Sunday, March 30, 2025 (Court Day #786)
It was pretty gloomy and it rained, so the morning club play at Derby Park was canceled. About 2:15 p.m., the sun is broke through and clouds were starting to dissipate. My wife left about that time for some activities she was joining in with some friends of hers. I reached out to Connor to see if he wanted to drill, but I didn’t hear anything back. About half an hour later, I decided to head to Brommer Park, with the hope of picking up some games.
Brommer
I arrived at Brommer Park at 2:59 p.m. and, promisingly, there were about 15 cars there.
When I got in, I spotted David L. and his girlfriend Minori on a court by themselves. I called over asked if I could join them and they invited me over. I warmed up with them until a fourth arrived, Brian Hackett. (Brian replaced me as the Sunday site coordinator at Derby Park last year.) I have no recollection of those games… other than they were fun and I was playing well.
After two or three games like that, I then rolled into games that were pretty much all 4.0 level players. Those games were great—very challenging and they were games where everyone wanted to play either a rematch or mix it up with the same players.
It was very windy for the first hour and a half. In those first games, the wind had a dramatic effect on the ball. Then, as the sun got lower in the sky, especially when the sun got into the clouds on the horizon, wind died down completely.
I got into a game against Dale and his son Chris. I hadn’t met them before. Or if I had, it’s been some time and I’d forgotten. Someone told me that Chris is a really strong player. And, indeed, Chris has one of the top three best serves I’ve ever had to return. Very fast. Within a few points, though, I overheard Dale turning to his son Chris and observed to him that I have really quick hands.
Marco and I played a game against tall Dave and Chris.


In my last game, I played with tall Dave against Chris and a regular, young guy whose name I forget. Dave and I lost. I think it was 6-11. Early in the game, I turned to lefty Dave and told him that I had just made three mistakes in a row. After being there for three hours and then sitting for 15 minutes, I was starting to get stiff, and my back was starting to tighten up. I could definitely feel it.
Very shortly thereafter, I called it a day and headed home. It was shortly after 6 p.m.
Today was the best stretch of games over three hours period that I’ve had in a long time and I was playing pretty well.
And?
And my mistakes today? Over the three hours or so, I missed about half a dozen serves. I think two were too long, and the rest were into the white tape of the net. Other errors, I think I missed about a dozen reset drop shots into the net. I hit a couple of shallow crosscourt shots wide… some were volleys, some were off the bounce.
I got far more outright wins on my serves than my opponents today. I gave up only one or two returns into the net. At one point, I had three of my serves returned into the net by my opponents in a row.
I have to break myself of a the return of a bad habit. On crosscourt dinks or crosscourt shallow drop shots from my opponents, lately, I will occasionally try to speed those up even though they are too low. Three times today, I missed judged those, and sent them up into the net. I need to make wiser decisions on those and be more patient.
Pickleball on National TV
Sunday’s PPA finale was slated broadcast on FOX this afternoon, but I read that coverage got bumped back an hour for some ho-hum soccer game. I had completely forgotten about it until it was well over. I’d rather play than watch!
Knee
Later in the evening, the outside of my right knee was sore from playing so it got the ice treatment. It’s hard to say if it was entirely from just playing or a combination of riding the Peloton bike in the morning, playing for three hours, and then riding the Peloton again for another 20 minutes in the evening. That’s a lot of knee work.
Number of days on a court: 786
Number of total hours: 3,116
Number of paid coaching hours: 126.5
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