After doing 3 miles today on the elliptical and 4 miles yesterday and after encouragement from my bunkmate to start playing Pickleball, I played my first match today.
As soon as I got to the court, the players all welcomed me. Someone right away asked out loud, “who’s playing with Jerry?” and someone quickly offered.
I decided to wear my distance glasses for the match.
I asked for a practice volley or two and they hit it to me, but I barely hit the ball and it seemed everyone laughed. Little did they know what was about to happen.
Let’s just say I got the handle of the game pretty fast. In fact, I think it was the 2nd point and the ball was to my backhand, so my instincts kicked it from tennis, and I reached for the ball, and guess what? It looked like I dove for the ball, and then I gracefully fell on my hands and my windbreaker looked all disheveled, but who cares. The key here is everyone saw the effort and started cheering for me!
In fact, my assigned tennis partner said multiple times from the stands, “that’s my tennis partner!”
Next, a lob was up high for me to get it, and there was a silence for a moment as the ball dropped as it hit the ground, I hit it on some crazy angle cross court with a slice, and everyone started saying, “Man, Jerry is good!”
Score was tight, 3-3, 4-4, 8-7 and then we lost 14-10, but let’s just say, I’m now known on the pickleball court!
It was a thrill!
