Open Play - Please Reply

Open Letter to All Club Members

I believe that our club has an organized play schedule that is second to none. With the new 24 courts our organized play offers many playing opportunities for all skill levels. I’ve seen no other schedule that comes close to our organized play. But there is one last element of the playing schedule that hasn’t been addressed yet and I’d like some input from the club members before the board makes a decision.

We need to make a plan for the open play hours on the courts. Our current open play works very well for the higher skill players. You come down in the morning, look for an in progress game with players of your level and challenge for the next game. This works very well for the high skill players and I have no intention of changing this. What needs to be addressed is the newer player that comes down to the courts in the morning looking for a game. They play a game or two with the morning group and quickly see they are over matched and do not return. I want to accommodate those players with courts they are comfortable playing on. Now that we have 24 courts we should be able to make courts available to all skill levels in the morning open play. I’ve come up with a couple of possible solutions that I would like to present. Please look them over and send me your comments or other solutions. These suggestions are for the morning open play hours from 7:30 AM to 10 AM.

The first possibility is to have 12 courts be challenge courts. These 12 courts would accommodate the current high skill level players that frequent the courts every morning. Life would continue as normal for this group. The other 12 courts would be available to the players with lesser skills. These courts would not be challenge courts. Play would be based on a sign in board. You show up in the morning and sign your name on the board. When an ongoing game ends the next 2 people on the list go in and play. It could also be the next 4 go in or winners stay on and split. There are several variations of how this could be done.  Many clubs have this as their only way of open play and it works very well for the newer players. If we have fewer people using the sign in system we could readjust the number of courts for each group.

The other possibility is assigning skill levels to different sets of courts. Courts 1 thru 8 could  be 4.0 plus, courts 9 thru 16 could be 3.5, courts 17 to 24 could be 3.0/2.5. The number of courts and skill levels assigned are just to start discussion. They could be changed to any combination. Each group could decide if they want to use the challenge system or sign in board.

These are my two suggestions. I’m open to any other possibilities or tweaking of these suggestions. We need to have an open play policy that brings the newer players to the courts in the morning.  That is the one part of our program that is missing and I would like to fix it. Please email me you suggestions.

Mark Nelson

President Palm Creek Pickleball Club

mcnelson555@sbcglobal.net