Category: Pickleball (Page 314 of 327)

Prelude

At our softball game on Friday night, the other team didn’t have enough men and had to forfeit but we scrimmaged anyway. I caught two deep fly balls in left field (dropping and missing none) and got around reasonably ok. The most problematic ache was the chronic right glute muscle. It’s, quite literally, a pain. Not crippling, but nagging.

Someone posted a good article about etiquette on a pickleball court. Nothing new to me, but a good list to share:   

http://www.coastalpoint.com/content/pickleball-points-15-do-not’s-pickleball_06_22_2017

Sunday, June 25, 2017 (Court Day #38)

First an update on Brommer, this photo was from this past week. They installed the posts for the dividing fence between the two pairs of pickleball courts. More progress!

Next Generation

My son Nicholas was picked up by my wife and brought home from UCLA on the 15th. I asked him a few days ago if he wanted to come play pickleball and he nodded his head. I checked in last night and he said he’d come today. I told him the URL for this blog again—I had shared it with my kids a couple of months ago—and told him to read at least the first few entries and watch the videos. He did.

As we drove—after a late start—to Derby Park, I looked at the gray skies then the thermometer on my car dash: 57°F. Not exactly balmy weather. (Though it’d burn off and climb to 80 in the afternoon.) I told Nicholas, “It’s overcast and on the cold side, it should be a lighter turnout today.”

Yeah, right.

We arrived at 10:15 a.m. and found a crowd waiting for court time! About 40 people for 24 positions. So much for my expectations based on past experience!

What’s odd is that they changed the color coding on the pens for the signup board:
Green = Intermediate
Blue = Int/Adv
Red = Advanced
Where was “beginner” when I needed it? Nicholas got color-coded as intermediate.

While we were waiting outside the fence, I had him volley the ball back and forth with me. I could immediately tell he was going to be just fine. He consistently hit the ball in a controlled manner back each time. Excellent hand-eye coordination. (Hmmmm. I wonder where he got that? Heh. Heh. Heh.)

Our first game was with a woman named Mary who was new (it was her second day on a court) and Marie, a regular. Nicholas had a solid forehand and very good volley skills right off the bat. His backhand, while inconsistent, wasn’t an automatic point for the other team. I eased up a bit on Mary and gave her easy serves, for instance.

Later we played against a couple, Larry and his wife Rosalie who are from Surprise/Bumstead, Arizona—but spend their summers in Santa Cruz. (Duh. As if you want to spend your summer in Arizona!) It wasn’t even close. Nicholas and I made short work of them. We came off the courts but played with them again, this time with Rosalie as my partner. Then we played once more (after waiting) with Larry as my partner. After playing with Nicholas, Rosalie asked, “How long has he been playing again?” I paused. “About 90 minutes.” She was impressed. “If he sticks with it, he’s going to be really good!”

The last game of the day was Grita and myself versus Nicholas and Stuart. Nicholas hit a few forehands into the net. Stuart stopped the game. “Time for a lesson. Pickleball isn’t like tennis. There are no strings. You need to lift and push the ball with your paddle.” Of course, Nicholas has very limited experience with tennis, being a sailor, but advice never hurts!

We wrapped up play at 12:30 p.m. We’d played 6-7 games and Nicholas had done extremely well for his first time out. Yes, he’d stepped into the kitchen on a volley once, but that’s not unexpected. His volleying and general play was very good. He was a bit frustrated with his play at the end. I know. He’s a perfectionist. I wonder where he gets that…

Shoes

A few weeks ago, shoes come up as a discussion on the Facebook Pickleball Forum. Someone posted that Costco was having a special of a pair of Kirkland court shoes for $12.99. I went ahead and bought two pair. If they didn’t work for pickleball, I could still just use them for around the house.
[Ok, I have to share something. I’m typing this on a Mac Mini computer running OS 10.12 Sierra. I has predictive typing apparently. When I typed “around” in the sentence above, it very helpfully inserted “around-the-post” for me! Hahaha! I guess the blog writing is taking its toll on my computer! Sorry, computer, I had to change that back to just “around”!]

Shoes about to come off.

I wore the new shoes on Thursday night in Scotts Valley. They seemed to work well. I’d noticed about a week ago that Jerry Louis wears the same shoes. They couldn’t be all that bad then. So three days ago, I kidded Jerry that I was modeling my game after his . . . starting with his shoes and that I spent four hours online tracking down the type he was wearing until I found them then ordered some! Perhaps he took me seriously as he launched into how he modeled his game after another player himself. (I’m not at the point yet where I can adjust my game to be modeled after anyone!) What was particularly interesting was that he shared that took a pair of $120 shoes and his Costco shoes to a pediatrist and she inspected and flexed both pairs around then pronounced that she liked the cheaper shoes better! Jerry’s been wearing them since! (Someone at Pickleball Forum had been talking smack about the Costco shoes, but I don’t think he had ever used them.)

My only beef with the shoes, having worn them twice now, is that the intentionally loose insole seems to bunch up a tiny bit at my left heel. It feels like my sock is folded over—but it’s not. I may stick some strong double-sided tape in my shoe to lock those insoles down.

That said, my right ankle is complaining less, though that may be nothing but a coincidence. As with many things, time will tell!

Jerry also wears elastic ankle supports of some kind. I briefly asked him about those, but I need to follow up.

Brommer Again

After I returned home, I found a message in my inbox from Karen Long that had gone out to the entire club:

BROMMER POTLUCK CELEBRATION

Please Join
Santa Cruz Pickleball Club
at Brommer Street Park 
Monday, July 3rd
9am-12pm Club Play
12pm-2pm Potluck
to celebrate the opening of the new pickleball courts!  

Please bring a dish to share and your own beverage 
[The BBQ is available for any of you wishing to grill]

*Utensils, luncheon plates, dessert plates, and napkins will be provided

That’s really good news! The construction must be ahead of schedule since they were original saying it’d take until mid-July. Nice. Now, the trick is I’m going to have a bunch of relatives in town on that day. Aside from the usual annual big 4th of July party, we’re going to be celebrating my parent’s 50th Anniversary. (The true date was this past December but it was problematic with various grandchildren in school in different states.) So maybe, maybe not.

My parents’ wedding reception 1966

Number of days on a court: 38
Number of total hours: 108

Wednesday, June 21, 2017 (Off Day)

I’ve figured out that I’m impertinent. I don’t take what I’m told at face value. I want know why. I want to proof that what I’m being told is correct. I should learn to trust, I suppose. Call me a stinker.

Why do I mention that? Because I haven’t been convinced that watching the ball during serving is best. While looking at my target and not the ball, I have never, even once, messed up the paddle contact with the ball. Never.

I posted my question in the Pickleball Forum on Facebook and got a mix of answers:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1340630926008388/permalink/1558959670842178/

I wrote to Mark Renneson of Third Shot Sports and he got back to me saying that it boils down to (paraphrasing) ‘what you are doing will work, but when all the top players are doing it a different way, you might want to consider instead doing it how they do it’. Indubitably good advice, of course. 

Another argument—the most legitimate one in my book—is possibly giving away your serve’s destination to opponents watching your eyes.

Residual from the Roll

It turns out that my elbow was a bit more injured than I thought. I couldn’t see it until I took a picture of the scape and saw the bruise! Oops! No wonder it’s a bit tender when I bump it!

Thursday, June 22, 2017 (Court Day #37)

I got to Scotts Valley’s Skypark courts at 6:30 p.m. sharp and games were already underway. I was able to get into a game pretty much immediately. A far cry from months ago, it stayed light for a quite a bit of time, with sunset at 8:30 p.m.

I spent most of the evening serving while watching the ball and not the target. I can still get the ball in, though it seems that it’s not quite as accurate as me looking at my target. I’ll continue to experiment. Overall, my play seemed subpar. Alas.

The next-to-last game of the day was Kris and me versus Bruce and Marie. We lost 11-3. Well, that was miserable. We had an immediate rematch and lost 11-5. Boy. There was no doubt who was the better team on this evening! Bruce has developed a very fast and low serve, generally to the backhand. It’s effective.

We wrapped up play at 9:15 p.m. I ended up talking in the parking lot with Bruce and his wife Janet for about 15 minutes. Janet suggested that when Scott Moore comes back for a workshop that I take it. (She knew I was out of town for the recent one.) She was able to take it and felt it was well worth it. When I said I really want to drill more, she said that she and Bruce have a net and live near me. We could always arrange a drill session.

The Looming Cloud

To be honest, I’m very frustrated with my play. In that, Janet and I are in the same place. We’re better than where we were, but aren’t improving fast enough. I want to be better. I’ve said it a bunch of times. I need to drill. Drill.

Softball

My team’s second game, and the first I can attend, is tomorrow night. Will I be sore? Will pickleball affect my ability to run the bases and run in left field? We’ll know soon.

Number of days on a court: 37
Number of total hours: 106

Tuesday, June 20, 2017 (Court Day #36)

Today was the first day of Jerry Louis’ pickleball class offered through the City of Santa Cruz. Class began at 8:30 a.m. In spite of me trying to be early, I got there about 2 minutes late. My classmates (Derby regulars) were there doing dinking warmups. There were 8 of us: John P., Eric, his friend Ted, Me, Maree, Cathy, Kim and a woman I probably have met but don’t really know. It was evenly split between men and women.

I guess I’ll share now what Eric very thoughtfully emailed me one week ago the evening after the first class:

Hi Andrew, 

Self-Evaluation

Back on Sunday, June 4, Jerry handed us a folder. In the folder were a number of articles to read as well as a photocopied form Skill Assessment for 3.5 Players (I some sleuthing using Google and found the original PDF online.) It was interesting. Each question is answered on a scale of 0 (crappy) to 3 (solid). I found some questions hard to answer, such as “Uses a forehand and backhand lob when appropriate”—I think so, but sometimes they are just poorly executed and get slammed back. I tried to be honest on the form and ended up with a mix of 2s (need work) and 3s with a couple of 1s. (My third shot drops are not consistent enough at this point, for instance.) Anyway, I handed the form to Jerry when I arrived and he provided another handout to read.

Warmups

Jerry talked about warming up and that tournament will only give you 2-5 minutes. We did some dinking and some diagonal serves to our own partners, asking the other team if we could switch so we could serve to the other service court. He mentioned not showing anything fancy and giving anything away in warmups.

Heading for a Fall

During a break, John and I played a few points of a singles game just to mess around. The problem is, I don’t have much of a “medium intensity” gear. John sent a shot off to the left and I went after it—hard. But I couldn’t quite get to it and lost my balance at the effort. Instinctively, I turned the fall into a roll. My cap and sunglasses (on my cap at the time) were strewn about. No blood, but I have a sore 2″-long light scrape on my forearm, and a sore left palm. I was back on my feet immediately and assured my classmates that I was fine.

Drills

Jerry had us doing a variety of different drills. Some of the best ones—eye opening—was the drill of serving into the last 4 feet of the court and returning into the last 4 feet of the court. I was quite surprised how many of my serves that I thought were landing deep were, in fact, falling short! Good to know!

I have to admit, I do have a really good cross-court backhand dink. Jerry even stopped to tell Ted during a dinking drill game, “You probably want to dink to his forehand, he [Andrew] is pushing you out of position.” A positive reinforcement!

Wake Up Call

I thought Eric and I were doing pretty well today . . . beating John and Ted fairly easily . . . until we played Kim and Cathy to 5 and got our butts kicked 5-1. (Or maybe my butt kicked; Eric said, “Boy, they sure were picking on YOU!”)

Lunch

Eric, Ted and I headed to the standard Mexican restaurant after class. Ted ordered a burger. Eric and I went for more traditional fare. I mentioned an upcoming tournament to Eric, the Golden State Games held up in the Bay Area in mid-August. Eric didn’t bite. He has more sense than I do. I later emailed John about it to see if he was interested in joining me in trying out 3.0, but he was reserved: “My first tournament experience told me that I should be much better before I play my second tournament. Also note that it’s pretty hot in Concord in August.” Yeah. After the game with Kim, I’ll probably need more than two months to make a more respectable showing at a tournament.

Number of days on a court: 36
Number of total hours: 103.5