I Am Addicted To Pickleball

I’ve always loved racket sports. Was raised on tennis and ping-pong in Australia. Learned to play squash in my first postgraduate job in Sydney, and played it a lot when I taught at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa. I had long tussles with Ralph Fagin in both squash and tennis.

Racketball was next – in Independence, Kansas where my grandkids lived. I taught Kara and Jaden how to play. It’s a different game because you can hit the ball off the back or side walls. In the end, they both became as good as me, although I never admitted this publicly.

I’ve been playing pickleball for 10 or 12 years. It’s like miniature tennis on a half-tennis-court but played with beach-bat paddles and a kind of wiffle ball. The game came easy to me because I was a fluent tennis player and many of the shots are the same. After I busted a knee skiing in Santa Fe, I never played tennis again. But jumped into pickleball, which is an ideal sport – it’s good for you physically, mentally, and socially. I thank God often that I can chase the yellow wiffle ball around like a 60-year old.

I have many friends, in both New Mexico and Kansas, who play two or three times a week.

I taught my g-kids to play pickleball in Dallas, where they lived at the time. Jaden is an athlete and can run down any ball. Kelby has been playing regularly and is becoming a good player. Kara hasn’t played much in the last couple of years, but she could be good. I made a bet that my g-kids would never be able to beat me in a racket sport. But who knows…..maybe when I reach 90 years old…

Pickleball Tournaments.

I’ve played in a few pickleball tournaments. The first was in Iola, Kansas. Kevin Shepherd and I lost an early round but went on to win the loser’s bracket. This meant we had to play in the grand final against the winner of the winner’s bracket. This was a strange win-loss schedule to me. We lost the final in two sets, against Larry and Dave (also from Independence), but the first set was close.

I have played in three other tournaments since then, and lost all of them miserably. I teamed up with Dave Moyer in the last two, played in Kansas, where we realized the problem– we were always facing two giants dominating at the net. We had to push them back, but we didn’t know how to do that. We lost both tournaments 1-5 meaning we only won one match.

But we kidded ourselves that we could do better so Dave and I signed up for one more tournament in Wichita, Kansas. I found out that Wichita is the largest city in Kansas, a surprise to me.

The Tournament in Wichita, Kansas.

I kept downplaying our prospects, and told Dave we would probably go 1-5 again. In the first match we were nervous. But we were also getting used to the yellow ball which bounces a lot higher than the heavy orange ball we had played with in Independence. We eventually won the match comfortably which boosted our confidence.

Dave and I played better and we were able to keep the opposition off the net where they could dominate. We won all five matches and our record was 5-0. With one match to go, we realized this was the team that we narrowly defeated before. They were 4-1 and had only lost one game – to us. We had to beat them once again to win the tournament.

Although full of confidence, we got behind early and the score quickly became 5-12 in their favor. We made a lot of mistakes. To have a chance, we realized we had to redirect and hit all our shots to the little guy, as the big guy was dominating.

A couple of quick mistakes by us and the score was 7-14 in their favor. The game ends at 15, so the picture looked bad for us. Then things began to change, and we started playing well. My partner Dave was on fire at the net smashing lots of balls away. We got up to 12-14 in their favor when the other team called a time-out. When play resumed, their big guy made one last desperate lunge to intercept a ball at net, and failed. We won the game 17-15. The other team, who were so far ahead of us, must have felt dreadful to lose like that.

It was the first gold medal Dave or I had ever received in pickleball.

I got in my car and drove away from Wichita and toward Albuquerque. I passed though Greensburg which has the deepest hand-dug well in the USA – 109 feet deep, and 32 feet across. I had been there years ago and had climbed down the staircase to the water level of the Ogallala aquifer. It’s a big aquifer that exists in eight different states. It extends so far west that it supplies part of the drinking water for Albuquerque. The aquifer’s water level is dropping however, and this has become a big sustainability issue for Kansans

But Greensburg is more famous for the tornado that wiped out the small town. On May 4, 2007, an EF5 tornado hit, destroying 95% of the town, and resulting in 11 fatalities. The tornado reached wind speeds of 205 mph and had a maximum width of 1.7 miles, causing extensive damage over a path of more than 28 miles. A fascinating part of the story is the town decided to rebuild the city as green as possible. It was quite a goal and an impressive accomplishment.

When I reached Tucumcari, the most left-behind town in New Mexico, I settled in for a margarita and great Mexican food at La Cita’s restaurant. Next morning, Albuquerque was only 2.5 hours away.
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Greetings from the Gray Nomad.
In about a week, it will be daylight savings time again in the USA, and also national mid-term elections.
Best wishes in your off-work activities, and may you discover a new inner-self in pickleball, the world’s fastest growing sport.

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Now Elijah said to Ahab, “Go up, eat and drink, for there is the sound of the roar of an abundance of rain.” So Ahab went up to eat and to drink.
And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he crouched down to the earth and put his face between his knees, and he said to his servant, “Go up, look toward the sea.” So he went up and looked and said, “There is nothing.” Elijah said, “Go back” seven times. And at the seventh time the servant said, “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is coming up from the sea.” And Elijah said, “Go up, say to Ahab, ‘Prepare your chariot and go down, so that the rain shower does not stop you.’” In a little while the sky grew dark with clouds and wind, and there were heavy showers. And Ahab mounted and rode [his chariot] and went [inland] to Jezreel. Then the hand of the Lord came upon Elijah [giving him supernatural strength]. He girded up his loins and outran Ahab to the entrance of Jezreel [nearly twenty miles].
[1 Kings, chapter 18].