Category: Pickleball (Page 243 of 326)

Thursday, March 13, 2019 (Court Day #246)

I couldn’t leave work early, so I got to Scotts Valley at 7 p.m. It was a chilly evening, I spent the entire evening in my sweatshirt, though I did get pretty warm at one point.

My tennis elbow, while improving, still has a way to go. Shaking hands will people still hurts, but not enough to cause my eyes to water in pain.

I played a few games, winning one.

Walking off a court to the waiting area, an errant ball approached and I instinctively switched my paddle to my right hand and tapped the ball back over the net. Mistake! That was unquestionably painful. So much for my secret hopes of switching back to my right hand soon. Nope. Not even close.

The fun stretch of the night was Mark C. (Maree’s husband) and me playing three games against Binh and Greg. Binh is getting quite good, he gets balls back that most local players would not. I could tell that he was taking it slightly easy on me—his serves were gentle deep serves.  I need to work on those. My left handed serving is getting far better. I was able to get some deep into our opponents courts. I got an ace tonight too, but that was purely a fluke of me trying to even get my serve in! Mark and I won the first game and lost the next two by close scores. In the second game, I did miss a couple of low backhands to my right side.

Greg commented on one shot. “I saw that…” He went on to talk about how I’d volleyed his dink out of the air swinging low to high applying topspin to the shot when hitting it toward Binh. It’s a “beyond newbie” shot and not all that easy to do with the weak hand/arm, but I was successful executing it. A nice surprise.

Bruce, Mark Dettle, Janet (Bruce’s wife), and Marie in the last game of the night.

As we walked out, I chatted with Binh. He admitted that he was sometimes avoiding hitting to my backhand, “I’ll do that when you get better with your left hand.” Binh is a great guy and I appreciate him looking out for me, but I’d rather get beat and get the practice on shots that need work. Plus I like an “honest” game. Hit me! Pull out the stops! Take advantage! Push me! That’s how one gets better.

I check my phone in the car, 8:43 p.m.

So?

My serving is continue to get much better. It’s still inconsistent and I can’t very accurately place balls, but I’m getting the vast majority of them in now.

I’m dying to switch back to playing with my right hand. It’s aggravating! I know that in the long run, it can only help my game, but it’s miserable. I hate it.

Saturday, March 16, 2019 (No Play)

My right wrist and forearm are causing me elevated pain with certain movements the last few days. It’s really odd. I’m continuing to ice my elbow most evenings. I’ve talked to a few people who said they’ve had tennis elbow but when I tell them that even shaking hands was excruciatingly painful, they say, “Oh. That’s much worse than I had it.”

Number of days on a court: 246
Number of total hours: 677

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

Wednesday, March 13, 2019 (Court Day #245)

It was a beautiful day. I had let my staff know that I’d be coming in around noon to meet with a sales rep. But the morning was mine. I arrived at Derby Park at 9:10 a.m.

A somewhat active morning at Sgt. Derby Park. It topped out somewhere between 25-30 people—on the light side.

There were a couple of younger guys that I didn’t know. It turns out that they are both firefighters, one named Trevor. I’m guessing around 30 years old, give or take 5 years. I didn’t meet Trevor’s friend.

After my first game—Tom S. and I against Ted B. and Trevor, Ted said, “You made all your serves in!”
“Oh, that’s right, that’s good!”
“You only got to serve about three times,” added Ted. Ha! Well, still, a good start. Tom and I did lose and it certainly wasn’t all Tom’s fault either!

Big SCPC Announcement

Dave Allenbaugh stopped all the games and made an announcement. He said the Santa Cruz Pickleball Club is working on becoming a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and that should be complete in a few months. At that point, they are planning a $20 annual fee to be an official club member. (Right now, you sign up for the club emails and you are a de facto member.) Also, Dave announced, the City’s Parks & Rec Department has allocated $55,000 to redo the court surface—vegetation is starting to grow up through cracks—and will add two permanent pickleball courts in the process! They also are going to leave two City-owned portable nets at the courts. Some of us are concerned that these nets will be either stolen maybe even vandalized by tennis players. When Brommer added their four permanent pickleball courts, the support wire for one or two of the nets was repeatedly cut.

We went back to playing. The last few times out, my back has been really tired. With all the rain, it’s like going to back to my early days of pickleball where my body isn’t used to the leaning, crouching, squatting and gets fatigued and sore.

I checked my phone: 11:23 a.m. Time to hit the road. On my way out for the day, one of the two parks employees was posting a sign outside the gate.

“Attention park patrons:
On a trial basis,  Sergeant Derby courts may now be used for tennis and/or pickleball on a first come, first served basis. Sunday and Wednesday pickleball reservations will still hold true, as demarcated on permanent signage. Additionally, the City of Santa Cruz Parks & Recreation Department has provided two portable pickleball nets here at Segreant Derby Park for public use. Any questions and/or concerns should be directed to…”

What did I learn today?

I did ok. People still have a certain awe when you can play with your off hand. Craig made the typical comment today, “I couldn’t play left handed.” I take that with a grain of salt. I think most people, with enough practice, could play left handed. It’s easier for some than others, of course. Some do it. Wayne will switch hands on occasion for a shot and did so today. So will little Barb.

I should practice at home. I still need to get more paddle control. I had some very nice shots along with some shots that were just completely wild. Even bouncing the ball up and down on my paddle would be helpful.

I still get massive amounts of satisfaction winning a net battle left handed. Granted, it’s typically against 3.0 players or maybe a weak 3.5, but nonetheless, it’s that thought of “yeaaaaaah”.

I’m missing tournaments. And I can’t sign up for any since I have no idea when my right arm will be better. And I’m not about to waste people’s time by signing up and playing left handed.

The good news is the weather report calls for clear skies at least through the weekend. This afternoon, Sharyl—the coordinator for Scotts Valley—sent out an email saying that they are back to free outdoor play for this week. Awesome. I think I may go.

Oh, a fellow named Doug—Hi, Doug!—joined my new forum and replied to a mass email I’d sent out to members. He stumbled across my blog while searching for online education and has been a regular reader since. See what happens when you don’t just share photos of your pets and your meals? People actually look at what post! LOL!

Number of days on a court: 245
Number of total hours: 675.5

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

Friday, March 8, 2019 (Court Day #244)

I was in San Antonio, Texas for a few days starting the last weekend in February for an annual art materials trade show for work. I was visiting a booth in the show when, Rob—a casual acquaintance and the owner of a vendor company based in Illinois—walks across the aisle and asks the woman in the booth, “Do you know what his nickname is?” He paused, then with a big grin, told her, “The Velvet Hammer!”
I was stunned. That’s only in pickleball and not many people use it.
Incredulous, I asked, “How did you know that?” He looked at me, still smiling, “The Pickleball Forum on Facebook. I play pickleball!” Turns out he’s been playing for about a year and is signed up for his first tournament in a few months.

The next day Rob’s wife shared with me that she won’t play against him any more since he’s very competitive and he’ll hit her with the ball to win! “I thought it’d be something fun that we could do together . . . but nooooo!”, obviously both amused and vexed at the same time.

ATP Drop Shot

At the Facebook Pickleball Forum, someone posted a link to a video of a “new shot”. I’m not sure if it’s new enough to warrant a different name or merely a variant of the Around the Post shot:

Finally. Playing!

The rain has been pretty constant this year with outdoor play pretty rare. I arrived at Brommer Park at about 9:10. A few games were already underway. It was chilly enough that I wore a sweatshirt to start—a sign of California winter. While warming up, a shower opened up, leaving heavy drops all over the courts. It was a mix of sun and scary gray clouds. The courts dried out then it had another very brief shower. No one left the courts!

Today, I played every shot—as I have been—left handed. While there were periodic wild shots, my lefty game is improving. I easily made most of my serves, at least 75%. And some were getting deeper. There were some net rallies that I won. I have to say, there’s a real sense of satisfaction and success going toe to toe with an opponent at the net volleying back and forth and still winning even with the disadvantage of playing with the opposite hand. John P. commented that he was impressed that I could even do anything at all with my left hand and that I was especially good at the net.

I was in the car shortly after noon to head home to get ready for work.

I’m so ready to play again right handed but I’m resigned to the possibility that it may be six months or more. Frustrating.

PickleballForums.com

I’m continuing to tweak the setting and features of my forum project. Again, I have no idea if it’ll take off or just be a fruitless fun exercise. But, if I can even get 1 out of every 10,000 players in the USA to be an active participant, that’s 200 people. I’d be happy with that. Maybe I can get folks for other countries. And pickleball is only going to continue to grow. The hard part is both letting people know about it and also getting people to participate. With 0 posts in a section, that’s not going to inspire confidence that it’ll be an active community worth the time to post there. Dunno. We’ll see.

Number of days on a court: 244
Number of total hours: 673.5

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