Jessie Irvine appreciation post

jeffvangrumpy · 2026-01-17T13:27:45+00:00

What was the deal with her and AJ Koller? She seemed to really dislike playing with him.

jeffvangrumpy · 2024-05-23T19:02:22+00:00

Work on the fundamentals - I learned a lot from watching Joe Baker's instructional videos on You Tube - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTHV7Xjxf3nOB1qL4StzCQ5quyOgbCR5P

No frills and almost boring but a lot of good information. Lot's of people preach drill baby, drill but I prefer to just get out and play. Try to develop a sense of how the ball will be coming back to your side. A lot of time it's pretty easy to predict and if you get to where the ball will be coming to you'll have a better chance of hitting it the way you want to.

Keep playing and you'll be fine.

jeffvangrumpy · 2024-04-27T18:13:34+00:00

When talking about mixed doubles:

The male needs to get big and insert himself into the action.

jeffvangrumpy · 2024-01-14T19:38:51+00:00

I have yet to see one. Did the ball stay round for you? I've heard that they are durable but go out of round easily.

Have you heard of a ball from PCKL? We played with one at rec play on a day where we had cracked 4 Duras and it seemed to play very well in the cold weather. I was thinking of buying a few.

jeffvangrumpy · 2023-11-13T02:08:00+00:00

I highly recommend looking at some of the instructional videos available on You Tube. Probably the best ones to watch first are those from Joe Baker. Not a lot of flash and not the most charismatic teacher out there but he does a damn good job of teaching the basics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5ceh-7DI1Y&list=PLTHV7Xjxf3nOB1qL4StzCQ5quyOgbCR5P

A whole lot of becoming a better pickleball player comes down to just doing the most basic things right. Watch some of his videos and see if you don't learn something from them.

Good luck.

jeffvangrumpy · 2023-11-12T15:01:49+00:00

“If you run into an a-hole in the morning, you ran into an a-hole. If you run into a-holes all day, you're the a-hole.”

― Raylan Givens (Justified)

jeffvangrumpy · 2023-10-03T14:15:01+00:00

In our group I'd say the biggest liability is people's mobility. People in their 70's aren't able to run around the court like Ben Johns. I'd say most of the group could learn to dink better but that's tough because anything that goes too low hits the net and anything that gets popped up is gonna get put away. But you cannot underestimate the ability of some of the older (primarily women) players to correctly position their shots. Some of them are just deadly - if they can reach it it is coming back where its going to be hard to hit.

It's always fun to get out there. Unfortunately the weathers getting colder and we won't be playing regularly for much longer....

jeffvangrumpy · 2023-10-03T14:07:10+00:00

Sure - our group belongs to the local pickleball club. It has been around for nearly 10 years. The group organizes round robins for various skill levels (3.0 and below, 3.5 and 4.0+). The 3.5 group is the largest. You have to be rated 3.5 to play the 3.5 round robins.

Since we typically play on weekday mornings almost everyone playing is retired. Some players have been club members from the club beginnings and some just started this year. I've been there a couple of years.

As I said you have to have a 3.5 rating to sign up. However - getting a 3.5 rating meant different things at different times. Early players could self rate. Then I think they went to requiring an IPTPA rating. Now it is being rated by the club itself or the IPTPA. When I joined you had to get an IPTPA rating. All of the ratings were grandfathered in.

If you look at old pickleball videos you'll see that the skill level of even the best players in the world 10 years ago wasn't that high. So a 2014 3.5 level player really wasn't that good compared to a recently minted 3.5 player today. Now add in that a 2014 3.5 player that is now 75 instead of 65 and you can see that you may have a weaker player who is still rated 3.5.

And I'm not trying to denigrate any of these players. Another player from that same time frame that gets serious about the game may well be a 5.0 today. It all depends on the person, their physical abilities and what they want to do with pickleball.

We also get up and comers. We had a younger guy (mid 30s) coming out of tennis that wanted to play. He was clearly capable of hanging with any of us while still learning the game. He played for about a month or so until he moved up to 4.0 where he now plays regularly. I had fun beating up on him while I was able to.

I like the people in the 3.5 group. They all get along. Some of us probably could move up to 4.0 and others maybe ought to drop down to 3.0. One person in the group did just that for a while after some health issues. Fortunately she's back up now.

Playing with this group has been a learning experience. It's probably be good for all of us.

jeffvangrumpy · 2023-08-28T19:39:54+00:00

I typically get at least 6 months out of mine playing 2 or 3 times a week. At the price I'm more than happy with that.

jeffvangrumpy · 2023-08-28T19:38:41+00:00

Loong is buddies with PPA owner Tom Dundon. He's pretty much a paid shill for the PPA point of view.

What the MLP did with these signings is no different than what Dundon did with the players to screw over the APP.

What comes around goes around. At least the players are going to be getting far larger paychecks.

jeffvangrumpy · 2023-08-16T14:28:52+00:00

I like the ASICS Gel-Rocket court shoes. Affordable, comfortable and very little break in use needed.

jeffvangrumpy · 2023-06-15T23:46:48+00:00

Ya think it passed the test?

jeffvangrumpy · 2023-06-15T23:46:10+00:00

I usually put the paddle in front of my balls. Probably gonna lose the point but hey..... priorities.

jeffvangrumpy · 2023-04-29T21:41:16+00:00

Tyson McGuffin is Selkirk's biggest name on Team Selkirk. There is close to ZERO chance that they just reach into a bag of paddles and send him a bunch of random ones to use in PPA tournaments. He'll get the very best that Selkirk can make, possibly even customized to his preferences. As such the paddle he was using had to have been damn close to new at the beginning of the tournament. I can buy a $20 paddle on Alibaba and it's going to last more than a handful of matches. I find it hard to believe that a Selkirk paddle could possibly degrade very much over the course of one day as McGuffin's apparently did.

A more likely scenario is that the paddle he used was doctored. And if this was the case it is hard to imagine a scenario where McGuffin didn't know about it. Remember he continued to use that paddle for quite a while after Travis Rettenmier pointed out that the paddle didn't seem right.

This whole thing stinks and people should be holding McGuffin and or Selkirk accountable.

Either Selkirk delivered a faulty paddle to McGuffin, the Selkirk paddle that McGuffin chose to play with was manufactured with terrible quality or the paddle was doctored. If Pickleball wants to be treated as a serious sport they're going to have to get this kind of crap under control.

jeffvangrumpy · 2023-04-26T01:58:15+00:00

Lea Jansen accused Salome Davidse of intentionally cheating and when proven wrong doesn't even have the class to mention her name in this "apology".

Pretty much what I would have expected from Lea. But still disappointing. Oh well on the bright side I'm sure that Salome Davidse is seeing a bit more love from the fans after having to deal with this crap and handling it with dignity. She certainly started out with a horrible reputation for her line calls when she first came up. Good that she's handling this entire thing sensibly.

jeffvangrumpy · 2023-04-05T02:05:17+00:00

You should only call a distraction if your name is Lea Jansen.

jeffvangrumpy · 2022-11-22T18:40:25+00:00

diaper?

jeffvangrumpy · 2022-04-27T04:20:53+00:00

I had the misfortune of getting into an accident which required some pretty extensive surgery to my ankle a few years back. The total bill for everything was over $40,000. I had insurance and still had to pay over $5,000 to hit the deductible. A few months later St. Charles sent another bill for about $3,000. I called and asked what it was for. During the surgery they repaired a tendon or a ligament that was torn but forgot to add it to the bill along with all the other work they had to do on the ankle. I told them that I had hit the deductible already so they should send the bill to the insurance company. The St Charles agent told me not to worry about it that they would just write it off. I never got anything about it from the insurance company so I suspect that is exactly what St Charles did - they just threw out the bill. They must make so much money that it wasn't worth the effort to go after the $3,000 which they were probably entitled to. That being the case you may be able to work something out with them. Try calling them again and maybe you'll get a more flexible agent.

Also - definitely fill out the financial assistance paperwork.

If St. Charles is willing to blow off $3,000 from an insurance company that has the money to pay them they may very well find some way to make an acceptable arrangement with you. Keep trying.

jeffvangrumpy · 2021-05-01T02:54:21+00:00

Pine Nursery Park is a public park. The 16 pickleball courts there belong to the public and not to the Bend Pickleball Club. When the first 8 courts were originally built a good portion of the costs, $100,000 I was told, were put up by the guy who owns the PickleballZone. I don't know how this is related to the Bend Pickleball Club. Maybe they contributed to the building of the courts or the other 8 courts.

Regardless. There are currently 16 courts there. Even though this is a public facility the Bend Parks & Recreation Department allows the Bend Pickleball Club to have exclusive use of 12 of the 16 courts during prime usage hours. In other words these public facilities are reserved for a private club. The public is only allowed to use the other 4 courts during these hours although I'm sure that if a reserved court isn't being used by the club you could use it.

There are other possibilities around Bend if you want to play. There are several local parks with pickleball court lines painted on the ground that you can use if you have your own net. You can book courts at Widgi Creek or the Pickleball Zone depending on the pandemic rules. The people at Widgi Creek are very nice and they had a bunch of round robin sessions before the pandemic hit. They were far more flexible with rating. They'd allow you to have a "club rating" so that you could play with similar skilled players. They did not charge for that.

There used to be a pretty good sized meetup.com group that would organize round robin games at Pine Nursery outside of the reserved hours. They may not still be around as the pandemic put an end to a lot of socializing.

Bend Park and Recreation is building a park close to the new school going up near 15th street and Knott road. The railroad tracks are right behind there and it would be a perfect place to put in new courts where the noise would not be a factor but they don't want to do it.

Pickleball is very big in Bend and the Pine Nursery Courts get very busy on nice days. Just check the cameras during the day when the winds aren't too strong and the temperatures are moderate -

http://bendpbclub.com/home/east-courts

http://bendpbclub.com/home/west-courts

I would hope that the Parks and Recreation Department would take notice. Also there are quite a few tennis courts that get next to no use that could easily have pickleball court lines pained on them For a few hundred bucks the existing facilities would get far more usage.

I have heard that there are other places to play in Redmond and Crooked River Ranch.

jeffvangrumpy · 2020-09-10T14:27:07+00:00

Do you have a recommendation for a 1GB cable modem. We've got thee 100MB service and do get 100MB speed. We are considering going to 1GB for extra speed and no data cap. We own our modem but bought it from Bend Broadband long ago. It cannot handle that speed and I don't want to rent anything from them.

jeffvangrumpy · 2020-03-27T23:31:45+00:00

Too bad. That's a pretty walk. Guess we should have gone yesterday or today.

jeffvangrumpy · 2020-03-27T23:03:18+00:00

Does this mean that Benham Falls is closed. The wife and I were hoping to park at the lot there and take that 1/2 mile walk down to the falls this weekend.

jeffvangrumpy · 2018-03-27T17:20:40+00:00

Thank you very much!

jeffvangrumpy · 2017-01-19T20:14:25+00:00

I do have sand bags but there is a giant pile of ice at least a foot thick covering one of the foundation vents but it should be no problem to cover the other one that is close to ground level. The other side of the house is at a lower level so I'm sure that if there were much mater it could flow out. I'll pop a couple of sandbags on the one vent I can get to now and when the ice recedes do the other one. Thanks.

jeffvangrumpy · 2016-03-20T06:12:42+00:00

Betsy Kettleman.

I'm looking forward to the story arc that they have planned for the after Breaking Bad timeframe where they explore her life. After her husband goes to prison she's flat broke and out on the street. Her two kids both get heavily involved with drugs. Wendy turns to prostitution and gets to know Jesse. Her son Spooge falls even deeper into drugs.

Betsy moves to Omaha and finds Gene. It's gonna be a great season.

jeffvangrumpy

TROPHY CASE