Category: Pickleball (Page 65 of 323)

Sunday, January 12, 2025 (Court Day #758)

It was a beautiful day and warm for January. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and it was 55°F as I left my house a few minutes after 9 a.m.

I’ve been teaching classes for Rec.us for over a year, so it has become a little bit routine. However, to properly run drills, I need balanced pairs and to have actual games, I need full courts—meaning all eight students that are registered have to show up. Last weekend, the first week of classes, in my Advanced Beginner class, a couple who was signed up didn’t come. I emailed them a few days ago and got no response, so I followed that up with a text yesterday and now, over 12 hours later, I still have not heard anything from them. I don’t know if they’re coming or they’re not coming. It makes it difficult for me to arrange substitute students… teaching adventures!

Brommer Park

I arrived at Brommer about 9:15 a.m. to plenty of parking.

My first game was paired with Gary against Dave Ryan and Evan. Not a big surprise that we lost but at least we managed to make a little bit of a game of it. I was playing very, very well.

Next up, Sam and I won 12-10 versus Dave Ryan and Evan. That was a challenging and great game. 

Dave Cox

Dave Cox arrived and called across the divider that one of his arranged players wasn’t going to make it and I was welcome to join his group as a fourth. I was in the middle of a game, but I told him, “Ok.” A bit later, Gary was playing with them and I eventually replaced Gary in their group of four on a reserved court.

I played a game with a guy named Ken versus tall, lefty Greg and Nick. Ken missed a lot of shots—he was probably warming up. We lost.

Monterey Guys

After that game, I was ready for a bigger challenge. And I joined Dave Cox and his two friends, Chuck and Tony from the Monterey area.

In our first game together, Tony and I won 11-1 versus Chuck and Dave. I was making very few errors and dominating.

We swapped sides and played a rematch, winning again 11-7.

After one game with Chuck as my partner, he shared a comment about our opponents were hitting everything to him and avoiding me.

I played two games with Dave against Tony and Chuck. I noticed that they were targeting Dave. Good news, we won both games regardless—not that Dave is a weak player, he’s not.

I left Brommer Park a few minutes after 12 noon. Home, then off to teaching.

I was happy with my play today. I played well. Not perfectly, but above average for me.

NFL Pickleball

The NFL Wildcard games were today. Kyle Brandt, a host on the NFL’s Good Morning Football, had a pickleball-themed skit during a playoffs broadcast to talk about the Denver Broncos. (The Broncos went on to lose badly to the Buffalo Bills.) This was no mere few-second mention. This was a good 2+ minutes on national television. If you watch, notice the brief appearance of his opponents. You can even tell by the way that they move that they are good players—even if they are obviously taking it really, really easy on Kyle and his partner.

Fun stuff! I was a bit puzzled when he stated,”Pickleball is the air fryer of sports.” But air fryers seem to be a trendy appliance. Even my wife bought one for our kitchen about a year ago!

Podcast

So, I listened to that Jill Braverman podcast that has stirred up controversy in the past few weeks. What was shocking to me to learn is that the UPA (PPA/MLP) pays ESPN to get their matches broadcast on the ESPN network. This blew my mind. Generally, networks pay for sports content, but in this case, it’s the reverse! It sounds like the UPA are trying to prime the pump—that is, if ESPN sees a boatload of people watching those pickleball matches, then EPSN might pay for broadcast rights in the future. The UPA is gambling on the growing popularity of pickleball. It occurred to me, this may be why they bumped Genie Bouchard into the round of 16 in her first pro tournament with very little pickleball experience… the UPA was hoping that she would draw eyeballs to the broadcast. (Of course, you may recall, the Genie got more or less destroyed in her first pro pickleball outing, though she’s doing much better lately.)

They were saying on this podcast that it is going to cost about $100,000 per paddle company to their paddles certified for use in the PPA and the MLP matches. It’s a $50,000 base fee in exchange for the publicity they receive from the pro events, plus a large certification fee per paddle, which would typically total about $100,000 per company. Obviously, we will not be seeing new or small paddle companies on the UPA circuit.

Cam & Mal on Social Media

There is a young couple, Cam and Mal, who have 353,0000 followers on Instagram. Mal, the wife, is 8-months pregnant but they went out to play pickleball anyway because Mal “misses it”. Hey, nearly 1/3 of a million viewers, we’ll take the exposure!
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEyhU1Ep9gj/

Genie Buchard Glasses

Pro Player Genie Bouchard, who recently got smacked in the eye during practice which resulted in a scratched cornea, appeared at a tournament last week wearing eye protection. Smart.

I will say I was a bit curious about her eyewear. Well, as luck would have it, an ad appeared in my social media feed for, wait for it… Kitchen Blockers. These are unique. What makes the difference? No lenses. They run about $70, so not as cheap as popping lenses out of cheap sunglasses, but better protection.

Number of days on a court: 758
Number of total hours: 3,062
Number of paid coaching hours: 105.5

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

Thursday, January 9, 2025 (Court Day #757)

I left work early to copy a special key before the locksmith shop in Scotts Valley closed, then I popped right over to Skypark around 5:30 p.m.

There was a crowd there tonight, but the times waiting for games weren’t too bad.

My first game was with Jax against Sam and Spencer. I lost with Jax, but it was close.

We mixed things up and I played with Spencer and we won.

Next, I played with Sam against Spencer and Jax. Sam and I won 11-0. (They had an off game!)

There were a couple of highlight-worthy rallies in two different games with Spencer, Jax, and Sam that I really wish were recorded. They were kind of amazing. After one, Spencer told me I had really good hands. 

Natural Debris

There were a bunch of leaves on the courts. In one game on the night, my right foot slipped out from under me. I didn’t fall, but it caused short term discomfort in my back.

Youngsters

I signed up with Alex and a name I couldn’t read. Alex is a good player—yeah, except this was a different Alex! I played with Daniel Borlean against two 8th graders from Scotts Valley Middle School! I didn’t know that they were 8th graders until we got onto the court and saw how young our opponents were. One was Aydan and his friend was Alex. They wanted to play together. Daniel and I beat them 11-0. I will admit that they did have a handful of shots that were far better than I was expecting. I could see them becoming very good with time and practice. Afterward, Aydan muttered to Alex, “We were outclassed.” Yeah. Just a bit. For now. Watch out in a couple of years!

Yeah… no.

Daniel and I played against a man named Sonny who lives at the summit (Santa Cruz Mountains), but he said that he often plays at Mitchell Park in Palo Alto.

Sonny and David played against Daniel and myself and the first game was very close, though we lost.

And… Down.

It felt really good about my play tonight and until the last two games.

Daniel and I played again and this time was a little bit more lopsided in favor of Sonny and David.

We mixed it up and I played with Sonny against Daniel and David. This was a disaster. We got clobbered. The final score was something like 11–5 and that was closer than the game actually felt. David was on fire.

Somewhere in all of that, David hit a drive that hit a knuckle on my paddle hand. Ouch. It bruised some and was sore on my way home.

We finished that last game at 8: 24 p.m. I didn’t hang around long, just said my goodbyes, and headed home.

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Friday, January 10, 2025 (No Play)

Pickleball has made it to all seven continents. Well, kind of. There was no net or court, but a pickleball was knocked around in Antartica for the first time ever. Pilot Lt. Col. Jared Wood of the U.S. Air Force Reserves was down there in October last year and posted a video about it at the time, but the news is only now making the rounds. Wood lives in Seattle, so he’s used to cold nasty winter weather!

The video:

The later resulting article:
https://www.dupr.com/post/pickleball-in-antarctica-how-the-sport-is-taking-flight-with-lt-colonel-jared-wood

And here’s a brief part of an interview with Col. Wood:
https://www.instagram.com/duprpb/reel/DExSZ86tTYj

Tennis Pro Bummer

In this article from late December, “bad boy” of pro tennis, Nick Kyrgios said he’d be partnering for pickleball with Jack Sock at the PPA Australia Open this month:
https://www.tennis.com/baseline/articles/nick-kyrgios-make-pro-pickleball-debut-2025-jack-sock-australian-open-nothing-major

But that won’t happen after all. Kyrgios was picked to play for Australia in the Davis Cup which is happening the same weekend as the PPA event. Alas.

Pickleball Female Pro Pay

A few weeks ago the PPA/MLP people issued a press release about how the top 60 female pro pickleball players are making more on average than female pro basketball or female pro soccer players.

Here’s an article I found about it:
https://nypost.com/2024/12/20/business/professional-female-pickleball-stars-earn-more-than-wnba-nwsl-athletes

Of course, this is “average” salary, not minimum or median value.

Hypothetically, let’s say the top female player is making a $2,000,000 salary—Anna Leigh Waters doesn’t make that in salary, maybe with endorsements, but not salary—and a #2 player is making $100K/year, then the remaining top 10 make $50K/year. Take a look at this chart I threw together in Excel:

As you can see, this averages out at $250,000 salary for the top 10 players, but the vast majority are making only $50,000/year. We just want to be careful what we take away from press releases. It’s probably not as bad as my hypothetical chart, but it may not be too far off. We don’t know. They didn’t give us a median and we do know there is disparity in performance and pay of the players.

Then the other question is, is this sustainable? The WNBA pays their players not a lot. Caitlin Clark, the rookie phenom—off her record-setting college career—makes about $70,000 as a pro basketball player. The highest paid WNBA player makes about $250,000/year. The WNBA can pay as much as that because it is subsidized by the NBA to the tune of $15,000,000 per year. According to this article, the WNBA has lost money every year since its first season in 1997:
https://www.sportspro.com/news/wnba-losses-2024-media-rights-deal-cathy-engelbert-adam-silver-caitlin-clark-nba/

The PPA and MLP paying their pro players $30,000,000 annually. Being that the UPA (PPA and MLP parent) is borrowing $10,000,000 this first quarter of 2025 (“bridge loan”), it does make one pause and wonder. Will it succeed? The APP is quietly being successful, so you’d think that the UPA should be able to pull it off, but the numbers in and number out have to be in balance.

Number of days on a court: 757
Number of total hours: 3,059.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 102.5

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

Tuesday, January 7, 2025 (Court Day #756)

Today was a warm day for January—hovering in the mid 60s—and it was still 61°F by the time I got to Scotts Valley. My car was telling me that I only had 3 miles of gas left so a little choice for the stop and fill up. When I got out of my car at the gas station, it was very windy. I had fully expected tonight to be a challenge on the courts, but the windscreens did their job and it wasn’t bad at all.

Skypark

The lot was full, but I spotted a woman walking to her car so I put my car in reverse and left her room to vacate the spot. I felt myself fortunate in my timing.

Free Cap

As I was about to play in my first game, Anthony’s young female friend Anna was offering two Joola caps for free. She said that they were brand new. She had a light gray one and a light blue one. I snatched up the gray one. Thanks, Anna!

Games

My first game was with Alex against Anthony and Anna. Alex and I won 11-1 against them in the first game. I was playing well.

The next game was Rachel and myself against David and his girlfriend Minori. While I wasn’t perfect, I was more perfect than Rachael. It was a close game, but we lost.

A nice surprise, Caitlin, the recently graduated UCSC student, was there tonight and said “hi” over the center divider while we were both in separate games. She later said waiting for her graduate school applications to come back.

Where a series of games with the two Aarons—Aaron Hicks and tall lefty Aaron Bartley against Matt Babb and myself. We played two very close games of which Matt and I won both.

We switched our partners in this time Aaron H. played with Matt and I played with Aaron B. We won 11-5.

We played another game, and this time while Aaron B. and I took a big lead, Aaron H. and Matt went on a run and started closing the gap. That’s when the lights clicked off at 8:30 p.m.

And?

Tonight felt like redemption. The last three outings have felt subpar but tonight I felt like I was playing well. Sure, I made some mistakes, but overall I played quite well.

Warm

Amazingly, when I got home, it was 63°F. (Scotts Valley tends to be more extremes when it come to temperatures.) Sheesh. It’s January 7 at 8:45 p.m. and it still about 60°. Yes, it was a very nice day.

USAP

When I renewed my membership for USA Pickleball over the summer last year, they were redoing their website and things were a bit rough. I didn’t get the newly-implemented membership discount for USAP Ambassadors and ordering one of the offered swag packages proved to be difficult.

A few weeks ago, I reached out to the USAP and they refunded the missing discount amount and talked me through ordering swag.

A package was waiting for me on our dining room table when I got home from Skypark tonight. Cap, luggage tag, socks. I was mainly after the cap. As if I need more caps! And I probably won’t wear the socks. Maybe I’ll gift them to my brother.

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Wednesday, January 8, 2025 (No Play)

A first, my brother John called me about 5 p.m. and asked if I wanted to play or drill. We’d been at my parents for a family party on Monday and I’d mentioned that we could get together and drill. I had a meeting tonight, so I couldn’t, but this was something new! My brother is getting serious about pickleball!

Number of days on a court: 756
Number of total hours: 3,056.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 102.5

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