Category: Pickleball (Page 25 of 323)

Pickleball is Dying!

December 8, 2025 / andrewlenz / 0 Comments

Monday, December 8, 2025 (Court Day #879)

I’ll point out here that when I use “voice to text” on my phone to make notes for these entries, it’ll make the funniest errors sometimes. One is instead of recording “Brommer Park”, it sometimes records it as “Groomer Park.” Grooming for better pickleball, I hope!!

I seem to be missing a pair of sunglasses in the house somewhere and the only pair that I can find is the one where one of the wings partially snapped which I had reinforced with tape. So, yesterday I ordered another pair on eBay for about 15 bucks. It’s nice when the sunglasses that you like are cheap!
[I’ll note here that I later found the missing sunglasses when my wife opened the passenger door of my car!]

Meeting

Today, is our monthly Santa Cruz Pickleball Club board meeting, so I took most of the day off from work. Today’s meeting was my third nonprofit board meeting in five days. Between that and working six days a week, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of extra free time. I spent about an hour yesterday finishing the November SCPC minutes (since our board secretary quit with a notice), then I spent about an hour this morning finishing the agenda for the meeting today.

It was a beautiful day, but not a cloud in the sky and a temperature of 55°F.

Brommer Park

Surprisingly, when I pulled in the parking lot at 10:31 a.m. there were about half a dozen parking spots open. That was a bit of a shock for me.

During club play, the blue color is supposed to be 4.0 and higher. I was signing up in blue and one of my partners was obviously a 3.0. I’m always verbally kind and supportive of my partners, and generally, I don’t really care too much about playing with a weak partner if I have strong players to play against, but when your partner can’t keep a rally going, that starts to get annoying. I mean, how many drives can you just hit into the net! Still, I didn’t say anything negative.

The best game of the day was when I was paired up with a guy named Thomas against Mo and Soji. (Mo knew Thomas, but he was new to me.) My play that game started at a little rough, but then I dialed it in just in time for Thomas’s play to get a little rough. Eventually things fell into place and we were both playing better. We ended up winning the game. I will say that Soji has gotten significantly better over the last year.

I finished play at about 12:10 p.m.

Our board meeting was called to order at 12:16 p.m. We covered a variety of topics including setting membership dues for 2026 and setting the amounts for optionally prepaying annual court fees as a lump sum instead of paying two dollars in cash every time.

And?

I felt my play was ok today. I had my share of errors, especially early in the session, but I got more and more consistent as time went on.

Today, there was a new experience of feeling somewhat consistent knee pain even during a game. I specifically remember standing at the net waiting for my partner to receive and noticing that my knee hurt a little bit. It is not good.

Pickleball is Dying!

So this guy, affiliated with Bluejay Capital Group, because some indoor pickleball complexes are going bankrupt, posted on social media on November 24 that pickleball is dying, comparing it to the rise and decline of racquetball. His claim is that, “I expect pickleball to fade out of our lives over the next five years.” I can’t believe just how ignorant and wrong that is!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRdlB3YDs9L

I thought this was complete biased nonsense and posted a rebuttal at the time…

pickleballjourney:

“There is no decline. Pickleball continues to grow. It has grown 311% in the last three years and the Sports & Fitness Industry Association is projecting double digit growth for at least another four years.

Just because people don’t want to pay to play inside when they can play outside for free, doesn’t mean this sport is dying.”

I didn’t think too much about it after my reply, but then an article appeared talking about this guy’s post:
https://www.dailydot.com/news/is-pickleball-dying

Since it has been getting some notoriety, there you go!

Number of days on a court: 879
Number of total hours: 3,340.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 185.5

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

A December Sunday at Brommer

December 7, 2025 / andrewlenz / 0 Comments

Sunday, December 7, 2025 (Court Day #878)

It was an absolute beautiful day, much like for the parade yesterday. Sunny with only traces of clouds and 57°F. While that may seem a little bit chilly, it doesn’t take long to warm up while getting exercise in the direct sunlight.

Paddles

Andrea, from Aireo sports, says she’ll be dropping off some demo paddles to me on Friday while on her way to a paddle event in Monterey. That will be good, that way I can share them with my students and local players.

Knee

My right knee has been bothering me more than normal. I was walking the dog yesterday morning and with every step, it was a 3 or 4 out of 10 in terms of pain. In Harry Potter books, characters would not say the name of the Dark Lord—”he who shall not be named”—out of fear that somehow simply doing that would conjure him up. Dare I say it? In the back of my mind has been I thought that someday I may have to subject myself to a knee replacement. That is no little surgery. It’s a long recovery time with a lot of physical therapy and, of course, a lot of missed pickleball time too.

No Teaching

I am off from teaching for a few weeks. It’ll be a nice break. I have a new pickleball classes starting in a month. My Advanced Beginner class sold out as of yesterday, but my Beginner class at the moment, has zero sign ups. I’ll likely convert that to an Intermediate class. At this rate, it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to fill a Beginner class. It seems that pickleball is starting to get saturated locally.

Brommer

I pulled into Brommer Park at 9:15 a.m. The parking lot was full, but there were two cars pulling out just as I arrived, leaving me a spot.

Lefty Game

Regular Ed and I played against Carson and a guy named Dave. Due to injury, Dave was playing lefty though he is a righty. I switched to left myself. We lost 13-11. Amusing game. A lot of fun. Carson won on an ATP—pretty good for lefty!

Righty Games

Soji and Dan Dewey played against René and me. We are up up 6-3 but went on to lose 11-7. It was not entirely my fault, but mostly me. This was my first game after switching back to playing righty, after playing that other game lefty.

Soji and I won 11-5 versus J.P. and René.

Kent Shain—part of the local pickleball “OG”—and I played against Ed and someone. We won 12-10. That was a lazy game.

Oren and Aaron played against Alex and me. We won 13-11, then won again 11-6.

Conner & Jim

I teamed up with a weaker player against Conner and his dad Jim, 8-11. I’m surprised we kept it that close. I made three errors in the whole game. Conner and Jim didn’t speed up on me in that game after I countered Jim’s speedup with a winner back to Jim’s feet.

I teamed up with Pavel against Taylor (Track & Field Aaron’s girlfriend) and Nari, who sports a beard. I don’t remember the outcome, but I’m sure we won.

Rick Arnold and I played against Pavel and young Track & Field Aaron. We won solidly. I think it was 11–5 or 11–6.

The last game I played with Oren against René and Rick Arnold. For every error that I made, my partner made two. It was not his best game. We lost 5–11.

Track & Field Aaron has super-quick hands, probably the fastest that I’ve played against. (People tell me I have super-quick hands. Now I know how others feel!) Aaron is a challenge. He can rip balls hard too.

I felt that I played ok today, but there were no elite games.

I checked the time. 1:31 p.m. It was time to go home and have my first meal of the day.

Number of days on a court: 878
Number of total hours: 3,339
Number of paid coaching hours: 185.5

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

2026 Holiday Parade, USAP/DUPR, A Pickleball Christmas

December 6, 2025 / andrewlenz / 0 Comments

Tuesday, December 2, 2025 (Court Day #877)

I was hoping to leave right at 6 p.m. from work as I had told my staff that I would, but it turned into 20 minutes after that.

Jackie, one of our SCPC board members, said that somebody told her that the newly resurfaced courts at Skypark were already bubbling and cracking in spots. Given how poor the communication was between the City of Scotts Valley and the contractor, and how long it took for the contractor to complete the work, I won’t say that I’m shocked that there is some issue. Although, I am slightly surprised that it happened this quickly. It hasn’t even been three months since the courts reopened.

Skypark

When I got to Skypark, it was dark and a chilly 54°F evening. I asked someone about the bubbles and he pointed to the first court, nearest the gate. Though I couldn’t see anything from my advantage point off the court and I didn’t get the opportunity to inspect it closer later.

First Game

Jens and I played against Alex and Manda. I played quite well, I missed no more than three of my shots that whole game. We lost 11-6. Jens apologized to me afterward for his errors. No need, of course.

David, Alex, Mike

David L. showed up and I convinced him to join us for a game. Alex and I played against David and big Mike. It was David’s first game so he wasn’t completely warmed up. Alex and I won 11–6.

We played a rematch, but this time we lost 8–11.

We played a rubber match and, this time, I was no longer playing as well and Alex and I lost 3–11. There is no question that I shoulder most of the blame for errors in this game. It was not a good performance on my part.

Frabrizio and Me

Frabrizio arrived and he and I teamed up against David and Alex. I knew this would be the toughest combination for me to play against. Sure enough, Fabrizio and I lost the first game by a significant margin.

We had a rematch and we lost 0–11. It was painful.

We played again and lost again. I was continuing to not play well.

David and Me

I wanted to play again with this combination, but David wanted to mix it up. David and I played against Frabrizio and Alex. David started out a little rough, making mistakes. I suspect that he was trying too hard. We found ourselves down 0–3. But then we came back and went on to win.

Alex and Me

We mixed it up. I played with Alex against David and Frabrizio. We were playing well and found ourselves up 6–3. But they went on a run and took the lead at 7–6. During this game we had an incredibly long rally. It was one of the longest ones of my life. They had to have been at least 20 shots between the dink battle, Alex’s lob over Frabrizio‘s head, their battle to get back to the net, another dink battle—it was great! We just scored two points and tied up the game 8–8 with Alex continuing his first server, with the lights clicked out at 8:30 p.m. Such a bummer. That was a fun game, I was finally starting to get really warmed up!

As I drove home, my thermometer read 50°F. It’s December now and it’s starting to get noticeably cooler in the evenings. It’s also not heating up as much during the days, generally staying in the low 60s.

Overall, I was not happy with my play tonight. I hit at least three or four outballs. There are a few shots where the lights affected me and I had trouble judging the distance of the ball.

Wednesday, December 3, 2025 (No Play)

The Lifetime Network has jumped on the bandwagon and has a TV movie coming out called “A Pickleball Christmas“. Here’s a trailer that’s been posted on social media:
https://youtube.com/shorts/u13RHAkHQoo

What’s amusing to me about the trailer is the fact that for the event that they are covering, they have three reporters, including two sideline commentators, but the court looks like it’s in some small neighborhood park with a mere handful of fans. It doesn’t make any sense.

Playing Against Kyle Yates

Someone posted a comical video about what it’s like to play against Kyle Yates, former #1 doubles player in the world:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRUx2ebjrhf

Carmel Ban

There’s been a lot in the news, at least in the pickleball world, about Carmel banning pickleball in their city. Carmel is a little bit over one hour south of me. I’ve never played down there, but I can sympathize with the local players. The city didn’t even give the players as a chance to police themselves to use quiet paddles and quiet balls to play and keep the neighbors happy. Instead, they voted to simply ban the sport altogether:
https://www.ksbw.com/article/carmel-pickleball-misdemeanor-offense-california/69596554

Rohnert Park Again

Here’s another video providing more insight into the new pickleball complex in a former movie theater a couple hours north:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DR2O6bYCUIK

Friday, December 5, 2025 (No Play)

DUPR announced today that they are now the official rating system for USA pickleball.

DUPR and USA Pickleball Announce Landmark Agreement to Adopt DUPR as Official Exclusive Rating System

I think this is a great thing. UTR-P was announced as the rating system for USAP in April last year. It was a new thing and it always seemed to be kind of forced and cumbersome. Now, we have a system that is in common use, DUPR.

Ben Johns

Here’s a good breakdown of a game where Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio lose to Hayden Patriquin and Federico Staksrud in upset at PPA Worlds, 11-8, 11-5.

Saturday, December 6, 2025 (No Play)

Today was the day of the annual Santa Cruz Downtown Holiday Parade. I got the pickleball club involved for the first time a few years ago. As the USA Pickleball Ambassador for Santa Cruz County, it’s my role to increase the profile of pickleball and the parade seems a really good way to do that.

I told club members to show up by 9:45 a.m., some came earlier, some came a bit later. We used to be in the last third of the parade, but this year, we were in the middle. With the parade starting at 10 a.m., I figured we wouldn’t start any sooner than about 10:15 a.m.

There was a bit of an adventure Sean M. was supposed to bring the mini parade net and the banner, but his girlfriend needed to be taken to the ER after a slip and so Jeff H. had to race over and picked them up. Fortunately, Jeff made it with a comfortable margin but for a bit of time, we were worried we’d have no banner and nothing to hit a ball over!

We got a bystander to take a photo shortly before we were to head onto the parade route.

As the SCPC organizer, I was disappointed to see over 100 roller derby kids, but out of about 500 pickleball club members, we had just 11 show up… 2.2%. I heard that Skypark was busy with players in games but not supporting the club. Just how impressive would it be to get 50 pickleball players out showing the need for more courts?