Category: Pickleball (Page 119 of 324)

Friday, August 25, 2023 (Court Day #604)

When I arrived at Brommer Park at 8:55 a.m., the parking lot was already completely full, as well as all the nearby street parking. I parked a couple of blocks away and hoofed my way in.

It was overcast and unusually muggy with the temperatures in the high 60s by later morning.

Today was very busy with a lot of waiting involved.

I was debating signing up in blue (top skill level, 4.0+) or signing up in red (3.5+) and since I’m coming off a three month hiatus of knee surgery recovery and my DUPR rating—at least the temporary one—seems to be showing a yellow (temporary) 3.96 to the right of the last of this past Sunday’s DUPR matches, I signed up in red. Last week, I would’ve qualified with a 4.0 DUPR rating, though DUPR continues to show my rating as “4.00”.

There were players signing up in red who are not even a 3.5 rating. There was one guy signing up in red who had no clue about DUPR and had no idea what his DUPR rating was. I would’ve put him as about a 3.3 and I told him so. But then he signed up in red again anyway regardless of what I had just shared with him.

Today was a mixed bag. I played reasonably well, though I didn’t get even one game where all four players were equally strong.

At the end of the session, when I went to put my paddle away, I realized that I was playing with my older Rogue paddle today instead of my new carbon-fiber one. I grabbed it in such haste out of my backpack to start playing that I grabbed my old l paddle! Oops.

Reservation Controversy

Last night, a reporter, Jean Yi, from the Lookout Santa Cruz news website posted in the “Santa Cruz Pickleball” Facebook group, asking to interview people for an article. Jean is writing about the controversy about the new County of Santa Cruz court reservation system for Brommer Park and Willowbrook. I sent her an email giving her my contact information and I also told her that I would be playing in Brommer this morning. She said she was going to be at Brommer too and indeed, she came. She talked to Dan Bliss, myself, René, and Alan Cable, and a man who is visiting Santa Cruz for a month named Erik. Jean also interviewed some other players.

Last night, after seeing Jean’s post, I looked at this new system, operated by Rec.US online for the County:

The County is allowing players to reserve one of the four permanent Brommer pickleball courts for $4.25 per 30 minutes. A court can be reserved for up to 2 hours which would cost $17.00.

There are several problems.

One is hardly anyone knows about the new system yet and that creates some ill-will.

Another is there is no mandatory minimum time before reserving the court. In other words, a player could arrive to the courts, see that it’s busy, go to his phone and reserve a court immediately and kick anyone there off and monopolize the court for 30-120 minutes. Sure, it generates cash for the County, but there is no sharing of the courts.

Jean’s article should be published early next week.

Neighbors

My newly-discovered neighbors, the new players, Mauricio and his wife Sharay arrived around 11 a.m. this morning. They were still there playing when I left. In their mailbox, I had left them a copy of my pickleball fundamentals strategies sheet I’d made up four years ago for a SCPC workshop. This morning, Mauricio said “thank you” with a big smile.

At 12:30 p.m., my game was finished, the temporary nets had been taken down and it was time for me to head home and then to work.

Funny Instagram Short

This is so accurate and apropos given the impacted nature of the courts today:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CwQWgcigUpg/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Number of days on a court: 604
Number of total hours: 2,657
Number of paid coaching hours: 2

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

Tuesday, August 22, 2023 (Court Day #603)

I left work and arrived in Skypark at 7 p.m. Things were hopping with players all over the place waiting to get into games. It was one of the busiest nights I’ve seen. It was a warm and unusually muggy evening and, being summer, the sun was still out for a good chunk of the session.

I am still a little sore from Sunday’s outing. In particular my right glute muscle. Fortunately, my knee seems to be fine. The back of my right hand is sore, however.

It was nice to see a lot of people that I hadn’t seen in three months. Tim, Rachel, Paul, Max, Nicole, Shawnte, Casey, Aaron . . . there were a bunch of people. Noticeably absent were Matt and his young son Lucas.

Most of the games tonight are pretty uneventful. The best games were the last two which involved Paul and myself battling Shawnte and Rachel. Paul and I lost the first game but then we won the second. Shawnte has a wicked backhand roll volley/slap which has speed and accuracy.

We wrapped up at second game about five minutes before the lights clicked off at 9:30, Rachael, Paul and I helped take down portable nets. Afterward, I ended up hanging out for another 45 minutes chatting with various players in a partial darkness.

DUPR

Shawnte mentioned that his DUPR rating was over 4.0 when playing regularly with 4.0+ players in the San Jose area, but after playing with lower rated players, his rating dropped: “You’d think that the system would understand that your opponents are going to hit most of the shots to the weaker player and take that into account.” We both went on to complain about DUPR no longer using score differential in its calculations. A game of 11-0 has the same weight as a game of 20-18. Why throw away useful data? Hopefully, they’ll revert and reintroduce that differential feature that was a strength of the DUPR system versus UTPR.

Newbies

I wrapped up the evening talking to two new players, Mauricio and his wife Shaye. They said they’ve been playing for three weeks. It turns out that they live only about 12 houses down from me! Super close.

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Wednesday, August 23, 2023 (No Play)

I went to the hand specialist this morning. He’s a PA (physicians assistant) named Steve. Nice guy. He poked and prodded, twisted, bent, asked questions. He wasn’t sure what was going on with my wrist and hand, but referred me to get my hand X-rayed. He said if that doesn’t show anything, the next step is an MRI. I told him if I get an MRI done, I may as well do my left knee and right ankle while I’m at it!

Prime Time

My uncle Jerry texted me a photo of his TV this evening. He was surprised to see pickleball on “primetime”. I told him that the guy on the right of the box is Tyson McGuffin and that I almost walked up and met him . . . if I hadn’t been so intimidated by his intense look at the Golden State Championships 4-5 years ago!

Yep, pickleball is moving up the entertainment food chain!

Number of days on a court: 603
Number of total hours: 2,653.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 2

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

Sunday, August 20, 2023 (Court Day #602)

I arrived at Derby Park at 8:45 a.m. to open and set up and I found that Pam and Barb had everything almost already done. I’d heard that the city had purchased two additional new rolling nets, but there were three! That means only one portable club needs to be taken out and set up on the six courts. After six years of dragging a bunch of net bags out, it feels weird to have to bring out only one net.

As I’d been told, there were four skill levels based on DUPR/UTPR ratings. Black for novice (2.5+), green for intermediate (3.0+), red for advanced (3.5+), and blue for the top skill level (4.0+).

Later on, between noon and 1 p.m., the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club had arranged for a DUPR session where players would enter their game scores and help determine their ratings. More players were in attendance with the plan to join in that activity later.

Refs and Rules

Mark and his wife Maree were there. I hadn’t seen them in quite a long time. Maree said that last year she refereed in 24 tournaments and was “never home”. I talked to her about rules for a few minutes and she said the certified referees do not like the new USA Pickleball mid-year rule that the refs have make sure the players are in the correct position prior to the serve. As one pro player commented publicly, (paraphrasing) “We are professionals, we should be able to get ourselves in the correct places without help.”

Games

My first game was with Maree against a couple other players. As one I expect after a three-month layoff, my play was not stellar. It wasn’t an outright horrible, but it wasn’t great either. It was probably between a 3.0 and a 3.5 level in terms of skill.

The second game I played was not much better and I/we lost that game as well.

With the larger number of players, some people decided that the wait wasn’t worth it and simply left.

Jenna and her English husband James were there. She said they’d moved to Monterey, but were up in Santa Cruz and wanted to see the local players again. It’s a bummer when players move away. (Well, not always, there was one guy that moved to a different state that many of us certainly don’t miss—he was irritating!)

Hugh was there with his dog Groot. Hugh said that he joined The Hub, the new indoor pickleball facility located in Campbell. (It’s currently the largest indoor pickleball facility in the USA, but that won’t last!) Hugh said he’s been playing there every other day. I asked him how much it costs per month and he said it was $119. That works out to about $4 per day. For me—who works all the time—a membership like that would not be very practical. My wife Kristen has been pushing for the two of us to join the La Madrona Athletic Club, and she put us on the waiting list some number of months ago. Kristen thinks that we should come up for membership before the end of this year. She claims that if we join, she will take up pickleball. I will believe it when I see it!

Newbies

There were three newbies today. Jodi, Julianna, and a woman with an unusual name starting with Ky, pronounced “Key-air-ah”. I explained the NVZ, the two-bounce rule, the two types of serves, and how scoring is done. I went into a game that I had previously signed up for, but when I was done, I walked over and provided instruction to the three newbies and Dyane. Not long into it, Tom S. came over to let me know that we were on deck for a game then later called me when it was out time to play. I left the newbies in Dyane’s hands. Dyane was a good match for the new group with a similar softer play style.

As time went on today, my play got better and better. By the end of the session I was getting in the ballpark of my normal skill level, though I was still a little rusty.

DUPR Session

It was noon and time for the SCPC DUPR session. While in a game, I looked over and there were a 20-30 people outside the courts getting instruction from Pam as to how things would work. I didn’t hear the call to gather, but I hadn’t planned on playing DUPR anyway.

But, I was feeling decent about my play and ended up doing some DUPR games anyway.

My first DUPR game was paired with Misa (of Japanese descent) against Tom M. and Ted. Midway through the game, Tom exclaimed, “I thought you said you were rusty from not playing for three months!” Yeah. Misa and I won:

I’m not sure how the date entry of “today”, when recorded into the DUPR app, changed to yesterday’s date. Bizarre.

I wasn’t ready to head home, and with the courts reserved for DUPR games, I signed up to play another.

For the next game, Tom S. asked if I’d play with him. I agreed. Another win.

My last DUPR game was with Charles and me split to make the game more even. It was pretty close.

I have to comment on one rally. I slammed a ball at Charles left foot. I relaxed. The rally was over. Astonishingly, Charles was able to get that ball back over the net to my partner, who couldn’t handle the shot, ending the rally. Impressive. And I told him so!

Apparently, that last game dropped my DUPR rating to below 4.0 to 3.96. We’ll see how the rating adjusts in the coming weeks. What’s funny is Charles is rated as a 2.0. That’s ridiculous. He’s a 3.5 easy and almost certainly over 4.0. No wonder my rating dropped! I believe Trevor is a newish player too, like Jonathan, but I don’t know for sure . . . I’d never seen either of them before, though both are at least a 3.0 level. In terms of ratings, it should be Charles, me, then probably Trevor then Jonathan.

I played a few more games, and wrapped those up at 2:15 p.m. I’d been there for 5 1/2 hours. Given the longer wait times, I’m counting today as a 5 hour session.

Analysis

Today, being back after a long time, I was a bit more aware of where my play was going off the rails. Primarily, it’s execution. A more distant second, it’s court positioning. Balls not going exactly where I want. Me needing to cover the middle even more.

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Monday, August 21, 2023 (No Play)

I’m a little sore from yesterday. Right glute, back of my right hand. And overall a little sore. But for a three month lay-off pretty good. But I was riding a Peleton bike nearly every day and in the last month, using barbells to build strength, so I wasn’t sitting on my laurels. I’m currently at about 181 pounds. I was 196—almost 197—when I last played the first week in June. My goal is to lose another 15 pounds. Maybe more, we’ll see. Regardless, my belt is telling my that my waistline has unquestionably shrunk. I had a customer at work mention that I’d lost weight, so it was enough for her to notice.

Number of days on a court: 602
Number of total hours: 2,651
Number of paid coaching hours: 2

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