There’s a lesson we can all learn from what is so far the biggest upset of 2026 on the PPA Tour. Last month at the PPA Tour Mesa Cup, Anna Bright/Hayden Patriquin stunned Ben Johns/Anna Leigh Waters by rolling to a three-game sweep in the gold-medal match. On match point, Bright sent a third-shot drop […]
Let us know if this sounds like you: When you started playing pickleball, you knew nothing about it. But it seemed interesting, so you learned a little bit here and a little more over there. Eventually, you felt OK about your game, but then … you were stuck. That is what we refer to in […]
The pro pickleball players who constantly succeed share a trait: The ability to consistently execute on their plan. I am thinking of this as “Disciplined Execution.” In my vernacular, “Disciplined Execution” means doing your best to develop, stick to, and execute a game plan. It is important to always include “doing your best” in any […]
We are entering interesting times at the top of pro pickleball. For a long time now, order has prevailed in the men’s doubles division. Ben and Collin Johns were able to wear opponents down with a steady soft game diet. Drop, move forward, dink, wait for a mistake or a ball that Ben could attack. […]
Want to play better pickleball in 2026? Here are 6 shots that you want to make sure you have in your game. I bet you could use improvement on at least 4 of the 6, especially if you’re a 3.5 or 4.0 player looking to improve your rating this year. 1. A reliable backhand return […]
Every pickleball player uses metrics when they play as a way of measuring performance. Even the score is just a metric: How many points you have compared to your opponent. There are useful metrics, like how many serves am I missing per game on average. And there are useless metrics, like your unforced errors (more on […]
There are lots of lessons to be learned from watching pickleball at the highest level. The recent PPA Tour Lakeland Open in Florida was no exception. This lesson is about the mental side of our sport – an aspect that influences much more than you may think at first (there’s a pun in there I […]
Federico Staksrud and Hayden Patriquin won gold last weekend at the PPA Tour Pickleball World Championships (and the 3,000 ranking points that came with the title) after handily beating the No. 1 seed Ben Johns/Gabe Tardio in the semifinals and then pretty decisively following that up with a win over the No. 4 seed JW Johnson/CJ […]
Pickleball challenges us. This is one of its great attractions. Every time we play, we are faced with adversity and puzzles to solve. And we do our best to work through them. But as you interact with pickleball and do your best to work through each game, strive to be as constructive as possible. This […]
Whether you’ve been playing pickleball for several months or several years, you’ve probably encountered the following scenario: You hit a volley that lands very close to the baseline. I mean, the ball is right on (or next to) the line. You think your shot landed in. But your opponent sees things differently and calls the […]
