Cambria Part One, Challenge Court Rules

 Hi All,

I've been in Cambria for the last 10 days and played at the local club four times.

They have six nice courts and if you are a member or pay the drop in fee ($3), you have exclusive use in the morning.  Afternoon is open to the public with no fees.

They have two of the six courts set up for challenge play.  The rules were interesting to me, as the question of what to do about differing skill levels comes up frequently.  On Sundays, all courts are challenge courts, though there is a upper skill versus not so upper set of courts.

Their rule is that the folks on the challenge courts (CC) are expecting a competitive game and no one is expected to take it easy on anyone.  With that in mind, all are welcome to play at any level.   I thought this was a good way to do it.  Folks can find a comfortable level and the good players don't have to be gentle souls if it conflicts with their core beliefs.  :-)

I played with the good players for about four games and found my game was not up to it.  I was invited to play as it was early and they needed a player.  We swapped partners every game and I was never on the winning side.  

The less skilled folks were below the typical Downs levels by a little bit.  I would have been happy to play somewhere between the two levels, but that game didn't exist.  But I was very happy to play with social folks and enjoyed the play level.  I played with a lot of folks across four days and probably three hours a day.  The club has a monthly fee of $10, which is what I paid.

On Wednesday they had a drilling group going and that sucked all the players from the social side.  I was about to go home, when I started to watch the local pro, Gregg Whitfield drilling a bit with his wife.  I had played a few times with Gregg in the advanced side.  He had also remarked on my "need" to roll all my shots and hinted that something better might be in order.

Gregg has a web site up and has some of his videos on YouTube.  His general approach is a defensive one, with control being a big part of how he plays.

I was invited into the drilling session.  Yeah for me!  They were working on blocks as a method for hitting about 80% of shots.  Now, I have long recognized my lacking in this area, so this opportunity was of great interest and value to me.  Which leads us to the next post as this one is long enough and I want to talk about some of technical details in my "lesson."

Cambria is a nice place and the PB makes it a good destination and chance to meet new folks.  I ran into several players around town in the course of the time there and it was nice to have a local connect.

One more point...  So Sundays are when the heavy hitters come from all over the county.  I wandered down to watch a bit.  It was a quiet day and not much action.  While I was hanging about, Rich Rutan and Ada show up!  I watched some of their games and they were quite competitive. 

OK, I'm going to work on the next couple of posts!