Tuesday, August 2, 2022 (Court Day #527)
I left work and arrived at Skypark shortly after 6:30 p.m. As seems typical lately, parking lot was completely full. The funny thing was there were no temporary nets set up and the only pickleball courts that were in use were the four permanent courts. Light crowd.
Matt Smith was there with his wife Carolyn and Tim F. was there as well, however they said they’ve been there since 3:30 p.m. and were done playing and leaving shortly after I arrived.
I played a couple games against David and his girlfriend Minori with Christina as my partner. They won the first game, and we won the second game. Those were good warm-up games.
Newbie Max
There is a player there named Max, the middle-aged man about my height, who said he’d started playing a month ago. I asked him if he wanted advice during our game together against Wendy and Paul and he said he did. So I gently I gave him pointers here and there. Such as if you have one opponent who is back and one who is forward, hit the ball to the player who’s back. There are some rare exceptions to this—like in a tournament when a much weaker player is at the net—but you generally want to hit to the player who is back and keep them back away from the net.
When I stopped between points to educate Max, Wendy wanted to hear what I was telling him so she could learn too. She also had some questions about court positioning, and I told her to shift toward the ball and close up the middle and leave the far sideline open instead. You don’t want to give your opponent the easy shot down the middle or the near slideline but you can leave in the difficult risky shot with the sharp angle.
Max told me that I was very, very patient and very kind helping him learn the game and giving him tips. He said he played with some people previously who are not very happy about playing with him. I told him I was a USA Pickleball Ambassador. Wendy said she didn’t know I was one and said that I had earned my title tonight. She also complimented that I’m perfect for the job.
Wendy told Max, “You are are very fortunate to be able to play with players of this caliber.” A nice thing to overhear, though everything is relative, of course. There are players in my area would destroy me on a court.
Fun & Challenging Games
The games of the night though, were the ones played with young David and Paul W. and John. (John’s wife Peggy was not there tonight; he said that she had tendinitis in her wrist.) The first two games Paul and myself against John and David, and in the last game was David and myself against John and Paul. I did make some mistakes but overall I was playing pretty well even though I starting to get a little tired towards the end. They were close games. I believe I was on the winning side for two of the three games. Maybe it was three of three, can’t remember. But they were fun and challenging games where you had to focus. We finished play at 9:15 p.m.
Number of days on a court: 527
Number of total hours: 2,418.5
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