Category: Pickleball (Page 234 of 326)

Thursday, May 30, 2019 (Court Day #273)

Day 34 playing left-handed. (34th day out.) Tennis elbow.

I had so many things going on, I forgot about Thursday night pickleball until my calendar reminded me with an email around closing time! At work, we had a customer who appeared 15 minutes before closing and kept us half an hour after closing time. My cashier wanted to go see the first game of the NBA finals with the regional Golden State Warriors playing. Me? I wanted to get to pickleball, though I did listen to the game in my car on the way to Scotts Valley. The Warriors were down by 10 points at halftime, which is when I got to Skypark at about 7:20 p.m.

I played a number of games before I left at about a quarter after 9.

Sharyl noticed my paddle after I played against her and Olga with Shawnte as my partner. (We lost, Shawnte is pretty green yet and I’m playing left-handed!) She said she has a Prince Response paddle for sale—she started experiencing wrist pain when  she started using it so she stopped. This did get me to thinking, Could that be part of the cause of my tennis elbow? When did I switch over from the Tempest Wave? Regardless, I did notice my left wrist aching a bit coming into tonight. I’ve played a lot in the last week, six times in eight days?

The last three games were Olga and me against Oleg and Shawnte. Olga and I lost pretty lopsided games until the last where we actually lead at times and only lost 11-9. To my credit, I only failed to return a few of Oleg’s powerful serves in those three games.

Olga and her husband Oleg pack up as Shawnte gives a smile.

Overall, tonight was frustrating. I was doing my best to get into “tournament mindset” during games, yet still shots occasionally went wild despite my best intentions and focus. I did bestter serving, missing only a handful over the two hours.

Tonight, I didn’t bother to explain to anyone that I was playing left-handed. People either already knew or I didn’t care. It came up regardless. Like Larry asked how the elbow was doing. And Stuart mentioned it during his game with me.

So frustrating.

Number of days on a court: 273
Number of total hours: 751.5

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Wednesday, May 29, 2019 (Court Day #272)

Day 33 playing left-handed. (33rd day out.) Tennis elbow.

Tournaments

Yesterday afternoon, Binh texted asking if I had Art’s contact information. I let him know that I didn’t. He said Art had asked him to be his partner on Saturday at the San Juan Bautista tournament. SBJ tournament? I knew nothing about it! In a later text, Binh “confessed” that he is signed up to play with Mark G. in a tournament in Sunnyvale in August the week after Binh and I are to play in the Cabrillo Tournament. I emailed Jen, the organizer for the SJB tournament, asking for details. It turns out men’s doubles is on Sunday, not Saturday. I forwarded that information to Binh’s email.

Derby

I got up and my back was sore. I arrived at Derby Park at 9:15. Dave Allenbaugh had jury duty so he got Tom S. to be the site coordinator in his stead.

Binh talked to Art and Art said he was fine with Binh playing with me this weekend. Good news for me.

Greedy

I played a game with George as my partner. There was one shot down the middle slightly to his side where I got greedy and took the shot. I should have left it for his forehand so he could slam it instead of me simply getting it back over the net with my overly-stretched weaker left-handed forehand. George gave me a polite “talking to” afterward on the bench. He was most certainly right. Truth is, we were losing and I decided to be more aggressive on my shots—the problem was I may have cost us a point by not letting George attack a shot that should have been his.

Binh and I played a game against Karen Long and Gary. Karen, of course, is an advanced player, and Gary is a 3.0 on a good day. Binh and I lost. Karen felt bad after she beaned me in the left shoulder. A “chicken wing” shot is hard enough with your natural arm, let alone trying to play using your non-dominant arm! Afterward, Binh apologized to me for taking it easy on Gary. I laughed and told him that it was fine. (I didn’t take it easy on anyone though I’d made an effort to intentionally hit shots to Karen now and then.)

Binh and I lost several early games in sound fashion. Unfortunately. But we got better. Binh and I beat Eric S. and Grita 11-5. That was impressive, though Eric wasn’t playing his best game.

We went on to beat Wayne and new Dave 11-5. We had a rematch and beat them again, 11-0. (Bagel!) They got just one serve. We scored 5 points on my only service then the rest on Binh’s only service. Game. Binh is doing better with employing a soft game. Wayne likes to bang the ball and our style of play was a very good match to that.

Then we played Eric S. and John P. We lost 11-6. Expected, but we still gave them a fight.

I noticed my ankle between points once or twice. It’s still causing pain at times. I’m not sure why the injury has come back. (I rolled my ankle . . . maybe 18 months ago now? It’s been a while.)

Things to Work On

Low backhand. Serving. Trying to dink volley low semi-drive shots back over the net—I’m taking far too much off the shot and the ball is dropping well short of the net. I noticed today that I did far better serving if I lobbed it a bit more than hitting low over the net, I think I’ll use that more frequently.

I was done and off to work at 12:06. I had a plumber meeting me at work at 1 p.m. Little did I know at the time that he’d be 40 minutes early and would be already asking questions when I was about to step into the shower at home!

San Juan Bautista Tournament

Later, I emailed Jen and told her to sign Binh and me up for 3.0 and to try to give us as much time as possible since we’d be driving down right after Binh got off from his RN job at 7:30 a.m. She confirmed and even said she’d give us a first round bye. Nice!

Dave Allenbaugh responded quickly to my email asking if he’d cover Derby for me so I could play in the tournament. He said since he’s stuck in jury duty instead of playing pickleball, he was happy to cover!

Number of days on a court: 272
Number of total hours: 749.5

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

Monday, May 27, 2019 (Court Day #271)
Memorial Day

Day 32 playing left-handed. Tennis elbow.

I arrived at Brommer Park a mere few minutes after 9. The parking lot was already over half full. It was overcast and breezy. One temporary net would blow over more than once during the session.

My back was pretty tired from the start. About an hour in, the temptation of leaving crossed my mind. I powered through. My right ankle also would hurt now and then, but typically not during actual play, but when just walking around.

Tom (visiting from out of town) and Cal take on two players (nearside). Overcast.

With the holiday, it was very busy. Early on, Leslie announced we’d be playing to 9. When I stopped to count players, there were 61 people at the courts, and some had already left!

A big crowd today. Tony (leftmost, tan hat) and Daniel (rightmost, red) don’t mark the limit of waiting people! Alan K. has his hands on his hips while Terry Long (purple) does some managing of the court board. Sun!

Binh and I beat Mark G. and Allen 11-8. (Not be confused with Alan K. or Allan C.)  It was a long game. Mark was having about as much trouble with his drops shots as I was—a lot.

Between games, I sat next to Joe, the new guy whom I’d played singles with a couple of weeks ago. I mentioned the pain in my right shoulder when I raise my elbow and he said it sounds like a rotator cuff problem. He said he’s having rotator cuff surgery and will be out for a few months for recovery. “Today will be my last time playing for a while.” He said I should go see Dr. Warren Scott in Soquel, who diagnoses sports injuries. I didn’t mention this before, but I’d asked my PT on Friday about that pain and she mentioned that it could be my rotator cuff, but she didn’t go beyond that and we didn’t discuss it more.

Binh and I played our our last three games against Aidan and Karen. (Little Karen, not Karen Long.) We won all three, though we had to come back the last game down 8-3.

There was a first in one of those last three games. I hit my first deep forehand slice service return as a lefty. That’s a decently advanced shot that I rarely see from intermediate players. I’ll take whatever little victory I can get right now!

I checked the time, 1:39 p.m. Four and a half hours. No wonder I was so fatigued!

Number of days on a court: 271
Number of total hours: 747

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