Still a construction Site

The place is still a construction site, despite being able to play on court one and having a chair to sit on. The Anderson guys will be finished with their work by the end of Wednesday, then we have to wait three days for the paint to dry on the floor lines. I know people are eager to play over there but it's still a construction site.

Finish work is progressing. Slowly. The tile in the restrooms is done, but now we wait for the concrete stain on the floors and then the plumbing fixtures. Maybe this week? The plumbers only want to come one more time to do their install.

Electricians are changing over the power today. That will effectively stop all other work for at least an hour today. Once that's finished we'll be able to turn all the lights on.

They have to build and finish the bar-like area and put in the counter-tops, but again, we're still waiting for some things to show up. Seems we're in waiting mode again. Reminds me of waiting for the concrete to be poured or the dang ceiling to be finished. A lot is going to get done in the next two weeks, but it's still really frustrating to wait.

Recently a friend told me a Buddhist expression that goes something like this: Good at the beginning, good in the middle, good at the end. I'm keeping that in mind as I try to wait patiently and not push the contractors to hurry up.

So, as you may have noticed in my last 3000-word post (since a picture is worth 1000) we did break in the first court. How does it feel, you might ask? Well, I gotta say, it's pretty incredible. I've played on plaster courts before, but probably not with the same amount of attention. I've spent the last 15 years or so playing on the wood courts at the venerable Nielsen Tennis Stadium. While a nice material, the walls have been painted many times so the ball tends to skid a little on the walls. They have recently sanded the floors down to an au natural finish which has been a HUGE improvement in predictable ball behavior, but still the ball will skid on the walls a bit.

Panel wall courts tend to be very loud and echoey, and the ball loses all it's texture within about 30 minutes so it just skids like crazy all over the place.

ASB courts are another sort of panel option, but the walls are seamless and filled with sand so that they have a very solid feel to them and a true bounce. There is some sort of paint on the walls with a little texture so balls bounce true and don't skid on the walls. A very nice court.

Which brings us to plaster. When Pete the Plasterer first finished a wall, I was pretty amazed at how glass-smooth the plaster is. From experience, I know that the balls don't skid on plaster, but I'm looking at this stuff thinking, how could this be? These walls are smooth as glass... Be that as it may, when the ball touches the plaster, the wall seems to grab the ball, slow it down, and kick it out into the middle of the court. I said a while ago in a post how good straight walls reward good play. You could also say, that they punish poor play. With sticky plaster walls, if you hit a ball that strikes the side wall at any angle at all, it's going to come out into the center of the court. That's not good.

A number of times over the last few days, I've hit what I thought was going to be fairly decent length, only to be a bit surprised that when my ball hit the side wall maybe a little short, then slowed down drastically and came off the wall so my opponent had all sorts of time to send me flailing away into a far corner. It's quite dramatic and will take getting used to.

Now that said, when you do hit good length that stays tight against the wall and you force a weak return, boy can punish the meatball that comes out into the middle of the court. It's brilliant, and that's what we mean by a court rewarding you for good play.

Anyway, the courts are great. They rank up there with the nicest I've played on. The floors are beautifully sprung, the lighting is excellent, and the sound of the ball striking the head wall is flat out brilliant. So satisfying.

Now if we can only get the rest of the contractors out of the place... Nice guys and all, but I'm ready for you to go!