Category: Pickleball (Page 23 of 323)

Friday, December 26, 2025 (Court Day #885)

It has been raining a lot recently, including last night, but this morning, we had a lull. It was sunny and in the low 60s. There are clouds in the north and clouds in the south, but hardly any clouds actually over us.

While there was no cancellation notice sent out, I wasn’t convinced that club play was actually going on at Brommer Park. But it had been a while since I’d played and I really wanted to get out. I figured that even if club play was not going on, there would be players out at least drilling at Brommer if the courts were too wet.

Brommer

I arrived at Brommer Park at 10:25 a.m. The clouds were definitely blowing in and the rain was expected around 1 p.m. according to my wife.

There were empty courts when I arrived, and I assumed that it was just rec play, but that turned out not to be the case. I went to hang up my backpack when a woman on the court informed me, “Gloves going on.”
I was very confused. “Gloves?”
“Club is going on.”
Ah! That makes so much more sense!

There was indeed club play going on with signups. Between games, there either no waits at all or the waits were very short. Often times the wait involved waiting for a fourth player to go fill one of the open courts.

As I continued to play, my performance got better and better. It started out pretty rough.

First Game: Illegal

In my first game was playing against a guy I’ve never seen before. His serves were difficult to handle with unusual spin. It was a bit puzzling. But then I figured out that he was serving illegally. He was doing a volley serve, but he was swinging from high to low and putting significant backspin on the ball. I let it go during the game, but once the game was complete, I brought it to his attention. He asked why it was illegal and I explained. He said he’d switch to a drop serve.

Second Game: Illegal

He and I teamed up in the next game and I noticed him doing the drop serve, but that was also illegal because he was throwing the ball down instead of just opening his fingers and let gravity do its job. Then, during the game, he went back to his illegal volley serve. But it is rec play, I really don’t care a whole lot. Making the serve to me more difficult is fine by me when there is nothing on the line other than getting better and/or having fun.

Tournament for C & J

Chayton mentioned that he and Jordan are playing together at a tournament in Monterey in the 4.5 level in a few weeks. Chayton said that they were planning to stack, with Jordan on the left and he on the right. He said Jordan has some very nice backhand crosscourt shots and he prefers playing on the right anyway.

Tim F. and I were playing against Brendan Fish and Ken, the regular. We barely lost the first game and we played a rematch. We won 11–3. Just as we were serving the last ball, drizzle started coming down. By the time that we finish the game and I got to my backpack and pulled out my car keys, it was starting to come down pretty heavily. The last game finished up at 1:55 p.m. 

It was windy like crazy today. It made some shots unpredictable. 

My mini-vacation of two days off ends and it’s back to work tomorrow.

Pickleball Gift

Yesterday, my lone Christmas present pertaining to pickleball, was a gift from my wife—a 2026 pickleball calendar featuring literally pickle cartoon characters saying cliché pickleball jokes, such as, “I have a dinking problem!”

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Saturday, December 27, 2025 (No Play)

A local news station interviewed an 85-year-old national champion in Maumelle, Arkansas, kind of fun:
https://youtu.be/nj8P3J3EDGs

New Rule Book

UPA Pickleball has released their new rulebook for 2026:
https://usapickleball.org/docs/rules/USAP-Official-Rulebook.pdf

And the change document which outlines the—well—changes!
https://usapickleball.org/docs/rules/USAP-Rulebook-Change-Document.pdf

Number of days on a court: 885
Number of total hours: 3,352
Number of paid coaching hours: 185.5

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

Thursday, December 18, 2025 (Court Day #884)

I got stuck at work, finishing up a large year-end order to one of our suppliers. (They have a year-end promotion that they provided to select select key relatively large retailers.)

Skypark

I arrived at 7:18 p.m. with it dark and in the low 50s.

It was a very lightly attended evening and at no point were all the courts full. It was more a problem of finding players than courts.

Games

I got a game with Chuck against a fellow I’ve seen once before named Jerry and his friend Ron who is a lefty.

Chuck and I lost the first game, then won the second. There are a couple of people waiting to get into a game so Chuck and I stepped out for a minute and drilled while waiting.

We got into a third game and this time we got clobbered, I think it was 3–11.

We had a fourth game, in this time there was a complete reversal with us winning 11–1.

We had won last fifth game in Chuck and I were ahead 6–1. Then it was 6–3. We scored a couple of points but not long after they scored again, which made the score 8–6. Then I was 8–7, then 8–8. Then 8–9 then they continue to score and win the game about five minutes before the lights clicked off.

And?

I do have to say, I was not playing well tonight. Everything was off by a little bit. When I was about to leave, I told Chuck that and he asked how I slept last night. Funny enough I shared with him that I’ve woken up completely exhausted. It was weird.

Camera

I tried out this new “NUISK Dual Screen Thumb Sports Camera” which has a metal plate on a cord that the camera magnetically sticks to.

My thoughts? It’s a piece of junk. I’d show you some of the video, but it’s practically impossible to get video off of this camera. I’m not a tech slouch. I have a computer science degree from U.C. Santa Cruz, which feeds a lot of students into the Silicon Valley. NUISK did not make this camera user-friendly. I followed the directions to the letter, but the video would not offload from the iPhone app via its own WiFi hotspot as it was supposed to. It would just fail. I’m not a fan of Amazon, but I knew this was a possibility, so I bought it from them knowing that I might have to return it…but I found out that the return window passed already. They only give you a few weeks, I didn’t check that. Alas. Some people seem happy with it, it has overall good reviews, but so far, it’s less than worthless.

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Friday, December 19, 2025 (No Play)

Looking at the weather app, but I’ve never seen such a solid forecast for rain. Then this popped up on Instagram today:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DSbtYkFFQe6
California will be on of the wettest places on earth for the next ten days!

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 (No Play)

The various leadership groups in pickleball are uniting to tackle the issue of counterfeit paddles. This has been posted by USA Pickleball:

A group of leaders in the pickleball community have joined together in a unified effort to address one of the fastest-growing threats to the sport, counterfeit paddles. This issue has aligned every organization: there is no room for counterfeit paddles in the sport.

The entities standing together include the Association of Pickleball Players (APP Tour), Dynamic Universal Pickleball Ratings (DUPR), Major League Pickleball (MLP), Professional Pickleball Association (PPA Tour), United Pickleball Association of America (UPA-A), USA Pickleball (USAP), and World Pickleball Federation (WPF).

Counterfeit paddles undermine competitive integrity and can pose real safety risks due to unregulated materials and performance. Authentic manufacturers invest heavily in research, testing, and innovation to meet established standards, counterfeit products do not. Through this initiative, the pickleball community is working together to educate players, support legitimate manufacturers, strengthen equipment standards, and discourage the sale and use of fraudulent paddles.

At every level of play, from local courts to championship competitions, players deserve safe, certified, and authentic equipment. Together, we’re protecting the integrity of the game we all love.

The article at USAP is here:

Leaders in Pickleball Community Unify Against Counterfeit Paddles

They are getting serious!

Popularity?

It keeps appearing on social media and articles that “Apple data now shows that pickleball is more popular than tennis.” But this is not new. There was a study over two years ago that released showing this in 2023. People! This is old news!

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Monday, December 22, 2025 (No Play)

My sister-in-law suggested something different for our Christmas gathering tonight with her family and my family—which also included were my son’s girlfriend and my daughter’s boyfriend. After dinner at a Mexican restaurant, we went ax throwing! I started out really bad but later threw 10 bullseyes in a row then I stopped to let a relative use the lane. “Take that, ax!” I suspect that pickleball helped. Aside from hand-eye coordination, once you get a shot figured out, being able to repeat it is helpful.

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Tuesday December 23, 2025 (No Play)

Retired NFL wide receiver Terrell Owens claims in an interview with The Kitchen that pickleball is harder that football, saying that pickleball has more strategy to it:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSjGVackTx0
Do I agree? I’m not convinced, but there are specific challenges to pickleball that give it its high ceiling for skill that can take years (or never) to develop.

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Thursday, December 25, 2025 (No Play) – Christmas Day

Highly-ranked tennis pro turned “wannabe” pickleball pro, Sam Querrey, posted a hysterical video on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSqN9rID4Zt/
Sam is the poster child to hold up when people say that they could switch over from tennis and dominate pickleball. Sam was ranked the #11 tennis player in the world and won 10 ATP singles titles. He’s also 6’6″… I’d kill for that reach! (I’m very average in terms of height.) Well, Sam did not come over and dominate pickleball. He flamed out.

Third Shot Drop Difficulty?

The Pickleball Clinic shared a post on social media saying:

“The Center for Sports Difficulty Research conducted a study that indicated a third-shot drop is the hardest feat in sports because of how precise players must be.”

Also, the The Kitchen posted this:

“According to the Center for Sports Difficulty Research (CSDR), hitting a perfect third shot in pickleball has been named the hardest feat in sports. In their 2025 “Precision Index,” the shot scored a rare 9.9/10 in difficulty.

Combining split-second timing, pinpoint accuracy, and flawless touch, it leaves even elite players humbled. The study cited several key challenges.”

The only thing is, there is no “Center for Sports Difficulty Research”—it’s completely made up! Then again, the Center for Sports Intelligence Research just determined that I’m the smartest pickleball player in the world. We’ll just leave it at that.

Number of days on a court: 884
Number of total hours: 3,348.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 185.5

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

Tuesday, December 16, 2025 (Court Day #883)

Two days ago, on Sunday afternoon, Andrea, the Aireo Sports marketing person, dropped off in assortment of demo paddles at my house to share locally. Yesterday at work, I printed out some labels and at lunchtime today, I applied them to the paddles. Later this afternoon, one of my private students came by and picked up the bag of paddles to try out.

Skypark

It was 61°F, practically balmy for the middle of December. When I arrived at about 6:45 p.m., three of the eight courts were empty. Quite a surprise. Someone suggested that it might be because it’s the holidays. Later, on our way out, Scott said that he was going to Mexico for the holidays and see us in the new year. Maybe it is a result of the holidays . . .

Games

My first game was teamed up with the UCSC student named Brandon who had never met before against a couple of regulars. Before the game, Bandon warned me that it had been a few months since he played. Considering that he hadn’t played for a while he did all right. It was solid 3.0 play.

I got into one more game. That was completely unmemorable.

I played three games with Dr. Alex—the birdman—against David L. and a fellow named River. I’d seen River around but I’d never played with him before. Judging just from tonight, I’d say River is a 4.0 player.

Alex and I won the first game by a few points then we had a rematch and won that one again. We played a third game and also won that one. For the fourth game, we mixed things up and I played with David against Alex and River. The score was tied 4–4 when the lights clicked off at 8:30 p.m.

And?

I played well tonight. As a matter, fact, this is about the best that I played at night in quite some time. This was equal to my daylight level of play.

Sure, I gave my opponent some gifts, but they were greatly outnumbered by nice shots. I was about to as I was about to leave, I made a special effort to walk over to where River was sitting and packing up and I told him that he played well, which he did. He thanked me for the games and told me that I have fast hands. Yep, that’s a compliment that I hear fairly frequently. 

One particularly memorable shot in an early game and Alex was across from me. I left a little bit too much room between me and the right side line. Alex drove a passing shot to my right and all I could do is barely get my paddle on it, and the ball careened away off into another court. Oops!

It was 55° when I left and I was comfortable in a T-shirt and shorts.

When I got off the court, I had 45 text messages! Lots of messages from my mom, my brothers, my sister and who knows who else!

Rain is coming and we will see if there is a play on Thursday night or not. Play this weekend, and especially this Sunday, is nearly guaranteed to be out of the question.

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Thursday, December 18, 2025 (No Play)

If there are circumstances in a tournament doubles match where one of the two players can’t continue, but the remaining partner still wants to play on alone, this is legal and a certified USAP referee explains in this brief article:
https://insideden.com/pickleball-blog/pickleball-doubles-injury-rule/

Paddle Battle

There is a pickleball facility franchise called Pickleball Kingdom. They are promoting a reality TV show coming out soon that will stream on YouTube. Based on the trailer, it appears to be one of those “vote a person off the island” contestant elimination scenarios

This is great promotion for Pickleball Kingdom’s franchise program. They have to be hoping that people will be inspired to become a franchisee.

Mall -> Pickleball

Speaking of pickleball franchises, a different one, Picklr, is opening up in a shopping mall in Santa Barbara.

Santa Barbara Is About to Get a Premier Pickleball Facility

In our county, in Capitola, there is an indoor shopping mall with some vacant spaces. Over a year ago, the facility let the community know that they were seeking ideas on how to use the empty space that formerly housed Sears. Some of us formally reached out and suggested pickleball courts. Unfortunately, the idea was dismissed out of hand without any explanation. Granted, it would take a chunk of money to get the floor into a condition to use for pickleball, that is, a surface where players wouldn’t slide and slip. I don’t know if they even considered that with the rejection, but maybe. Again, they never said.

Number of days on a court: 883
Number of total hours: 3,347.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 185.5

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