r/Pickleball

I was casually introduced to pickleball by my girlfriend who gave me her hand-me-down paddle (who got it as a hand-me-down herself from her mom). It is a Uteeqe brand paddle. If you haven’t heard of the brand, you’re probably not alone.

We played super casually for about a year (like once every 2-3 months) when we were walking through Costco and ran across a clearance for Selkirk Prime paddles. 2 paddles, a bag, and balls for a whopping 16 bucks!

Maybe because the Uteeqe was my first and only paddle I ever used, I found myself not liking the Selkirk paddle and went back to my trusty Uteeqe. My girlfriend continued to use the Costco paddle and is pretty good with it.

Fast forward a couple years and we moved into a pretty nice neighborhood where we lived a couple blocks from public pickleball courts. We went from playing every 2-3 months to suddenly playing 3-4 times a week!

As with most public courts, we need to place our paddles in the queue. Since this is an upscale area, we are putting our combined value of $8 paddles next to $200-$300 paddles. We don’t care and we continue to play with our value paddles. My girlfriend is actually an ex-tennis player and is frequently commented on by the regulars that she is really good. I’m personally fairly uncoordinated, but I hold my own on the court.

Since we’re playing so often now, I was thinking of buying us decent paddles. We have both considered doing a legit upgrade here and there, but we end up getting analysis paralysis. So many brands, shapes, generations, pros/cons on all reviews… it gets overwhelming. I also looked into some demo paddles, but none of the sites have the higher end paddles I’m looking at.

We’re already consistently winning about 60% of our matches, and I can definitely admit that most of our losses are a skill issue (some of the regulars are amazingly good). I just can’t help but think that a decent paddle could help us have more fun and improve our game regardless of winning or losing. I have this old school way of thinking that continual practice and court time is the best investment, but just wanted to see what the community thinks of pulling the trigger on higher end paddles. I know myself and once I start buying them, I’m going to spend 2-3K on paddles before I know it.

Pickleball is his #1 priority and I have stopped dating the guy because pickleball has become first priority.

Why is pickleball so addictive

And here I'm not talking about wildly different paddles; I more mean paddles that are similar, think Joola Pro V Perseus / SLK ERA / Luzz Cannon, or RPM Q2 / Selkirk Labs Boomstik / Aireo Cyclone. I ask because I'm curious what the calculus might be when a pro signs with a specific company.

Like, once dialed in, can a 5.5+ or pro player basically play the same level of game with any paddle "similar to" their main? Or does the paddle sometimes make too inevitable of a difference to ignore even when it's subtle and weight / other legal mods have been exhausted?

So just wanted to share my recent experience where I may be getting scammed out of $500+

Saw an ad on FB of Ben Johns promoting the Pro V. It was a video ad that was legitimately filmed of him. When I clicked on the link it stated they were selling off some Pro Vs for 40% off. The website looked exactly like Joolas. After I went to purchase 2 paddles, I only then realized that the website was joolapadle.com.

Should have checked more carefully

Their contact for support was still Joolas official support email but when I looked closer as I bought it through Shop the email contact was some place in Denver with an email called contact@snowyen.com

Anyway buyer beware because on Shop it showed the JOOLA logo and the website they link to is a clone of Joolas.

Got a full tennis court in the yard, roughly 118x56, about to pull all the tennis lines and paint 2 pickleball courts instead. No more tennis, Down to 4 layout options and can’t decide before we call the guy to paint lines.

1.** Both courts side by side, same orientation, stacked across the width — both pickleball nets would be where the tennis net was originally
2.** Same idea but rotated 90, courts sit side by side can space them further apart, layout pics has them close together
3.** One court on each half of the court, split down the middle, keep original tennis net as the divider
4.** Diagonal, 2 courts rotated 45 degrees to maximize serving area

Anyone here converted a court themselves or played on one that felt cramped / felt fine? Trying to not screw this up before the paint goes down.

Pictures of layouts in the comments.

I want to live my Coral Pro, but when I dink or reset slightly off center, the ball dies. Is this typical of this paddle, or do you think that I just got a bad one?

I'm pretty new to the sports side of things. I've always been active, but I'm new to the social side of pickleball. I didn't grow up playing tennis or anything like that, so I have a question more about open play etiquette than actual pickleball.

My husband and I mostly play together. We're not DUPR rated, we're not trying to become some professional pickleball couple or anything, but the main reason I play is because it's a hobby we enjoy together and want to get better at together. He has a tennis background, so he's a little better than I am, but we've been playing for a couple of years now and we're improving.

We've been joining lots of open plays, mostly all-level sessions, which is totally fine with us. We've talked about getting rated so we can join higher-level open plays, but honestly we don't care that much. Sometimes people want us to split up, and that's fine too. We'll play with strangers. That's part of open play and it's fun.

I've seen a bunch of different formats. Some places do 12-minute rounds where you play whoever you're with until the timer goes off, then everyone rotates using a paddle rack or a board. I've also played fixed-partner leagues, which have been fun too, but those are usually just one game and you're done.

What I'm wondering about is the format itself.

I kind of like the idea of best-of-three. Especially with a new partner, a new court, or even switching from indoor to outdoor, I find the first game is almost a calibration game. You're figuring each other out. Then the second game feels like the "real" game. My thought was that if one team wins the first two, great, you're done and rotate off. But if it's one game each, you'd play a third as the tiebreaker.

I know the obvious downside is time. More people would be waiting to get on the courts, and I completely understand why that matters.

I guess my question is... are there open plays anywhere that actually run like this? Or is one game and rotate basically the accepted standard because it's the fairest way to get everyone on the court?

Title: Ripping up our tennis court for 2 pickleball courts — which layout would you actually go with?
Got a full tennis court in the yard, roughly 118x56, about to pull all the tennis lines and paint 2 pickleball courts instead. No more tennis, just pickleball. Down to 4 layout options and can’t decide before we call the guy to paint lines.
Both courts side by side, same orientation, stacked across the width — basically the standard conversion you see everywhere

Same idea but rotated 90, courts sit side by side going the long way instead

One court on each half of the court, split down the middle

Diagonal, rotated 45 ish degrees

Anyone here converted a court themselves or played on one that felt cramped / felt fine?

What do you think is best layout? Layout pics in the comments

I’m 65 and my grip strength is not great. I feel like in order to get a stable paddle I have to put my finger on the back. Am I giving up too much?

It's been a month since the DUPR reset, so we have a full month of post-reset data to analyze.

I looked at each match played by the people who got the reset ("Resetters") going back to the start of 2025. Using DUPR's formula, I calculated the expected score in each match, and then I looked at their actual scores.

According to DUPR, a 1% point differential corresponds to ~0.05 DUPR (note: ~0.08 for rally scored games; I normalized everything to standard scoring for this analysis).

I'll be using terms like "overperforming" and "underrated" for when actuals are higher than expected, but keep in mind, it's just that actuals are higher than DUPR expected. An underrated player will consistently overperform, but there are other ways that can happen. It could simply be because a player practiced. I am not attempting to tease those situations apart in this analysis.

The Resetters care about their DUPR a lot, and are essentially betting money that they are underrated. In aggregate, this population is almost certainly practicing/improving more than their opponents. Even if DUPR were a perfect rating system, and none of the Resetters were underrated (i.e. they're all delusional), we should see this group beating expectations consistently from improvement alone.

https://preview.redd.it/jcu3385k0fbh1.png?width=1713&format=png&auto=webp&s=0871a0fd443bb4f2eaaf926ad75ead0a9320a775

The Resetters were consistently overperforming expectations by around 0.05 DUPR. On the day of the reset, their ratings increased (avg increase ~0.14), and in the month of June they're now losing more than their new ratings would predict.

Some players didn't gain much rating during the reset, and others gained a lot (as much as 1.2 -- although this player and many others who gained more than 0.5 were just cheating - They bought the reset for the "you can't lose rating" clause, and then went on generational losing streaks (like dozens of games) to the same opponents to try to boost them up. DUPR if you want to ban some people, I wrote software to identify players who wintrade like this.)

Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, looking at this by cohort. There's a cohort of players who gained almost nothing. These people underperformed during the reset window and didn't get much rating boost on reset day. Here's what their chart looks like (note this is about 40% of the Resetters):

https://preview.redd.it/qy8zu5vb1fbh1.png?width=1713&format=png&auto=webp&s=f13b088296742367226f0f23775501e0b7f2e22e

That leaves the people who gained 0.1 or more, the top ~60% of Resetters:

https://preview.redd.it/vs9adojh1fbh1.png?width=1713&format=png&auto=webp&s=abe3b701b1614b838c2e49c23c0e956f6269a740

The Resetters consistently beating expectations until May 2026 is easy to explain by the Resetters simply practicing/improving more than average. DUPR might be perfectly accurate; we just identified a group of tryhards. That same group of people suddenly underperforming in tens of thousands of games for a whole month is much harder to explain if the reset gave people accurate ratings.

By the way: This chart lines up with my anecdotal experience. The Resetters I know were underrated at the start. During the reset they played a bunch of ranked games, and their rating went up to match their play. Then they got another big bump on 6/1 and now they're overrated.

I have much longer analysis in the works about how the DUPR scale has changed over time and also comparing DUPR ratings across the country. I'm trying to psyche myself up to write them, but it's a lot of work.

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Hey peeps.

I'm looking to practice alone in my downtime. I want to buy an MDF sheet, maybe 3 feet high by 4 feet wide and attach it to a fence. But I have a few questions if anyone has done this.

1. What thickness for the MDF for optimal bounce?

2. What to use to best temporarily secure and remove the board, from the fence with limited movement?

3. What could I secure to the back just to give the board a tiny bit of extra pop.

I'm going to put a net against the fence and hang the board right above. Just looking for the easiest and most secure way.

Looked at the Dink Master and the A11N. Dink Master was way too much in Canada and the A11N is a little too small height wise.

Give me some tips, so I can become better than my bf at pickleball, his ego is KILLING me. I want to know your tips and tricks to beat someone even if they are better then you skill level.

At first I thought this was a bug but it appears the app has paywalled the List View function of the calendar behind the paid tier. Only the Bubble view, which is in my opinion, is horrible, is part of the free sub.

I realize this is a r/choosingbegger complaint but the fact that the paid service really provides no other useful benefits seems like they knew this would enshitify it enough to push people into paying, rather than providing some useful feature beautifying that was worth paying for.

Do people really use the Bubble calendar?

I bought a j2cr lh cbe and then bought the standard handle because I’m bad about choking up a lot and did not realize this until I had the long handle. Sold it and bought the Ultre. It came in Thursday and after several sessions here is my impression.

Power and spin goes to the Ultre. It is more grippy. Hard to explain. But just is.

Pop goes to the Ultre by a tad. But for some reason I do punch volleys much better with the j2.

Control, drops and resets go to the to the j2.

The j2 is louder and sounds better imo.

If I had to choose the j2 is the paddle for me. I do want to try a j6. But I have always been a hybrid fan.