Category: Pickleball (Page 308 of 327)

REWRITTEN
(Due to a supremely infuriating bug in the WordPress mobile app, all my original writing for this entry was deleted. I’m doing my best to write what I recall.)

Friday, August 4, 2017 (Off day)

Brommer Ribbon Cutting

My slim hopes of attending the official Brommer Park ribbon cutting for the new permanent courts were dashed when one of my staff called in sick. I wasn’t here but Pamela Iriguch (who I don’t know) took some photos which Dave Allenbaugh posted to the club website.

What is fun is that it made the Santa Cruz Sentinel. I’m not sure if we should be happy that it was in the first section of the newspaper or insulted that it wasn’t in the Sports section!

Sunday, August 6, 2017 (Court Day #54) – REWRITTEN

Derby Park was very busy. The photo below doesn’t even show the handful that were waiting outside the chain link courts enclosure.

Alas, I don’t remember the details of this day. I remember playing a game against a woman where afterward Bruce thought I was targeting her. While I initially told him that I didn’t think I was abnormally targeting her, after thinking out it, it’s very possible that I was. I certainly wasn’t favoring her, which I had been when Jerry and I had played a couple of newbie women where I was intentionally hitting the ball in a way that would allow the ball to stay in play versus hitting up a winner or setting up a winner. I wasn’t doing that on this day. If the

Outreach by Ray

Ray Pereyra—the other half of the Ray and Robin couple—was off in Detroit at the tail end of July for the AAU Junior Olympics and was showing youth how to play pickleball. I learned that Ray is part of the club’s steering committee and an ambassador for the USAPA. Good job, Ray!

Injured Finger

Oh, and here’s the right pinky after over a week of healing. Still sore. Not too gross compared to what it looked like the week before.

Number of days on a court: 54
Number of total hours: 156.5

Tuesday, August 1, 2017 (Off Day)

Santa Cruz County Courthouse

I’m sitting outside a courtroom as a witness in a criminal trial. The court aggregated five charges/incidents into one trial. I’ve been here for almost an hour. Sitting. It’ll be my first time on the stand in a trial, so I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t anxious. A young woman stole a handful of art pens from our family business. A few days later she was found in a stolen car with drugs. We’re losing money due it all the time involved but sometimes you need to make a stand for what’s right and hold people responsible for their bad actions in the hopes they straighten out their lives. It sure is a pain, however.

Ah. They ran out of time for the trial after taking too long to select a jury. Two hours of waiting for naught. Ah, well. Back tomorrow afternoon.

Wednesday, August 2, 2017 (Court Day #53)

Today, Terry Long lead a free class at Derby Park. I arrived right before 9, helped set up nets. As people arrived, we warmed up. Terry started the class around 9:30 after more people showed up.

Terry instructing the group.

Terry talked about groundstrokes and spin. He had us play a drill game he called Crouching Poacher, Hidden Baseline—coined after the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon—where the serving team stays at the baseline as does the receiver but the receiver’s partner stays at the kitchen line and tracks in front of the ball even if it goes to what would normally be the receiver’s side of the court. The idea is for the forward person to poach a lot. The receiver would move to protect the court where the poacher can’t reach. If the poacher hit the ball mid-way between the kitchen line and the baseline, then the serving team would be “uncaged” and could then move up to their kitchen line. We did this to five points then rotated.

We also did a drill where we hit deep groundstroke with topspin. Forward, cross, forward, cross, repeat.

After this, class was ended about 10:45 or 11 and we broke up into playing regular games.

I played a game with Tom S. against Jerry Louis and neighbor Dave—both Jerry and Dave are stronger players than either Tom or me. Nonetheless, Tom and I battled it out and even lead at times. Eventually, we lost as expected 11-7—or maybe it was 11-8. Still, it was surprising that it was that close.

The next game was Alan and me against Dave and Tom. Dave and Tom made it difficult, but Alan and I won.

I had a good day, playing solidly in the games.

My morning ended at 11:50. I haven’t seen Maree and Mark for a week or so, they are good folks, no doubt they’ll be around again soon.

Court Case

After I got to work about 1 p.m., I got a message that the defendant plead guilty to all charges. The full trial was called off and none of us have to testify. That’ll save a bunch of time and headaches!

Out in the Pickleball World

Tournament pickelballers are aflutter this week after a bunch of top players didn’t get into the Nationals tournament. It was first come, first serve. Registration opened at 1 p.m. online and spots were gone pretty much immediately. There are two main problems. 1) Slots are not merit-based. So a self-rated 5.0 player can register having never won any events anywhere. 2) They offer a ranged of graded events below 5.0, meaning there are less games available for the top players. Someone compared it to Wimbledon, that is, they only allow top tennis players there. For pickleball to be taken more seriously, a similar approach needs to be taken with high-profile pickleball events. As a lower-graded player myself, I think that’s the way it should be. Drop the lower-graded events. Make Nationals only 5.0 players. Make sure the top players are registered—make it an invitational if they have to. Pickleball is experiencing growing pains. It’ll get better in the coming years, but in the meantime, there will be problems!

Brommer Event

Brommer Park is having a ribbon cutting on Friday for the new courts. Politicians will be there making speeches, etc. Staffing at work is a little thin, but since it’s at lunch time I might be able to make it out long enough to see people and show support.

Movie

My former neighbor Dave stopped by his ex-wife’s house next-door and while around knocked on the door to introduce his growing puppy Brewster to our corgi Oliver. My son Nicholas and I were off to see the movie Dunkirk and were rushing. Oliver doesn’t like German Shepherds—he was nipped by one once—or puppies and spent most of the brief visit growling! Dave kindly expressed concern that he might be teasing me too much. Nah. He did offer some advice: “Develop on your third shot drop now. Don’t wait and work on later.” I do tend to lapse back on a third short drive as a crutch since my opponents generally aren’t super strong. I should go out of my way to force work on the third shot drop. Oh, and Dunkirk. Very good movie.

Number of days on a court: 53
Number of total hours: 153

Sunday, July 30, 2017 (Court Day #52)

First off, let me say that sometimes the WordPress system is a pain in the butt. I wrote a few paragraphs on my mobile phone and updated the draft. I got home, opened the draft on my computer and all my previous typing was erased. *grumble*

Pinky

Our softball team had its seventh game on Friday night. I was in left field when a deep hit came in my direction. Only a little running was required, it was an easy catch to make. I raised my mitt along with my right hand for additional support. The ball was just about there. PAIN! The ball dropped from my mitt onto the ground. I picked it up—or so I’m told, I don’t remember that—and threw it in. I immediately trotted off the field holding my numb pinky finger and a replacement took my spot in the outfield. Broken finger? No, didn’t seem so. Bloody? A little. And a huge blood blister above the last knuckle on the inside of my right pinky finger. I spent the rest of the game icing my finger. I took a photo but no one really wants to see someone else’s blood and injury! You have been spared! As it is, two days later, the swelling has gone down, I can just about close my pinky completely and I’m simply protecting the blister with a Band-Aid. It still looks pretty bad, however!

Insole Aventure

Last night, I slathered the bottom of the insoles and glued them into my Costco shoes. Today, I didn’t notice them at all. They didn’t move. Success! Finally!

Derby

I arrived a few minutes after 9 a.m. and warmed up with Grita in heavy mist. Mike was the next arrival and joined our warm up. A few games ensued as other people arrived.

Kris (of Scotts Valley) made her first ever appearance at Derby Park. Nifty! She and I played against Gita and Mike. Grita asked, “Are you sure?” I was thinking, sure, they are stronger players but it shouldn’t be too lopsided. Uh. No. Kris and I got clobbered. I think the final score was 11-1 or 11-2. Grita slams her forehands and has solid backhands as well. If she had a stronger dinking game, she’d be absolutely deadly. While talking about pickleball signup list (separate from the club list), Grita asked Terry Long about the numbers on the sheet, meaning the grades. Terry explained they are for entering tournaments and told Grita that she’d be a 4.0 player and that if she developed her soft game, she’d move up.

Terry Long told me he had the loaned data stick, but I forgot to ask him for it later. (I was in a game at the time.) Play was stopped midmorning for some announcements. Grand opening ceremony for the Brommer courts on August 4. Terry will be offering free classes at Derby for those interested, just sign up. Of course, I forgot, so I emailed his wife Karen later!

James & Oleg

A little after noon, a man around 30 named James appeared. He was from Washington but had recently moved to Santa Cruz County. He said he’s played pickleball on and off for a couple of years but played “too much” tennis in prior years. I had to remind him of being up at the net for receiving, but he’s a very good player—I’d say better than me. I offered to play a game with James against Ted and Oleg—who I found out later had only play two previous times! Oleg plays amazingly well for his 3rd time out. He must have had some prior racket sports experience. Or he’s from another planet. While Ted and Oleg made us work, James and I won 11-0.

We convinced Stuart to play as the fourth in a game of James and myself versus him and Oleg. Stuart is always hanging playing with the advanced players. This time, it was a much closer game—back and forth. Eventually, Jame and I edged them out and won 13-11.

At one point, Stuart hit me with the ball. “Good thing you had lasagna last night!” he kidded. Stuart is such a crack up. A few points later, I hit Stuart with the ball. “Good thing you had lasagna last night!” I busted up laughing. We poke fun at each other.

Learning Moments

Between the last two games, Stuart demonstrated that I wasn’t keeping my paddle up at the net. “80% of the shots are going to be backhands.” He held is paddle in a backhand position in front of his chest. “Above the net line.” One of the two remaining women on the bench—maybe Janet—chimed in, “He just won 11-0, he can’t be playing too badly!” But Stuart is right. A paddle doesn’t do any good hanging down by your leg!

It still takes me a while to get my game in gear. I was playing my best after I’d been playing for 3 to 3 1/2 hours. I have to figure out how to speed up that “warm up curve”.

I was disappointed with the game against Mike and Grita. I really need to develop a good drop shot and continue working on “slowing down the game”. On the flip side, I was proud of my performance in the last couple of games. Not perfect, but pretty good.

Milestone

I didn’t realize it, but with the 4 hours of play today, I passed 150 hours of court time. How do you like that? 4 hours at one time is a first.

In the final point of a game I hit my first real “power backhand”. I hit it as hard as I could and it flew about 6″ above the net. They got a paddle on it (near the kitchen) but was returned harmlessly into the net. I got some compliments on that one. “Good way to end a game! Nice backhand!” I need to work more on that.

I guess another first is in the last game, I became aware of my own breathing. An accelerated heart rate is normal. Breathing faster is normal. Literally trying to catch my breath was a new experience. Stuart and Oleg had James and me really working!

Compliment of the Day

After loading the last net into the storage bin, Stuart shared, “You played well.” High praise from Stuart!

Tan Lines

Pickleball leads to some interesting tan lines:

My wife said, “It looks like a chicken leg! Send a photo to Charlotte.” So I sent it to my daughter. Her response? “Gross.” You almost always get an honest evaluation from your teenage daughter!

Number of days on a court: 52
Number of total hours: 150.5