Play was a little bit wild today. We didn’t have a couple of people from our normal group. It was nice to see some of the people that I haven’t seen in a while and get some games in with and against them. We also had another female there today who was practicing for an event with her partner.
Almost all of my games today were against her. It wasn’t the best rotation but it wasn’t a frustrating rotation, at least for me. I probably should have sat more than I did but the games were fun.
Yesterday I worked a lot on a couple of specific shots and today I kind of forced a couple of those. They didn’t have the appearance as they had yesterday. What I was working on yesterday was catching it below the net but what I did today was the same shot but on ones above the net. It was mostly effective but I’m not sure how necessary it is to put what feels like a lot of effort into a shot above the net.
I hate to tinker around with new shots when we have good games because we might lose. But when I get an opportunity in a game that doesn’t matter, do I care if I lose or do I want to see if the practice I did pays off? Today I tested it, missed it and we ended up losing. It wasn’t the reason we lost the game. But losing those points didn’t help.
There were a few ATPs today. There were some I teed up for people. My partner had one in one game and it was sweet. I had one that wasn’t a winner. But we did win the point because my partner slid over and put away the block.
I went to my favorite local rec center on Friday night and met up with some of my friends. Even though the crowd is mostly beginners and has a feeling of date night or a father-daughter family time, I got some really decent games.
I think we played 4 games but most important for me with this outing is the chance to catch up with my friends. It’s probably the only time that I don’t mind a long wait between games. I’ve missed the last 2 weeks because I was out traveling for games on Saturday so the longer the wait, the more we could talk.
The inside scoop (shhh!) is the possibility of the rec center getting a Pickle Roll, which would be awesome. I’m not talking about a dill pickle with ham and cheese wrapped around it (aka Minnesota sushi), I’m talking one of those pickleball courts that roll out. An instant additional court.
In the games we played I was able to work on a couple of the shots I’ve been testing but it’s still very much a work in progress; not a lot of success with it tonight. The guy who works there is really good at reading paddles so even if I could have done it he would have known what I was attempting.
After the first game and sitting to wait, boy oh boy was I stiff. Holy cow it took a long time to loosen up. Still, it was a lot of fun and I really like going there for games.
