Category: Pickleball (Page 242 of 326)

Sunday, March 24, 2019 (Court Day #249)

I arrived at Derby Park at 8:50. I was the first one there—Wayne didn’t beat to the courts me, for a change! It would be a beautiful day with perfect pickleball weather. Sunny and warm enough to be very comfortable in shorts and a T-shirt but cool enough not to get sweaty easily.

The two City of Santa Cruz nets were back. Cal must have returned them after he took them last week.

Attendance topped out at about 32 people today. We had a couple visitors from Montana, a man and an Asian woman named Lynn. I didn’t have much interaction with them, but they seemed very nice when I had them sign the waiver.

James, the excellent player, made an appearance today and I got to play a game with him. James and Gary versus Binh and me. Binh and I both got nailed with the ball by James. I got hit in the hand twice and Binh got one right in the chest. I think it ended 11-7 with us losing. James keeps you on your toes!

Carl hamming it up for the camera as Gary sits and James leans. Wayne in blue and Ted B. in red can be seen at the far left.

My tennis elbow has taken a small turn for the worse this past week. As has my right ankle, it’s not constantly painful, but at certain angles or rotations, it’ll hurt.

A man, whom I don’t play with much, when he was leaving said, ”Oh. You’re playing left handed—I did remember you being better.” He had been puzzled why I wasn’t as good of a player has he recalled. Yeah, left handed.

Just when I was about to leave, the visitor from Montana overheard me mentioning my tennis elbow and how I was playing left handed, he voiced approval and a big “attaboy” grin.

It was almost 1 p.m. I left Stewart in charge, stowing away all that I could in the club storage bins. Cal was teaching on one court using a City net and the Montana visitors were playing at the other City net against two locals. A grandmother and her daughter came to play tennis with two little kids, so we moved one net over to clear a tennis court and accommodate them. They were very patient and nice.

Today was a definite step backward on my serving. While I made most of them, I missed maybe 20-30%. Not good.

As I was winding down in bed, YouTube suggested this video uploaded two days ago:

This new website looks really good. A new modern features-rich interface for PickleballTournaments.com is to be rolled out in May. Right now, the current site looks like it was coded 20 years ago by someone with no design sense and no background or training in “user experience”. It’s ugly, clunky, and inefficient. It looks like the websites that I helped construct in the late 1990s when HTML was still a new thing and CSS was yet to come. Of course, it may be next year before I’ll be able to enter a tournament, so for now the update is irrelevant for me. Melody was asking today if was in any upcoming tournaments. Ha! No way.

Monday, March 25, 2019 (No Play)

This may seem a bit weird to talk about cutting toenails. But this morning, I cut the toenails on my right foot. No biggie. Normal. But when it was time for my left foot, I simply moved the clippers to my left hand and started cutting. My immediate thought was, “Woah. That’s an ambidextrous moment!” The playing left handed has flowed over into other aspects of my life. Crazy.

Rain is expected Wednesday, but I have a scheduled meeting with a client that morning, so rain is A-ok with me that day.

Tonight, I saw that Joe Baker released a new pickleball video today. I haven’t seen a bad one from him yet. This one is a good one too.

Number of days on a court: 249
Number of total hours: 685

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Thursday, March 23, 2019 (Court Day #248)

I had a board meeting and couldn’t get to Scotts Valley until 8 p.m. Late. But any playing is better than nothing. I only got three games in. All were with Bruce and Janet with an assortment of players to fill out the four.

Under the lights. Stewart, Sharyl, someone, Greg, Christine, Olga.

Bruce and I teamed up for a couple of hysterical games where we both played left handed. Bruce did surprisingly well, though he mentioned he’s been playing ping pong left handed against his wife Janet—otherwise he’d destroy her since he’s been playing ping pong since he was a kid. It translates well to pickleball, plus Bruce is a natural coordinated athlete. Bruce and I lost both games but did better in the second.

The last game was Olga and me against Janet and Bruce, with he and I still both playing left handed. Olga was serving very well and playing very well overall. She’s gotten much better. Olga carried our side to a win, though I did serve some really strong left handed serves that I would have been proud to have served right handed. That’s a first.

Folks were all done about 8:45.

Forum Project

I’ve decided to let my new forum sit. My wife and I will be gone for a week leaving our house and dog in care of a young woman. When we get back, I can see about getting the forum going.

Number of days on a court: 248
Number of total hours: 681

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

Sunday, March 17, 2019 (Court Day #247)

What an absolutely gorgeous day! Amazing. I arrived at Derby Park at 8:55 a.m., a bit later than I wanted. As I walked up, I expected to see the two City-provided portable nets all set up and ready to be moved into position . . . but my worst fears were realized: GONE! Both nets were nowhere to be seen. Disappointing.

Cal

There was a local tennis instructor named Cal Honda who has been teaching pickleball classes through the City of Santa Cruz. I’d never met him, but he appeared today. As the SCPC site coordinator, I broke away from warming up and walked over, greeted him and I asked his name. He said, “Cal.” I told him that I was the site coordinator—”Oh, Andrew!” I asked if he was the Cal teaching classes and he said that he was. I asked if he’d played at Derby before. He said he hadn’t, so I had him sign the waiver. He mentioned something about the nets being left at the court, how it was a bad idea, and that he had taken them. Ah. That’s where they went! I guess we’ll hear later if he had the City’s permission to remove their property from the courts. At least we know where they are and that they weren’t stolen by some lowlifes.

Dave Cox, Adrian (left) taking on Eric and Greg (right).

There was a new guy, Eric. He played a lot of tennis and this was his fifth time out playing pickleball. He plays decently—excellent for just starting out—but there’s plenty to clean up and adjust.

Videos

I recorded a handful of games. Not that they are particularly noteworthy or even particularly entertaining . . . unless you enjoy seeing me hit an occasional shot in a completely random direction. I figured it’d be good to have a record of my skill level playing left handed.

Here’s one of Chris and myself playing against Tony and newbie Eric. Chris and I did win this game.

Here’s another match, a 20-minute battle of relative ineptitude. (No offense to my court-mates!) Though Adrian and Jeff both were serving very well. It’s hard to make out just how fast their serves were coming, but you can get a sense that from the high number that get returned into the net or returned very poorly—my lefty play withstanding.

I left the courts shortly after 12:30. The last one out, as typical for a site coordinator.

Overall

My serves are getting so much better. I believe I missed less than half a dozen in 3 1/2 hours of play. That’s on par with my right hand serves! On the topic of serving, I need to work on serving from a more upright position, there’s nothing to gain from leaning over, and in fact, it’s detriment in terms of ball angle over the net. The higher you hit the ball from, the harder and faster you can hit it.

Later

After talking to someone today about exercises to improve tennis elbow and how the doing twists with the foam roll were so painful that I couldn’t do them, I decided to get out my green Theraband Flexbar and try the “Tyler Twist” with it again. While it was still a little painful, it was tolerable. I opted to do a few twists. I’ll try again soon.

Tuesday, March 19, 2019 (No Play)

With the 3 1/2 hours of play on Sunday, my left forearm is sore . . . particularly along the top inside of the back of my forearm. The “tennis elbow” muscle on the outside is also a little sore—that worries me, to be honest—but doesn’t seem to be significant.

Number of days on a court: 247
Number of total hours: 680.5

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