Thursday, March 12, 2026 (Court Day #912)

Gabe Yardio pulled off a lightning-fast “Kyle” crosscourt speedup. Really nice!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVzbN1DkehL

Game Videos Review

I’ve been reviewing my game videos that I have been taking over the past few weeks—including looking at the final scores—I’ve come to the conclusion there is something fundamentally awry with my game. I need to be more patient and wait for obvious opportunities to attack instead of forcing them. Also, I need to give myself more margin for error.

There’s a consistent theme. Returns that are too long and fly out. Drives that are too hard with not enough margin for error and end up hitting the white tape of the net or sometimes even lower.

They are definitely strong points to my game, including serving, my drop shots, transition zone defense, hand speed at the net. But there are stupid things to fix.

“We’ll see if I can work on those tonight,” was what I was thinking as I drove to the courts.

Skypark

It was still sunny with no clouds to be seen and it was still a very warm 77° when I arrived at the courts at 6:31 p.m. I lucked out when I arrived, I was able to grab the one open parking space left in the lot.

After over 9 years of playing, I had a first. Winning two games in a row 11-0.

In the first, Ben and I won 11-0 against Ken and young Gabe. 

In the second, Ben and I won 11-0 against Ken and Scotty. 

Ben and I won 13-11 against Alex and Mauricio. This was a long, long back-and-forth game.

The last game of the night was Alex and I versus Ben and Mauricio. It was also a very long game. Alex and I were down most of the game but had tied it up 8-8 when the lights clicked off.

There were more games, but those are the ones of note.

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Friday, March 13, 2026 (No Play)

A while back there was talk about a guy defrauding investors in a pickleball scheme. And maybe I talked about this before, but it popped up on social media again, a father and son—Randy and Chad Miller—were convicted about six months ago and have been spending some time in prison. They bilked $300 million dollars from people:
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid02euhCBtSsAo1TVWXYPBxsLwnSbf9pT6UVDS9puQBjbxj5nH62XnVGTpP5gv7g8kLVl&id=100063889967200

There’s more about it here from September last year:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/sports-park-executives-sentenced-prison-municipal-bond-fraud

The reason it has been popping up is that a few days ago, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today announced that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York entered a partial judgment against Jeffrey Puzzullo in an alleged municipal bond offering fraud:
https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-26498

Here’s the charges that were filed against the Millers and also Jeffrey De Laveaga:
https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-26280

All four men plead guilty to charges. That is a lot of money!

Number of days on a court: 912
Number of total hours: 3,414.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 203.5

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

Tuesday, March 10, 2026 (Court Day #911)

Tennis pro Nick Kygros is out playing pickleball in preparation of going onto the PPA tour…

DUPR mocking

With DUPR charging people to reset their DUPR rating, there are a good number of people giving DUPR a hard time about it. (As in, why charge people to fix a rating determined by your apparently insufficient algorithm?)

This Reddit discussion about it is pretty funny…

Why stop a DUPR Reset? Some other ideas…
byu/Particular-Night-435 inPickleball

Defense Matters

Here is a masterclass demonstration on defense. On the near court is Ben Johns with partner Gabe Tardio. Wow.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVpXVJ2jQsT

Play Time for Andrew

With the time change two days ago, it was very much still daylight on my trip to Scotts Valley when I left work shortly before 6:30 p.m. The one annoying thing was the sun was low in the sky. It gets in your eyes pretty much no matter what you try to do to prevent it. But still, it’s nice to have the sunlight.

Games

I teamed up with young Andy and we lost 6-11 to Jordan Rein and Marquis. This was a fun game. I’d say Jordan was the better of our two opponents, but both are stronger players than I am.

Jordan wanted a more balanced game and asked to play with me. He and I went on to win 11-4 over Andy and Marquis.

We played once again, and this one really was more balanced. Jordan and I still won 13-11.

DUPR

There were enough players tonight that we were using the paddle rack system. I went to put my paddle in and there were three paddles grouped with a Post-it note that said “DUPR?” Matt Babb was standing nearby and I asked him about it and he explained that Paul (his friend) was part of that group of paddles. I figured, “Why not?”

Once on the court, we had to figure out teams. I was on the side with Mike Diaz so I figured that would be as good as anything. Paul and I are the strongest players. It was only after the teams were decided that Mike told me that he had not played for a month. I had to chuckle a little bit of that, it figures!

Mike and I were up 8-1, but then lost 8-11 when we stalled out and Paul and Scotty stopped their errors and came back. Once the game was complete, I could see Paul was entering the result into the DUPR app on his phone. I was expecting my rating to go down a little bit after this game.

[Later note. I verified the final score and, as expected, my DUPR dropped a bit to 3.889. Lesson: no DUPR games at night and especially after a long day at work! But my reliability score for my rating is still only 20%… that is, up to 80% inaccurate.]

Lights Out

After the lights clicked off, there was the normal light-hearted pickleball community chatter as players fell into a little groups while getting ready to go.

There were three Indian guys, Ashley, Humad, and Shreyas, plus the short, very talkative friendly Michael. (Someone described Michael as a own local Richard Simmons of pickleball.) Ashley and Humad are hilarious! Part of the discussion was how Ashley gets mistakenly identified as Abhi. Both are tall, Indian, and can drive hard, though I’d take Ashley as a tournament partner. Michael turned to me and said “Abhi could benefit from some of your game, Andrew.” His point was that I play more of a control game versus driving very frequently. I was kind of surprised that Michael remembered that much about me.

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Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (No Play)

Some people have been saying that Apple decided that adding a pickleball emoji in their latest operating system update was not worthwhile.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DVwm2pOEZtB
But that is not entirely accurate. Apple in and of itself does not call the shots. They are part of the Unicode Consortium based in Mountain View, about 45 minutes north of my house in the Silicon Valley. The Unicode Consortium’s Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) meets quarterly and decides what proposed emojis get added to the standard. The committee has representatives from Apple, Meta, Adobe, Microsoft and others. While we didn’t get a pickleball emoji this time, we might get one in another three months!

Number of days on a court: 911
Number of total hours: 3,412.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 203.5

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

Tuesday, March 10, 2026 (Court Day #911)

Nick Kygros is out playing pickleball in preparation of going onto the PPA tour…

DUPR mocking

With DUPR charging people to reset their DUPR rating, there are a good number of people giving DUPR a hard time about it. (As in, why charge people to fix a rating determined by your apparently insufficient algorithm?)

This Reddit discussion about it is pretty funny…

Why stop a DUPR Reset? Some other ideas…
byu/Particular-Night-435 inPickleball

Defense Matters

Here is a masterclass demonstration on defense. On the near court is Ben Johns with partner Gabe Tardio. Wow.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DVpXVJ2jQsT

Play Time for Andrew

With the time change two days ago, it was still very much light on my trip to Scotts Valley when I left work shortly before 6:30 p.m. The one annoying thing was the sun was low in the sky. It gets you in the eyes pretty much no matter what you try to do to prevent it. But still, it’s nice to have the sunlight.

Games

I teamed up with young Andy and we lost 6-11 to Jordan Rein and Marquis. This was a fun game. I’d say Jordan is the better of our two opponents, but both are stronger players than I am.

Jordan wanted a more balanced game and asked to play with me. He and I won 11-4 over Andy and Marquis.

We played once again, and this one really was more balanced. Jordan and I won 13-11.

DUPR

There were enough players tonight that we were using the paddle rack system. I went to put a paddle in, and there were three paddles in there with a posted note that said “DUPR?” Matt Babb was standing nearby and I asked him about it and he said that Paul (his friend) was part of that group of paddles. I figured, “Why not?”

Once on the court, we had to figure out teams. I was on the side with Mike so I figured that would be as good as anything. Paul and I are the strongest players. It was only after the teams were decided that Mike told me that he had not played for a month. I had to chuckle a little bit of that, it figures!

Mike Diaz and I were up 8-1, but lost 8-11 when Paul and Scotty came back. Once the game was done, I could see Paul was entering the result into the DUPR app on his phone. I was expecting my reading to go down a little bit after this game.

[Later note. I verified the final score and, as expected, my DUPR dropped a bit to 3.889. Lesson: no DUPR games at night and especially after a long day at work! The reliability score for my rating is still only 20 percent for accuracy.]

Lights Out

After the lights clicked off, there was the normal pickleball community chatter as players fell into a little groups while getting ready to go.

There were three Indian guys, Ashley, Humad, and Shreyas, plus the short, friendly, and very talkative Michael—someone described Michael as our local pickleball version of Richard Simmons. (Ashley and Humad are so hilarious! Both have a great sense of humor!) Part of the discussion was how Ashley gets confused with Abhi. (Both are tall, Indian, and can drive balls hard, though I’d take Ashley as a tournament partner.) Michael turned to me and said “Abhi could benefit from some of your game, Andrew.” His point was that I play more of a control game versus driving very frequently. I was kind of surprised that Michael remembered that much about me.

---

Wednesday, March 11, 2026. (No Play)

People are complaining that Apple decided that adding a pickleball emoji in their latest operating system update was not worthwhile.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DVwm2pOEZtB
But, the rest of the story is that it’s not just Apple’s decision. The Unicode Consortium, a non-profit based here in California-based, determines which emojis are added to their official standard. Their “Technical Committee” is composed of representatives from major tech companies—including Apple, Google, and Microsoft, and it meets quarterly to consider new additions. So, maybe in another 3 months, pickleball may get added. Or maybe another 3 months after that. Or maybe…

Number of days on a court: 911
Number of total hours: 3,412.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 203.5

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