Description: Tyson and Thomas weigh in on PaddleGate 2022. The PPA Tour has a new paddle compliance policy. We asked the dink fam, would Serena Williams crush the pickleball world on day 1? Tyson goes viral every year on May the 4th and you can too.
Show Notes
0:36 PPA North Carolina Open starts a shorts discussion
3:50 The Dink Fam lives the pickleball life
8:25 The Paddle Controvesy
13:40 The PPA Tour’s new paddle compliance policy
20:10 Field testing vs lab testing
28:19 It’s time for the Serena Williams pickleball debut
32:55 Tyson’s 33 million views formula
35:30 Recruiting Twitter warriors to defend pickleball
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Lots of things on the paddles for you. 1) A LOT of these brands are all sourcing from similar if not the same OEMs in Asia. You can literally order the same models without the branding online today. So the surface material for Electrum, CRBN, Joola, ESPER etc (all “raw carbon”) is very similar if not the same. See Example Image Here – https://tinyurl.com/3jr77hk3 So yes, better QA and specs need to come from the Brands but they should also work with their suppliers. 2) There’s ZERO science out there that any of the regs put in place by USAPA on paddle roughness matter all that much. A ball’s hardness and surface condition could (and likely does) have more to do with spin than a slightly over spec Raw Carbon Face. I’m sure at some point it does matter but the brands won’t tell you much since marketing and sales dollars are at stake. USAPA is in an odd spot since they risk biting a hand that feeds them. Similar debates likely can be had re paddles cores – USAPA regulates the deflection to a very tiny amount so most core material claims are likely marketing vs actually meaningful – Regs keep it that way.
Re compliance – Offer free roughness testing onsite for each tournament – the Joola vid shows how fast a “quick check” could be done. The testers are expensive so likely won’t be done by individuals. Randomly test podium paddles and the occasional other paddle to help with compliance.
The other elephant in the room here is that (within reason) paddle tech likely is more smoke than actual performance increase and it’s ultimately the skill of the player that matters. Not really info the brands want out since the gold rush of pricey paddles is very much on right now.