them too many gifts. Apparently, I need to drill my resets more . . . I was dropping too high for some reason and they’d knock it off the court. We lost 11-3. Of course, René wasn’t perfect, but I’ll take most of the blame for the loss.
Bye
For what they were calling the “Sixth Round”, René and I had a bye.
René said, “Well, we are not going to be in the playoffs.” While we were 2-3, I wasn’t convinced yet. I’m always an optimist.
Somewhere along the way today, René said that I have the fastest hands of anyone that she knows. Even with that, I missed some speedups. I just need my brain in the right place.
Game #6
In this game, we won 11-4 against John and Nancy. With John as the stronger player, we targeted Nancy. There is no mercy in tournaments.
Back at the registration area, John told me, “You played well.” John is part of the “OG”. It’s nice to get some validation and recognition from someone who was part of the elite players when I first appeared on the pickleball scene seven years ago.
Game #7
Next up, we played against against Andrew and Vivian from San Jose. This was a really fun game with some long rallies. We won 11-4. We finished this one up at 11:51 a.m.
After that win, we were now 4-3 for the tournament. Maybe playoffs weren’t so far fetched after all.
Game #8
Next, we’d be playing Binh and Jason. This would be a winnable game. Yes, they’d only lost one game and won six at this point, but it was winnable.
This was a close game. It was back and forth with good rallies and one spectacular rally that got some applause from Sue and Katy who were watching intently.
I did an inadvisable speedup on a crosscourt dink to my forehand from Jason. It was too low. I hit it into the net. I hadn’t done one of those for quite some time, I’ve been patient. Jason was quick with the trash talk, “I knew you’d be good for at least one of those!”
We scored 2-3 points and tied it up 10-10. Unfortuantely, it was not to be. René hit a crosscourt dink into the net and it was over. 10-12.
We lost, but it was a fun game. I checked the time on my phone: 12:26 p.m.
Playoffs
I wanted to see the tally. Eddy’s wife Christina—who is super pleasant, by the way—was doing that at the registration table. Once she was done, I took a photo.
There were no undefeated teams and no teams that walked away with no wins. René and I, with 4 wins and 4 losses, found ourselves in the middle of the pack—tied for 5th—and one spot outside of the playoffs.
Jason and Binh, with just one loss, were the top playoff seed.
Results
I texted Binh tonight to see how they did. Unfortunately for them, they lost both their playoff games and ended up without a trophy and sitting in fourth place.
John sent me a photo of the winners:
A surprise, we had beaten the team that ended up taking gold. And we had played the silver team to 9-11. There’s some solace in that. Though we got clobbered by bronze team 3-11.
I heard that the pro games were very entertaining. Maybe next year I’ll be able to watch. I had to get to work.
An enjoyable day of great games. Thanks to John and Eddy for their hard work!
Number of days on a court: 659
Number of total hours: 2,816.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 33
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