Pickleball Journey

Sunday, July 12, 2026 (Court Day #945)

I feel a bit like I’m falling apart. I’ve taken about a week break from playing. The pain in my right knee when walking is more common than uncommon. I have plantar fasciitis going on in my left foot. Some days, it barely bothers me, but other days, like today, it feels tight, though I would still consider pain to be mild. Then I have traces of tennis elbow going on on my right arm. And then this week, I’ve been dealing with some kind of pull or strain in my right shoulder. Earlier in the week, it was intense enough that I was considering putting my arm in a sling. Today, there’s a little bit of it left, but only with certain movements.

With all the above going on, I figured I would keep my pickleball session shorter than normal today. Plus, in a few weeks, my wife’s summer vacation ends and she fully returns to teaching. It’s not uncommon for her to go in during the summers to prep for classroom for the coming school year. This year, after teaching 1st grade for nearly 20 years, they’re moving her to teaching kindergarten. This requires a major overhaul of her classroom setup. This afternoon, my wife has plans for us to spend several hours at school, assembling new furniture and moving things around.

Backspin Oops

I realized that I didn’t mention it previously, but at my last outing at Derby Park, there was enough backspin on a shot that it flew back over the net toward my opponent side. I was there, but I spaced, and instead of hitting the ball back into the net or at least touching it before it bounced on my opponent side of the net, I simply let it go. Yes, of course, meant that my team lost the rally due to my mistake. How to feel dumb! The rule is you have to hit the ball before it bounces twice—even if it means reaching over the net to do it!

Brommer Park

I pulled into the Brommer parking lot at 9:40 a.m. It was was 64° and overcast.

When I arrived, I was the old man out. There was a court open, but no one to play with.

Young blonde Taylor arrived and asked if she wanted to warm up. We took a court and warmed up for about 10 minutes waiting for someone to join us. A group of four avoided us and walked past us and took the last court to play a game.

Games

Kim and I won 13-11 against Taylor and Gary. Taylor has ping pong background. I hit some drives into the net. Kim and I didn’t have the best collaboration and lost a couple of rallies as a result of not meshing/communicating the best.

Taylor and I won 11-1 against Kim and Hispanic Chris. 

Taylor has pretty quick hands and pretty good defense too. Slams were coming pretty fast at her midcourt, but she was getting the ball back over the net. Good job!

Chris and I then teamed up and lost 10-12 against James and Taylor.

The sun came out at Brommer around 11 o’clock.

Lefty Aaron B. and I played against James (the stocky James) and young, thin Aaron. In that game, I offered to stack after a few rallies, but since I had started as the first server, it meant we were stacking on odd scores, which was really strange. The first game was lopsided with me trying too hard and me being responsible for about 2/3 of our errors.

We swapped sides and played again this time, Aaron and I took a 8-6 lead. James is really great with his angles. On one of those shots, I went for an ATP from a dead sprint but hit the ball into the net. On another of Jame’s shallow cross-court shots, I was able to sprint to it and hit it over the net but then James went for a flying erne and hit the ball for a winner down the middle. While we did end up losing that second game 8–11, it was fun and challenging.

Closing Time

I checked the time, 11:36 am. My wife and I are selling an old bed frame online to a guy named Simon. He’s coming to get it today. I saw there was a message from him saying that he would be at my house about 10 minutes. Time to go! Too bad, I could’ve gotten in more good games.

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Monday, July 13, 2026 (No Play)

Interesting line call and referee’s actions:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DarVEr8TAVl

One of the comments on this video stated that the referee’s reaction time was too slow and he didn’t turn his head in time and was unable to watch the ball land. That is wrong. The referee is primary job is watching for foot faults. Line calls are left to the players on that side of the net. If a referee happens to see the ball, he can make a judgement, but that’s merely a bonus. We’re counting on the ref to point out the kitchen violations and with momentum, those can take place after the ball is already dead.

I remember sitting at Chamisal a few years ago, after a tournament. I was overhearing a referee up in the stands quietly talking to a man next to him. The referee was repeatedly commenting, “See? There is yet another foot fault!” They happen far more often than we think.

All that said, the referee in the video clip made a mistake. He should have never pointed to where he thought the ball landed. He should have simply said, “The call stands,” since he wasn’t watching the ball. I’m also kind of wondering if the referee was really doing a good enough job watching kitchen fault violations, but maybe he did.

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Tuesday, July 14, 2026 (No Play)

Actress Mary Steenburgen getting interviewed about The Dink movie coming to Apple TV this month:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DayRL0VkgyI

Number of days on a court: 945
Number of total hours: 3,498
Number of paid coaching hours: 221.5

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

Saturday, July 4, 2026 (Court Day #944)

My body is a bit of a mess right now. My right knee has a bit more pain than typical. And there’s a little bit of a new strain near my right collarbone. While I seem to be past the mild recurrence of tennis elbow, there is still some tenderness in my right forearm. And I’m continuing to deal with mild plantar fasciitis in my left foot. Like I said, a bit of a mess.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever played that Brommer Park on a Saturday before. With the holiday, I have a few options for locations to play today. I could drive out to Scotts Valley and play at Skypark for club play, but the waits with no doubt be long. It could go to Derby Park as I’m sure there are regulars that show up to play on Saturday mornings there, but I’m skeptical that I would get consistent challenging play there. And I certainly don’t want to drive all the way out to Aptos to play at Willowbrook. That leaves Brommer Park.

I left my house at 8:40 a.m. under completely cloudy skies with a temperature of 60°.

Brommer Park

I pulled into the Brommer parking lot at 8:53 a.m. The parking lot was very light as far as cars.

Shawnté and I teamed up and lost a close one 10-12 against Kyle and lefty Aaron.

I played a game with Lefty Aaron against Matt Babb and Micky. Aaron was taking the game very nonchalantly. There were at least two or three shots that I think he would’ve made had he been less lackadaisical. That’s not to say that he didn’t play well. He did. He has angles, depth, and power. It was a close game, but we lost after being ahead. And make no mistake, I had more than my share of less than stellar shots.

There was an assortment of games that weren’t memorable.

More Games

Two guys who I didn’t know were coming out of a game they had just won and Dan Dewey and I took them on. This would be Mark and Jim.

Mark is from Texas. He used to live over the hill in the San Jose area. His parents have a beach house here in Santa Cruz, so he’s visiting.

He partnered with an older lefty named Jim. I would guess that Jim is in his mid-60s.

Jim has quick hands. And Mark is a solid 4.0 player. Mark was all over the court.

Dan and I won the first game which was and back-and-forth and very close.

It was so close, everyone wanted to continue that group of players and we played again. This was another very close game but, this time, our opponents won.

We had a rubber match and Dan and I won that last game 11-9.

I wrapped up play at 11:15 a.m. to get home and spend time with family.

Ow.

By the end of the session, the only body part giving me trouble was my right knee. Driving home, there was no pain in my knee while in a resting position—it only hurts while under some strain.

Celebration

Every year, our extended family and some friends get together to have a party and celebrate Independence Day. We have a home-brew parade where the family and kids will decorate a vehicle—in the 1970s, this was an Army surplus Jeep that would sometimes be troublesome to start!—then we play musical instruments and march around the neighborhood. Drums, whistles, horns, cowbells, whatever we have around. (If I’m inspired, I’ll play bagpipes, though that’s less common now that I no longer compete and don’t play in a pipe band.) The parade used to be in my grandparents’ circular driveway, then it moved a few decades ago to my parents’ house where they live on a road that forms a circle. This year was the USA’s semiquincentennial, that is, 250 years since its founding. I have distinct memories of the bicentennial at my grandparents’ house in 1976, 50 years ago, so the gathering and mini parade has been a family tradition for at least half a century!

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Monday, July 6, 2026 (No Play)

This is hilarious! This is something that I often think about when I see these types of barriers!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZ-oftASI4K

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Wednesday, July 8, 2026 (No Play)

In the quest to keep paddles’ ball spin under control, USA Pickleball is abandoning roughness testing for a new system of firing balls at the paddle being certification tested and using high speed video cameras to determine the ball’s exit spin rate.
https://usapickleball.org/usap-news/equipment-news/update-regarding-the-usa-pickleball-spin-rate-test-and-implementation-timeline/

Ok. Let’s nerd out for a second on a tangent.

The USAP’s maximum allowed spin rate is 2,100 rotation per minute (RPM). Another way to think of this is 2,100 divided by 60 seconds which results in 35 rotations per second.

At 40 miles per hour, assuming each player is 2 feet inside the baseline (40 feet apart) it would take 0.68 seconds for the ball to travel from one player to the other. Of course, there is air drag and therefore any ball will slow down from 40 MPH over the course of its travel path. One source says a 43% loss of a ball’s speed was observed. Another says a ball lost about 15 MPH over its flight. Assuming 40 MPH at contact and losing 15 MPH, that would mean an ending speed of 25 MPH—or a 37% drop. So we have 43% or 37%… let’s pick 40% to have a middle ground. Assuming a consistent drop in speed, we can just average that speed over its travel, that is, 32.5 MPH. (If it were not constant, then calculus would come in!) Skipping some math, that is about 47.67 feet per second on average, or 0.83 seconds to travel the 40 feet. 0.83 seconds would give enough time for a maximum of 29 ball rotations under USA Pickleball rules. So, it’s not crazy, like, say, 200 rotations from one end of the court to the other.

A bit more.

A pickleball diameter can vary by 0.1″, therefore the circumference can vary too (9.03″ to 9.34″), but we’ll say 9.2″ for kicks. 40 feet is 480 inches. If we were to simply roll a pickleball 40 feet, it would rotate just over 52 times. Compared to a maximum of 29 ball rotations as discussed above, there has to be at least 44% fewer rotations through the air when compared to simply rolling a ball across the court. Now, all that changes with different speeds, of course.

Ok, nerding out done.

Something came to mind. My son Nicholas mentioned that a telltale sign of A.I. content is seeing m-dashes… like this “—”. I’ve been doing varying degrees of graphic design for work for at least 30 years and kerning, leading, glyphs, and m-dashes are all part of the territory. Rest assured, I don’t write any of these blog entries with A.I.! Though I suspect the periodic typos or grammatical errors that slip in should be proof enough!

Number of days on a court: 944
Number of total hours: 3,496
Number of paid coaching hours: 221.5

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

Thursday, July 2, 2026 (Court Day #943)

For the last two nights I’ve been wearing a plantar fasciitis support on my left foot. This thing which keeps my foot closer to a 90° angle relative to my leg and keeps the facia running underneath my foot in a more extended position. Typically, at night when your body relaxes, the length of your foot tends to be “down”—more in line with your legs—as if your calf muscles were contracted. The idea of the brace is by keeping the underside of your foot stretched out, it helps your foot heal and gets you past plantar fasciitis sooner. So far, it’s hard to tell if it’s making much difference. Last night, I bent the metal insert to more of a right angle, and I found it to be very uncomfortable because the end of the metal was digging into the top of my foot a little bit. I think I will try to adjust that tonight.

Skypark

I left work at 6:29 p.m. under cloudy skies with patches of blue. It was comfortably in the mid 60s. Unlike Santa Cruz, when I got to Scotts Valley, it was mostly sunny with a little bit of haze. I walked in at 6:40 p.m.

Games

Tonight, I played with the Aireo Cyclone paddle. Since it’s a demo paddle, I keep the paddle completely stock, including the grip. For my own paddles, I play with a larger grip—which involves adding wraps of grip tape. I’ve had the paddle for about six months and I figured it was time to try it regardless of imperfect grip size. The paddle does have exceptional power.

Games

I warmed up against Paul, then I played with a guy named Chris. Paul played with Chuck. 

Across the way, Mike C. was playing in a game with John, Alex, and a young guy who I later learned was Toby. The hope is Mike and I can play together in a tournament in October. I’m signed up but Mike is waiting to make sure he’ll be available that day. The more we play together in advance of the tournament, the better.

Toby is a tall, thin young guy who was playing with young John against me and Mike C. At one point, after I won a rally, John was telling Toby, “He’s a quick mofo.”

I played with Mike C. against Alex and that guy named Chris. I didn’t record if we won or lost, but I suspect we won.

We wrapped up about 8:35 p.m.

Video Inspiration

A great tweener crosscourt shot!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaTbIZ3SiOG

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Friday, July 3, 2026 (No Play)

Hmmm. I’m not sure what happened . . . so there is this post that came from The Kitchen…

Best Courts in USA
https://www.instagram.com/p/DaVl1F-kS9H/

All fine and dandy… AND in the “part 2” follow-up post of the best courts, our local Brommer courts made an appearance! I was really excited and shared it in the local Facebook pickleball group. BUT… then the The Kitchen’s post got deleted! Jared, who is the founder/CEO/president of The Kitchen, has made more than one appearance locally at Brommer Park. I got to play with him last year, there’s a post here with him mentioned. I’m not sure what happened, but I’m bummed that the social media post was removed. (It, no doubt, confused some local Facebook people since the link I shared went nowhere!)

Number of days on a court: 943
Number of total hours: 3,493.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 221.5

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