Category: Pickleball (Page 96 of 324)

Tuesday, June 4, 2024 (Court Day #669)

At 6:58 p.m., I was on the path walking to courts. It’s the warmest evening that I remember. My brother texted a photo earlier of his thermometer reading 94°F. He lives in Scotts Valley about ten blocks from the Skypark Courts.

The dry erase board was out when I arrived, but it wasn’t being used and it didn’t get used tonight at all.

Missing Women

It was a bit unusual tonight in that there were almost no women there. I was told there was a women’s league going on at Brommer Park tonight. I saw only one or two women. Spencer’s mixed partner Mo showed up later, but it was a whole lot of just guys.

Weather

It was very warm and unusually muggy. It made for a very sweaty and sticky evening. At one point, I had to get out a towel and wipe off my forehead. If I have ever had to do that before at Skypark in the evening in the years that I’ve been playing there, it was just once.

Good Games

Tonight was pretty much all good games. The really fun one was me partnered with Ethan against Marquis (“Marcus”) and David. They were standing there looking for a fourth. I wasn’t feeling super confident and said, “I don’t know . . . I could be the goat in this game.” (I didn’t mean Greatest Of All Time, I was thinking more “sheep and goats” . . . goats are the undesired!) But Ethan encouraged me and said, “You can play with me.”

And this is not any of the regular David, this David is a little bit taller and older David, who remembered me although I didn’t remember him. David asked if I was the Andrew who was having the arm problem. I told him, yes, shoulder, but then I added after the next rally, I had had really bad tennis elbow. In any case, he remembered me. I only had a very vague fuzzy recollection of him after our conversation. It’s been many months, no question. Maybe even pre-pandemic—that’d be four years in the past!

Anyway, that game was a lot of fun. Sure, I had a handful of bad shots, but on the flip side, I also made some really good shots as well. Ethan was a machine, as you would expect. He complimented me mid-game on my resets. I remember one rally where I was rock solid on my dinks. There was one shot that I popped up a volley while at the kitchen, Ethan said I probably should have let that one bounce. Yes, volleys are harder to control than shots off the bounce. I’ve been trying harder to try and take most shots out of the air while at the kitchen. It’s getting all the decisions perfect—“volley or bounce?”—that is hard.

Dropped

Also, as I was walking on the path back to the remote parking lot, I got a call from David L.—of David and Minori—saying that I had left my wallet at the court. Unfortunately, I have the habit of being a bit lazy and not always completely closing the zipper on my backpack. It’s more efficient, but a bad habit. My phone fell out once about a year ago, and this time it was my wallet. Someone also reached out to Paul Winn to get my number, but David already had it. I walked back, hung out with big Mike Diaz and Aaron (OG, not the big linebacker-size lefty Aaron) and chatted. At 10:15 p.m., I called it a night and left them to finish their beers.

Ugh

As I stepped out of the car at home, I was sore and stiff. Boy.

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Wednesday, June 5, 2024 (No Play)

The big news of the week is the continuing saga of the Joola (“you-la”) Gen 3 paddles being delisted/unapproved by USA Pickleball.

The story goes that the wrong paddles were submitted by Joola for approval. USA Pickleball approved the paddles—using their third-party testing service—then a different paddle was shipped out by Joola to the masses with the approval label on them. These paddles sent to consumers were tested and failed. Originally, it was chalked up to a clerical error on the part of Joola . . . but it came out today that the second set of paddles failed too! Uh, oh. Big problem. Now there are thousands of paddles “in the wild” that are not legal to use in tournaments. I will point out that this is NOT the fault of USA Pickleball. Inconsistency in manufacturing is a problem with the maker.

Health

I should have iced my knee last night. Also, my back is tight.

New Courts

So Karen Haselden, another local certified pickleball coach, has five beautiful new courts on her and her husband’s property in Scotts Valley. She’s calling it “Quail Valley Pickleball.” They even have an LLC for it—probably a good idea, you never know if someone is going to sue you when they are a klutz and hurt themselves! Dave Cox graciously reached out about joining him and having me play there on Friday night, but it’s $15. I’m not on generous retired firefighter’s pension, so I’m going to play for free on Skypark on Thursday night instead. I’ll probably go to Karen’s place at least once just to see what’s up.

More on Joola

So also today, later, Joola issued a statement basically saying they are unhappy with the USAP decision and say “we are confident the current Gen paddles are materially and structurally the same as those approved by USAP in September 2023”. They go on with:
“We plan to dispute USAP’s decision to remove Gen3 paddles from the list, and the process employed to do so, in forthcoming legal proceedings.”

So, it sounds like they plan to sue USA Pickleball. Such a headache. Someone said online that something similar happened with Joola a few years ago when one of their paddles failed a “field test”. Perhaps they are just pushing the envelope so much that the variance in manufacturing can tip the scale and a paddle can fail. There’s risk of pushing too much, of course.

Mindset at the Net

Here’s a good reminder that I tell my students. Expect the speed-up. Prepare mentally and physically for it. And If you don’t get it, you have time to adjust to a slower shot.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7z9YaNgRTw/

Number of days on a court: 669
Number of total hours: 2,845.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 37.5

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

Thursday, May 30, 2024 (Court Day #668)

I had volunteered weeks ago to assist with the “advanced” training session for SCPC members. Shawnte would be the lead instructor. Today was the day that it finally rolled around. And it was a good day for it—sunny and pleasant. As it turned out, this was an “intermediate-advanced” session.

I changed at work then arrived at Derby Park at 3:35 p.m. When I pushed myself out of the car with my right leg, my knee complained. It has been bothering me a bit more than the last week, but that push particularly hurt.

When I walked in the gate, there were a couple young women hitting a ball back and forth on a court. Nearby, a man was lying down on the aluminum bench, his face obscured by a broad-brimmed hat.
“John?”
Yes, it was John Pacholski—my one-time tournament partner and instrumental in me trying pickleball for the first time about 7 1/2 years ago. Puzzled, I told him, “I was expecting to see Shawnte here.”
”Why?”
”Well, it starts at 4, right?”
”4:30.”
”Ahhh…..”

I don’t know why I had 4 p.m. in my head, though that was probably my planned arrival time, not the clinic start time. Obviously, I should have double-checked the time during the intervening weeks!

A Game

Since we were very early, John suggested we play skinny singles. Eric Schmidt and John had played a ton of skinny singles during the pandemic. Playing sounded good to me. We did a combination of cross-court (even score) and straight ahead (odd score). Soon, I was up 4-1. I went on to win 11-1. We finished that game at 4 p.m. Between the skinny singles game and warming up a couple of players shortly after, I figure I got in about half an hour of court/play time.

Clinic

So, the 90-minute training session was scheduled to start at 4:30 p.m. Shawnte gave an extra 10 minutes to allow for people running late. Barbara Gerry said there were 17 registered, but when we started, we only had 15.

Before we started, Shawnte gave the four assistants—of which I was one—a very quick overview of what he had planned: warm-up, topspin dinks, ATPs, and stacking. The assistants would be me, Dan Bliss, John Pacholski, and Larry Yien.

Introductions

After we gave plenty of time for students to arrive, Shawnte started introductions, introducing himself, then he gave time for me, Dan, John, and Larry to introduce ourselves. We didn’t take the time for 15 student introductions, and I knew almost all of the students already . . . though there were one or two that I didn’t know.

Warm Up & Sorting

Shawnte asked every student go to a random court which he numbered 1 though 4. He looked around and immediately changed the court numbers so the stronger players would be on courts numbered 1 and 2. Each court had two simultaneous games of skinny singles which was played for about five minutes. After five minutes, the winner would move up half a court and the loser moved down half a court. We did this about four times to sort players so they would be of similar skill level on a given court.

A 16th student, a woman I didn’t know, showed up 15-20 minutes late. Larry then could assume his role as an assistant instead of acting as a student to fill a court.

I ended up instructing on the #1 court with the strongest players. John P. had the next court. Dan covered court #3, and Larry covered court #4.

Drilling Dinks

The first skill activity, we drilled topspin crosscourt dinks. One diagonal pair worked on forehands while the other pair worked on backhands. Then they switched.

Long Time No See

Midway through the session, Tristan showed up with three buddies to play. They settled in on one of the two courts we weren’t using for the clinic. I hadn’t seen Tristan in a long time. He looks like a full adult! I asked him, “What are you now 18? 19?“ He smiled and replied, “20!”

ATPs

Shawnte came to me partway through the session and wanted my opinion if we should cover ATP or stacking, since we didn’t have time for both. I told him ATPs and that’s what we did.

We ran an ATP drill. The ATP drill required the full court. There is the feeder who is trying to hit the ball wide enough for the diagonally opposite player to attempt an ATP, to the defender who would hope to return it to the fourth player. We rotated through backhand ATPs first giving each player a chance to do it, and then we switched and had the players do forehand ATP attempts.

Validation

There was one nice moment, where there was an ATP, an ATP return, then the shot by Eugene, who is properly position and covering the middle and hit a winner. Shawnte complemented Eugene on the shot and Eugene told Shawnte, “Andrew taught me that!“ Validation and success for a student! 

When time ran out, Barbara Gerry gathered everyone for a group photo.

Post-Clinic Games

After the session broke up at 6 p.m., some of us wanted to stick around and play some games. (John P. was funny. He smiled and shared, “I’m going to go lick my wounds from skinny singles!”)

Jax and I played a couple of close games against Paulie and Larry.

Then Julianne and I played against Jax and Paulie. I believe we won 11-9 after being down 8-3. But maybe that was a different combination of players. (It’s been a long day!)

I played a game with Misa against Paulie and a fellow named Adam whom I may have seen around before but I don’t really know. It was a very close game. I think we end up winning 14-12. It kept going back-and-forth.

I was missing an unusual number of serves during this session. I missed maybe half a dozen. It was odd.

By 7:06 p.m., I was in the car and on my way to Skypark in Scotts Valley to play more.

Skypark

As I was walking in on the path from the remote parking lot, I was already tired. Maybe it was a lack of sleep. Dunno.

Paddle Reunited

Kiki and I finally connected up and I was able to return her paddle tonight that I found last week. She said it’s not an expensive paddle, she bought it from Jon Barlow for $50. She said Jon has a factory in China knocking off some name brand paddle . . . China is the wild west when it comes to things like that. She remembered me from a few years ago while she and her now ex-boyfriend were playing Sundays at Derby. As much as I try to remember everyone, I honestly, just can’t remember everyone I meet on a court, as much as I try!

Games

Jax and I played a game against David L. (of David and Minori) and Spencer. We got our clocks cleaned, losing 6-11. But we won the rematch 11-2. That felt better!

Tonight was a really fun enjoyable evening. The crowd is a little bit lighter, although they did eventually bring out the white dry-erase board to organize those waiting, but the waits were not very long.

The only game was not as much fun/balace, was the game where I was partnered with the new guy, Jason. Jason did ask me advance if I’d be willing to play with him since he’s a newbie. Of course, I said I would. We teamed up against Tim Fekeirt and a man named Daniel, who is tall and I never met before. I asked Tim about Daniel’s skills . . . part of the pre-game ritual to try and balance teams. Tim said Daniel is new and not very good. Tim, of course, is a very strong player. And . . . it turned out that Daniel is pretty good too. Daniel hit some strong shots and was a steady player, and after Daniel hit a winner, I walked up to the net and—with a big smile—pointed out to Tim, “I thought you said Daniel wasn’t very good!” Tim laughed. He knew that he’d been kidding with me. Jason had more of a soft game than many beginners, but he has a ways ago with that yet. He also has a strong tendency to stay back at the baseline. But Jason is definitely a good rough blank. Lots of potential there.

Last Game

The last game of the night was Rachel and myself against Ofer and big Mike. Initially, the game was close and back-and-forth and then Rachael and I pulled out ahead and won 11-6. I was playing quite well at that point. We squeezed it in just before the lights clicked off shortly after 9:30 p.m.

I got nearly all of my serves in at Skypark, however, I hit at least half a dozen shots into the white tape of the net. That was a bit frustrating, but overall, I was happy with my play tonight.

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Saturday, June 1, 2024 (No Play)

I can’t recall if I shared this, but this video popped up during the past week, mocking pickleball:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C6L9Wy9u6yz/

Tennis Pro Playing Pickleball

Nick Kyrgios, famous bad-boy pro tennis player, talked some months back about eventually playing pickleball after retiring from tennis. Well, here he is in some recreational setting, playing:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7jrGhhA5vO/
And I’ll note, he switched to his left hand to take a shot. Nice. I’m not the only one!

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Sunday, June 2, 2024 (No Play)

I’ve had all kinds of extended family stuff going on this weekend and no teaching this afternoon. Val Rathbone was available to open Derby for me today. It’s probably good. My right wrist is bothering me and my right knee continues to ache more than normal.

Number of days on a court: 668
Number of total hours: 2,843
Number of paid coaching hours: 37.5

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

Tuesday, May 28, 2024 (Court Day #667)

This popped up today. Former tennis pro Genie Bouchard interviewed by CNN about pickleball:
https://www.cnn.com/videos/sports/2024/05/24/exp-tennis-pickleball-bouchard-wire-052407aseg1-cnni-sports-fast.cnn

In the interview, she describes how pickleball is entirely different than tennis and that coming into pickleball she feels like she did when she entered juniors tennis. Vindication for those who imply that pickleball is not challenging to tennis players.

DUPR

DUPR sent out an email message today:
“We are excited to announce the release of the DUPR Reliability Score, a new metric to help you understand your rating better. Your player profile will now feature two numbers: your DUPR rating, reflecting your current pickleball skill level, and the Reliability Score, indicating the confidence level of your rating based on match data.”

What stinks is that I entered games into DUPR from the Santa Cruz Classic Tournament a couple of weeks ago, but since DUPR requires all four players to verify the result for games not provided by a tournament itself, the games remain unverified and don’t count toward my DUPR rating.

Pro Fined

Romanian pro pickleball player Andrei Daescu had his paddle tested two and a half weeks ago at MLP Atlanta. (Pickle Pro Labs does the testing for MLP.) Lo and behold, they found a “foreign substance” on the paddle which made it more grippy. Well, in the last 24 hours, Daescu has been fined $50,000 (ouch), suspended from MLP and PPA events for two months, will be on “probation” for a year. I’m don’t know what probation entails other than the obvious . . . they’ll be keeping a close eye on him and his paddles. I guess the good news is that he wasn’t able to use the paddle in Atlanta as it was caught before play commenced.

_{LATER NOTE:
On May 30, Daescu issued a statement on Instagram:
“I am pained by the recent events. This was an unfortunate mishap. I would NEVER cheat.
There was no intent to use the paddle in question during competition; it was mistakenly submitted for testing. The paddle has never been used in competition.
The UPA has rules and policies. Paddle testing is the player’s responsibility. I will abide by their decision.”
The rumor has it the paddle was given to his practice partners to give them an advantage and make practice games more difficult for Daescu.}

Skypark

It was 7:09 p.m. as I was walking on the path to toward the courts from the remote parking lot. It was sunny but breezy. I was depressed over my play in my last game yesterday morning.

I was suddenly distracted by the sound of very distant fire works or the sound of nearer popcorn popping. Of course, it wasn’t. It was pickleball around a curve in the path and through the grove of trees.

It was a light crowd, with only a handful of people waiting to get on courts.

First Game

I got in my first game about 7:20 p.m., with Ethan and the young woman Caitlin (UCSC senior) against me and a woman who said that she just moved to Santa Cruz from Visalia—which is out in the Central Valley between Fresno and Bakersfield. She said her name was Laura or Lauren, I can’t remember which but she’s a good player. She has a really nice powerful two handed-backhand. It wasn’t a blowout, but we did win against Ethan and Cait, who is about a 3.0 player. (I strongly suspect that Ethan may have been dialing it down a bit.) I did go out of my way to hit more shots to Ethan than I did to Cait. I wanted a little bit harder game. There was some fun firefights in that game. Ethan is really, really good player. Easily better than me. He made a great shot . . . we were across from each other, Ethan to his right and me to my left. There is a wide shot by my partner. Ethan ran out, got it, and the ball looked like it was going to land out but he put so much spin on the ball that it curved back in and landed a few inches in from the corner of the court to win the rally. Nice.

Midway in that my first game that I realized that I grabbed my Rogue 2 paddle instead of my new Gearbox Pro paddle. Just as an experiment, I end up playing with the Rogue 2 paddle for number of games until I decided later tonight to change things up and see if the Gearbox would help me play better.

I went from game to game to game with very little waiting.

I played a few games with Daryl against Paul and Aaron. Daryl wasn’t playing his best and apologized to me. He didn’t need to, but I’m sure he felt more frustrated than I was at his play at that moment. I’m used to playing with weaker players, I’m patient.

Out balls! This continues to be my Achilles Heel. Paul mentioned after a rally that I’d hit several balls that had been heading out. Dang. I hate that.

After Play DUPR Chat

After the lights went out at 9:30 p.m., a few of us briefly gathered over by the bench and talked. Matt Babb was talking about the new DUPR announcement—the one announcing the new reliability score for one’s DUPR rating. I opened the app on my phone and I didn’t see where my reading my reliability reading was. Matt pointed it out—a small circle with a tiny “2” in it to the right of my numerical rating. He was saying that he has a 4% reliability rating, and apparently mine is just 2% . . . same as Paul’s.

I was complaining how I had entered a number of games from the recent tournament, but all four players need to validate the result for a player-entered game. Ofer was trying to convince me that you needed only one player from each team but I told him that any game not entered by a tournament requires all four players. Ofer didn’t believe me so I grabbed my phone and pulled up an announcement from April saying that, indeed, all four players in a match had to verify the score if it was a recreational game. (Recreational being any game not submitted to the DUPR system by a tournament.) It’s kind of a drag, because it takes only one player to either be lazy, or not be happy with the result of the match, to have the game not validated. So far, for me, none of the matches from the Santa Cruz Classic Tournament earlier this month been used to help calculate my DUPR rating since none have been fully validated.

I felt a little bit better about my play tonight, but not a ton.

My right knee is hurting a bit. I’m probably going to need to ice it the next few nights.

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Wednesday, May 29, 2024 (No Play)

Today, I shared on Instagram about my play this week on the court built 1977. A bit of a surprise, I got a comment from senior pro player Jennifer Lucore of Florida. Jennifer and I corresponded in November 2017 when she was asking for editors for her book coming out—her book about the history of pickleball. To date, I haven’t finished reading her book . . . I need to get it back out! Anyway, Jennifer posted:
“Hey Andrew, that is so cool! You know I love my Pickleball History 🤓 Can you send me more info on that court? I could add it to the continuation of the history of the sport, there is not a lot of documented courts in the 70s.”

I replied that I’d email her and I did . . . replying to that November 2017 email!

Vandalism

In New York, Manhattan specifically, a vandal has been causing all kinds of repeated problems for local pickleball players . . . putting equipment in garbage bags with the trash, cutting nets, and more devastation. It makes our local net disassembly pale in comparison:
https://www.mensjournal.com/news/mystery-pickleball-hater-vandalism

Number of days on a court: 667
Number of total hours: 2,839.5
Number of paid coaching hours: 37.5

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