Category: Pickleball (Page 312 of 327)

Game Analysis

A few things to note about this video first. Eric (dark) and I (light) are on the left. John P. and Dave A. (red) are on the right. This is not the best game for Eric. Missing three shots to start the game is not typical. The wind is significant and affected the ball on occasion.

Things to watch for:

At 1:58, I hit the fourth shot as a drive directly at John. This is a mistake. I should have dropped it. As it is, John smacked it back out near my left shoulder and I couldn’t get my paddle in position in time. 2-0.

At 2:17, Eric has made the same mistake twice, that is, not dinking the ball. John smacks it back easily between us. 3-0.

At 2:40, I make a nice drop from the sideline and got into position at the kitchen line.

You can hear the wind gusting at 3:25.

At 3:45, Eric hits the ball too high and John smacks it between us for the third time. 3-0.

At 4:10, John hit it too high and I turn the tables, smacking it between John and Dave. John, being polite, says, “My bad.” (To Dave.) Then to me, “Nice shot.”

At 4:52, I hit a third shot drop into the net. Was it the wind’s fault as Eric gentlemanly suggests? I doubt it. I think I just hit a crappy drop shot!

At 5:02, Eric suggests we go to more of a “drive game” because of the wind. I agree, being down 3-0, we should try something different. It works some, we win the next point.

6:06 starts a good rally which ends when John pops up a drive I make at the net followed by me slamming the ball for a winner. What’s funny about this point is that I hit the return fairly hard but it only makes it partway back to the baseline! Wind in action!

By 6:55, we’re tied up at 3-3. Of the three points we scored, two were from obvious errors each by Dave and John, both hitting one in to the net. Those weren’t quite as much from our new strategy as just unforced errors.

7:40, Eric pops up another one that John slams between us. (Hmmm. Deja vu.)

If you want to see something funny, watch me courteously hit the ball over the net to the server so he can serve. Except the ball lands in the net! Wind!

My most miserable and embarrassing shot of the game comes at 8:58 when I return Dave’s easy serve into the net. Duh.

Hey! “5-4-1.” We’re leading! Then 6-4.

At 9:23, I do a rotten lob that falls far short in the wind and John hits it back at Eric’s feet.

John is a funny guy. At 9:42, he holds up his paddle to prevent the serve for a while. Catching his breath! Ha ha!

10:02. Yeah, that’s the time I smack the ball into the net. Rats.

At 10:36, Eric stretches and makes a great hit back at Dave’s feet for a winner.

At 10:54, you can see where the “drive every shot” strategy is failing. I hit the ball near John’s head and he . . . smacks it between Eric and me for a winner.

11:05, I serve. 7-4-2. We win the point when John hits it just right of the sideline. A discussion ensues when I forget that I served and toss the ball to Eric to serve. But we got it right. 8-4-2.

At 12:27, John make a fantastic lob—in the wind, no less—over my head for a winner. 5-8-1.

At 12:46, the “drive strategy” fails again. I hit it directly to John and I didn’t get my paddle reset fast enough to properly return his hit. Point for them. 6-8-1.

13:07. Another embarrassing return. I attempt a high deep return but it sails left of the court by a wide margin. Ugh. 7-8-1.

13:22. Another “drive strategy” failure. John slams the ball between us. Again. 8-8-1.

At 13:55, I just make a completely boneheaded shot. The idea is correct, angled off the court, but the execution is bad. 9-8-1.

Four points in a row on bad decisions by me. I should have abandoned the “drive strategy” a long time previous.

14:14 starts a nice rally with me sticking with the soft game once it had already started—John made a nice third shot drop. Patience. Eric and I won that one when Dave hit it into the net.

14:48. My drop shot drops. Yeah. Into the net. Grrrrr. 10-8-1.

16:03. I attempt to lob between John and Dave. John jumps up and slams the ball at Eric’s left toe. Game. 11-8-1. Comeback. Drat.

Another Game

Here’s partial game that took place immediately before the above game. My performance is better in this one. I lamely hit a ball into the net as I approach it, I have a serve that blows a bit long (the wind is at my back for the entire game), and I have two high returns that sail long. I have a couple drops that aren’t quite low enough, though those don’t end the point. I do have a great cross-court fifth shot drop (at 8:11) from the baseline into the first half of the kitchen—if only I could do that all the time! Eric and I won 11-5. (And John and Dave are far stronger players than this video shows.)

Now for Something Completely Different

There was a contest on the Facebook pickleball group with the Aspen Kern (who runs it) offering a prize for the best favorite movies. Most answers included real movies. Bah. No fun in that. I offered my own list:

My favorites:

Gone With the Paddle
The Wizard of Dinks
The Kitchenline Redemption
To Kill a Poacher
Citizen Pickle
It’s a Pickleball Life
One Flew over the Pickleball Net
Poach Fiction
Been-Hurt
Dr. Pickleball or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Lob
2017: A Court Odyssey
Kitchen Driver
A.P. – The Around the Post
A Courtline Named Kitchen
It Happened One Game
The Adventures of Robbin’ Poacher
All Quiet on the Western Service Court
Mr. Smith goes to Nationals
Raging Banger
Drop Runner
Returner without a Serve
A Smash is Born
Easy Dinker
Who’s Afraid of Lucy Kovalova?
The Treasure of the Backhand Volley

Of course, I didn’t win. I never win any of those Facebook contests. Aspen uses tea leaves or dice to figure out the winners.

Number of days on a court: 43 (still)
Number of total hours: 123.5 (still)

Tuesday, July 11, 2017 (Court Day #43)

Today, we had a our make-up class from Jerry Louis. I arrived at Derby Park promptly at 8:30 a.m. to find John P., Eric, Dave A. and Jerry all warming up with dinking.

John P., instructor Jerry Louis, Eric, and Dave Allenbaugh (left to right)

We practiced deep serves, then deep serves with deep returns, then deep serves with deep returns followed by approaching the net wisely and the use of the 3rd shot drop.

Jerry then moved into a dinking drill. Since we weren’t allowed to do any drives, it was an exercise in focus and patience. (Yes, I did hit it into the net a few times!)

Next we did stacking. This was covered in the last class that I went to, so it wasn’t new, but I have to admit, it’s surprisingly easy to get messed up! John and I were partnered as a team with him on the left and me on the right. As it was, we managed to serve to the same side twice. What was comical was that Eric and Dave were lined up with the wrong person receiving but that was moot since once I served from the wrong position, the point was over.

Oh, one great moment. Eric was lined up to return in his right service court opposite my serving position serving right to left. Dave was stacking and was lined up outside the court at the net with his feet almost touching the sideline. Jerry stopped them and started explaining why Dave didn’t want to be there. I knew why since he’d explained it last time. The problem is sometimes the returner has to run up and hit a short serve at that corner and his partner would be in the way (where Dave was standing). Without being prompted, to illustrate the point, I dropped my serve precisely in the corner between where Jerry was explaining and Dave was standing—about 10″ in diagonally from the corner. Jerry chuckled, “That was PERFECT! That’s exactly why. Of course, that is a LOW PERCENTAGE SERVE…” I got the message. Yes, it’s a high risk serve. But it sure felt good! Ha ha ha!

We wrapped up the session at 10:45 a.m. and helped Jerry take his net and ball buckets to his car. Being that it was still pretty early, us four pupils opted to head to the new courts at Brommer to play some real games.

First Visit to Brommer

Boy. The Brommer courts are nice! It would be easy to get spoiled with those courts! There are four permanent courts as you walk in and four additional pickleball courts that are striped but would require portable nets since they share space with a permanent tennis court.

I followed Eric from Derby to Brommer and Dave arrived a few minutes later just after 11 a.m. Just as we were getting worried that John P. might have gone to Willowbrook or somewhere, he arrived in his white minivan.

We rotated players, so we were all partnered with each other at some stage during the session. There were cool breezes, which felt great in the warm sun, but wreaked havoc on lobs and arcing serves or returns.

We finished our last game at 12:45 p.m. I said my goodbyes, hopped in the car and got almost 10 minutes away before I realized I’d left my camera hooked to the fence. *grumble* It was still there when I got back to the park. There were a couple of fellas shooting hoops with a basketball on the courts. (It’s a very multipurpose facility!)

I’ll try to get some video posted.

I have to say, third shot drops are very, very effective when done correctly. I recall one in particular that I hit toward John. I noticed quite clearly that as the ball dropped over, he rotated his paddle from “drive it back” position to “dink it up and back over” position. I’m making progress on using those. I still need to use them more and get better at executing them, but progress! Am I taking my game to the next level? John did offer a compliment out of the blue, “Andrew, you’ve come a long way.”

I’m conducting an interview tomorrow morning at work, so no pickleball for me then. And Thursday night is busy. Maybe Friday morning—it’ll be my birthday after all!

Number of days on a court: 43
Number of total hours: 123.5

Sunday, July 9, 2017 (Court Day #42)

Playing softball on Friday night, I aggravated my right glute muscle. Sore. And my right knee hurts a bit. But my hips are better, so that’s good. (Oh, our team lost for the first time, we’re 3-1 now. Since I was alternating batting with my younger brother in the lineup, I was up only twice. But I got a single and a double, so I’ll take that!) My quads are still a little sore from sprinting while base running, but nothing to write home about.

Speaking of home, I drove over to John P.’s house last night to pick up his extra paddle for my neighbor Jill who’s going to be taking a pickleball class—maybe this week. I walked it over to her husband Erick about 9:30 last night and he showed me the wood paddle she had bought at Play It Again Sports. I demonstrated with him the weight difference. “Oh, yeah.” She’ll be much happier with John’s.

The plaque at the park honoring
Sgt. Charles Derby of the Santa Cruz Police.

I arrived at Derby Park at 9:10 a.m. with temperatures about 60 degrees but it’d climb later into the 70s. There was one game already underway. Mike arrived about a minute before me and we warmed up together. Eric appeared a few minutes later. Soon we had a game going. It took a bit longer for things to pick up, but eventually we had the waiting dry-erase board out, but it wasn’t long before it was unnecessary.

Take aways from today…

I still have to be careful about rushing the net on my shots that are able to be driven back. Mike sternly reminded me of that in a game where we played as partners. (Though we did win, he couldn’t complain too much.) After one exchange, Mike chuckled, “You did everything wrong, but you still managed to win the point.” Later, when playing against him and Maree, I overheard him telling Maree [paraphrasing], “He [me] has a rocket forehand.” Nice to hear. Sometimes you get compliments, sometimes not so much!

And holy crap. I’ve ready about people losing their serves. I must have have missed at least 10 serves in today’s 3 hours. It was miserable. Most, if not all, were from being too deep. I just need to refocus. Jerry’s class made point of serving deep, but I’m overdoing it.

The third shot drop. In the last game, played with Mark, Kirsten, Eric and myself, I made  number of successful third shot drops. It can be done. (Eric and I lost, but not by much. I made my share of mistakes—ok, and I did play the first four serves left handed—and a few of Eric’s often trustworthy third shot drops ended up in the net.)

Neither here nor there, but fun—I played a game with Marianne and a man and a woman I’d seen before, but aren’t really regulars. During the game, Marianne said, “You jumped up and hit that!” “Yeah.” “You hit it out of the air.” “Yeah.” It’s a bit of a novelty for some older folks!

I left at 12:12, with Mark, Erick, Maree and fourth starting a game that they had planned earlier. I would have played longer but you need other players!

While my serves took a dive and I wasn’t perfect, I felt pretty good overall about my play today. Some definite positives.

Even a few hours after leaving the courts, I’m ready to get out and play again. Alas. But I’ll be at Jerry Louis’ class on Tuesday for my final installment of that.

Number of days on a court: 42
Number of total hours: 119.5