The Relish

Slept like dogshit last night.

I was up at 3:00am to use the restroom and walked into the hallway to see one of cats’ eyes glowing in the dark, sitting upright starting at me from down the hall. I hurried into the bathroom, took a piss, then hesitantly opened the door, half-expecting Sookie, our sweet, raccoon-looking little gray tabby, to be right outside the door with a knife hanging out of her mouth.

I wasn’t able to fall back asleep until around 4:30am, and woke up for real this time four hours later. I also decided to bypass my morning coffee as a means of more relaxed play at Pickleball. I’ve done this before with great success.

Not today mf.

On Saturday and Sunday mornings, our local courts’ open play is usually loaded with rock-solid players. I look forward to it as an opportunity to challenge myself more without annoyingly choosing the partake in the normal “challenge court” part of weekday open play hours. Quickly on that: open play here is 0900-1200. There are six courts. Court #1 is reserved Mo-Fri as a “Challenge Court,” so the big guns don’t have to waste their time dispatching weaker players.

There are days when I really want to sign up and give it a go; I’ve played with and against several of the usual players over there and have held my own pretty well at times. However I still lack the courage and this morning confirmed that, yes, I do still play like a jackass sometimes and yes, I would probably get slaughtered over there.

I couldn’t find my serve. I was hitting it over just fine(ish), but it wasn’t the usual “holy shit” that I hear oftentimes when someone is returning it. And the dinking. The fucking DINKING! Net – net – net – net – net – net – net like Jesus, man. When the soft game starts to happen I’m just missing them lately.

And fucking of course, this morning, my first like…four games were with and against the challenge-court types, and I stuck out like shit floating in a fruit bowl.

Time for a new paddle

The time is nigh for a new paddle, methinks. I’m realizing how I’m at a point in my game where I should invest in a higher-quality ax. I’m a power-hitter first, no doubt. And sometimes that works really well. I’ll send ’em back deep and fast, and people are all like “oh wow that was a hard hit,” or “wow that guy is a fucking STUD” or…just kidding. I do hit it hard and sometimes, on days where I’m really feeling it, I can aim it pretty well too. But I’m realizing how desperately I need to add control as part of my game. I get torn apart by older, less athletic players who just know exactly where to put the ball. I want that. This morning there were ample opportunities for me to just tap it over the net while my opponent was out of position and I ended up either sailing it out of bounds or simply tapping it into the net.

So I looked up paddles, yada yada, more on this later…but I’m going to start saving up for one. 1% of every bi-weekly budget my wife and I do will go towards saving for a new paddle, and that’ll give me time to really dig into what the right fit for me could be.

In Conclusion

I played like trash this morning but still had fun. I also gained more clarity in my deficiencies, primarily lack of control, and I think that a paddle with a “wider sweet spot” is in my future.

I also will go back to drinking coffee before I go play.

Adios amigos.