Thursday, March 14, 2024 (Court Day #636)

Today, I saw the social media post on Instagram slamming a pickleball product:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4dW6dNL72G/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D
The post is a “slap down” on Joola paddles. I haven’t heard of problems with them, but based on the comments, some people believe there are.

Coaching Scam?

On Tuesday, I received a message through the PPR website:

“Name
Juliet Briones

Email
[email removed]

Message
“Are you available to coach my son?“

I replied within a few hours with my experience, availability, and hourly rate. Then I received this reply the yesterday:

“Thanks for your email,I’m delighted to know you are available to coach my son with his lessons, he is 17yrs old. We reside in London (Lutton),I’m into Real estate and Hotel Management work here, My son Brian will be relocating temporarily to my sister house in your state, less than two week from this date and I’m hoping the lessons can begin.

What we really want for Brian is to improve on his Skills and strength and he has had a few lessons here in Lutton but nothing too concrete I must say so I guess you will be taking him partly as a beginner too though he picked up interest since he was about 7yrs old thereabout.

I would like the lessons to hold two times a week for 1hr each day of the lessons for a total duration of six weeks.how much would that total to? 

Brian’s time is very open so we would have you plan for lesson days and times that suits you.Thanks again for your email, do get back to me on this and we can proceed on arrangements then and Brian schedule is fully open now so anytime and day work.”

Now, I started getting very suspicious. I performed a few Google searches and could find nothing online about a “Juliet Briones” working in real estate near London. I checked and there’s a Luton that is very close to London, but Lutton is a good 40 minutes outside of London proper. While the grammar isn’t overly bad—some errors—there is some odd capitalization and odd vagueness in the email, such as “in your state” instead of just “California” or more likely “Santa Cruz County”, and also “two week from this date” instead of “end of March” or “first week of April”.

I replied with a very brief message about an hour after she sent it, breaking down the rate and giving the total, followed by my nonsensical trap:
“How long has your sister been here in Nevada?”
I also removed my location from the two email signatures (one from my previous email) that appeared in my message.

Then I waited… and this morning I received her message…

“Hello Andrew 

That Sounds Good.

My sister has been in Nevada all her life but I’m always in and out it there.

I’m delighted to know we are in agreement and I spoke to my husband about your rates and at this point, I’m most delighted to say we have a deal! I am willing to pay your asking price.I will be paying you by wire check as its the only way i can pay you at the moment.

If this is OK, I’ll need you to provide me with your full name as to be written on the payment, your contact address (where the payment will be sent to and your phone number.

Truthfully, I must say Brian is excited about meeting you as he has been telling his friends over the phone about his new coach in the states! and that he will going to the states to meet his new coach OK then have a great one and get back to me and i can make relevant arrangements then ,please extend my greetings to your Family.”

Ah, ha! Trap sprung. I’m not in Nevada. She reached out to me telling me her sister lives in my state, that is, California. SCAM!

Pickleball impacts Golf

It came out this week that 66-year-old two-time Masters golf champion Bernhard Langer had to drop out of his last-ever tournament before retiring, but tore his Achilles tendon going for a lob while playing pickleball.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/03/13/bernhard-langer-pickleball-masters/#
Ouch!

Skypark

I was able to arrive at Skypark at 6:18 p.m., since I had one of my staff close the family business for me. I had to park down the street and around the corner—I knew this was coming with the city restricting parking at the courts.

There was no tennis going, only eight full courts of pickleball players.

There was about an hour of sun after I arrived. It was a nice evening. The wind gusts that had been happening all day had died down, so they was no longer a factor.

Denied

Tim and his son Casey walked out to an empty court that one active foursome hadn’t shifted to. I hadn’t played yet, so I walked out with them. I asked if I could join them, and said in a self-deprecating fashion, “I can subject Casey to me.” Casey paused and looked back across to the waiting area and said, “I thought Sean and Danny were going to play.” I could tell Casey wanted more than an Andrew “warmup” game. I politely left the court and returned to the waiting area. Puzzled, Sean asked me, “What happened?”
“I got booted.”
So, Sean and his brother Danny took my place.

Great Game

But the game I did get into was a blast. I played with Avery against Markus and Oscar. It was a really good one. We had a lot of long rallies with resets, firefights . . . it was great. It was a close game that Avery and I lost by a small amount, but Avery and I shared the blame. This one was far from all on me. That was the game of the night.

Although I was losing end of a lot of games tonight, I felt like I was playing a little bit better tonight. Maybe the rust from last 6 months is starting to come off. I still feel like I’m missing shots that I should be making. On the other hand, I will say my drop shots are getting really reliable.

By about 8:30 p.m., I was dying. I was so tempted to just go home but I ended up playing for another hour. I had packed a protein drink and a snack bar, but I had forgotten to eat them. I downed the protein drink right about 9 o’clock, and, of course, it would take a while for it to kick in, but at least took the edge off of the hunger. Boy, I was dragging. Moving around on the court seemed like a big effort. I noticed myself being out of position after winners hit by the other side. Part of that may just been from the fact that I just didn’t want to make the effort to move.

The lights clicked off about 9:30 p.m. and I headed home.

I took two ibuprofen, put the ice pack on my knee and crawled into bed.

Backpack Quest

While continuing to research my ideal pickleball backpack, this product was mentioned for carrying shoes. It looks pretty good:
https://klitch.co

On Tuesday night, I saw that Binh had a Gearbox backpack. I liked all the pockets. That’s a possibility for me.

Number of days on a court: 636
Number of total hours: 2,750.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 21.5

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

Tuesday, March 12, 2024 (Court Day #635)

With the time change two days ago, as I drove to Skypark at 6:45 p.m., it was still sunny. The sun was on its way to setting, and you couldn’t see the sun through the trees, but it was still light. As I left work, my car thermometer read 63°F, but by the time I got to Scotts Valley it was reading 57°. The equinox is in about a week and a half and then we’ll leave winter behind and head into spring. With it being lighter later, it’ll start to warm up a little bit. Parking will probably become more and more of a problem at Skypark as the weather gets better.

As luck would have it, a car pulled out of the parking lot just in time for me to take that spot . . . leaving the car that was following me with no option but the park out in the neighborhood somewhere.

Shortly before 7 p.m., I walked onto the courts. 

The two tennis courts were empty and there were maybe half a dozen players waiting to get into pickleball games. Tim, Casey‘s dad, was setting up a net. And it wasn’t too long before all the courts were full and people waiting to get on.

Over the course of the session, there were a few games that were very “disposable”, but most were good games. I spent a good chunk of the evening frustrated and disappointed in my play. Everything was a little bit off. But I only had three or four drop shots into the net and if I missed any of my serves, it was only one or two. I only hit the net tape once. I did have one leaping poach towards the end of the evening where I hit the ball out past the baseline and lost the rally.

As the evening wrapped up, I felt a little bit better about my play. I headed home with the sense that I seem to be heading in the right direction. There wasn’t a massive improvement in play, though I was playing slightly better than I have been recently. I will emphasize the word slightly”.

The lights clicked off shortly after 9:30 p.m. and that was that.

Number of days on a court: 635
Number of total hours: 2,747.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 21.5

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

Sunday, March 10, 2024 (Court Day #634)

Today is the day of the time change—”spring forward”—meaning we all have to get up an hour earlier. It’s brutal. While I was driving to Derby Park under cloudy skies with a 52° temperature, I had to wonder how many people would be there at 9 o’clock since yesterday at this hour it was 8 o’clock. My expectation was that people would sleep in a little bit later.

Today would be my third day playing in four days. That’s good, we’ll see if I can get my play back up to snuff. It’s been frustrating.

Eyewear

I learned this week that Anna Leigh Waters—the 16-year-old phenom and the #1 women’s player in the world—always sports eyewear when she plays. I also learned that her glasses are prescription. I’m wondering a little bit since I’m slightly nearsighted, if it would help to have prescription protective eyewear to play. Generally, I don’t think the corrective aspect of it would make much difference to me—I don’t wear glasses except when I feel like it and it’s convenient, maybe when watching TV in our living room or when I remember to bring them to a conference and have to look at projected slides. The hardest thing for me is playing under lights, which completely messes up my depth perception at times. Regardless, I nearly never play without eye protection—I think it’s been 2-3 times in 4-5 years and it was always against beginners. One very near miss and that was all I needed to get my act together.

Newbies

The funnest part of today’s session was teaching some new players at 11:30 a.m. There was John, who is in his mid-30s, and his friend Natalia who said she was 28, and yet another beginner who showed up named David—a retired UCSC astrophysicist professor. When I asked, David said that he does now the father of a friend of mine, another retired UCSC astrophysicist professor, Dr. Peter Bodenheimer. John and Natalia had wooden paddles that they had purchased as part of a cheap set. David have been gifted a paddle by a family—a nice one, a Ben Johns signature Joola paddle. All three had never played before, so I went through the normal stuff such as a non-volley zone, the double bounce rule, the two types of serves, how to hold the paddle, etc. They all did pretty well. After the explanations and warming up with dinking, I only played a few points in a game with them before I had to leave to teach out at Willowbrook. I had asked Ted earlier in the morning if he would be around at noon and I asked if he would close he agreed.

While I won a lot of games today, it was kind of a boring outing. For most of the morning, I was unquestionably the best player there out of 40 people. A little bit later on, Bob Hansen showed up then Hugh and Brandon . . . so there were more stronger players. The dream game would’ve been the four of us , but that didn’t lineup. Only now, much later, do I realize that maybe I should’ve started a box in blue (4.0+) and then waited for the others to come off of the court and force the game that way. I imagine Bob would’ve been up for it. I half expected him to leave after experiencing some of the lower skills games. Truth be told, I wasn’t the site coordinator, I’d probably have headed to Brommer Park to get in some stronger games. Unfortunately, the club has a hard time finding people to commit to being a coordinator for every week. There are plenty of players willing to be back up site coordinators without the responsibility of week to week, but that only goes so far.

Willowbrook Class

I taught my class today then I also taught Sean’s class today since he’s out of town. Then Sean will cover my March 24 class since I’ll be out of town. (It’s a wash.) So I had two in a row this afternoon. It’s always bittersweet wrapping up a class. After the second class today, one student shared, “You are a great coach.” Then another chimed in, “You are a wealth of information!” Those are the moments that make coaching worthwhile.

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Monday, March 11, 2024 (No Play)

Yesterday, I reached out to Joola yesterday to see if I qualified for a discount with my various pickleball roles. They got back to me and offered at 10% discount. Nothing like some of the discounts offered from other manufacturers, but better than a sharp stick to the eye.

Backpack

I’m on a quest to find my perfect pickleball backpack. There are things I like and dislike about every one I’ve found so far. A key for me is I nearly always hang mine on a fence, so it has to be very functional for a vertical orientation. The Joola was very promising, with a lot of pockets, but the zippers and pockets are more designed for use when the bag is set down horizontally. The quest continues!

Number of days on a court: 634
Number of total hours: 2,745
Number of paid coaching hours: 21.5

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